Plyometric Exercises

Plyometric exercises are something you should consider doing if you want to improve your speed and overall fitness. Not only can they make you faster, you can also work on some areas that running doesn’t develop. Because of the impact, I don’t recommend that beginning runners do plyometrics until they have 3 or 4 months of conditioning under their belt. I started with 10 or 15 minutes of plyos and am now up to 45 minutes. I usually do them 1x/week.

Plyometrics should be done on a level, soft surface. I do them on grass. There’s a lot of impact and you don’t want a hard surface making it worse. For most of my plyometric workouts, I have been warming up by running 3.5 miles. This is way more than necessary, but you should do 10 – 15 minutes of easy running in any case. Don’t start cold.

I usually start off with “butt-kickers” and high knee strides to get my heart pumping. A “butt-kicker” is a quick little step where you raise your heel all the way up until it touches your butt. You move forward slowly as you do this. A high-knee stride is just what it says. Here you focus on raising your knee and getting some vertical lift as you stride forward. About 60 – 75 yards of each of these is enough for me to get going. I usually spend about 45 minutes on plyometrics.

Following are some of the exercises I do, in no particular order. Runners World has some more exercises on their site.

• Quadrant jumps: jump forward, like a little standing broad jump, to the left, backwards, and then to the right, as if you are trying to land on the corners of a square. I may repeat the sequence up to 10x.


• Lunges (high): about 50 yds 2X


• Jumping lunges: done in place


• Squats (without weight)


• Just plain jumping: Arms straight overhead, I just jump as high as I can off my toes, up to 20x.


• Saggital jacks: just like a jumping jack, but your legs go forward and backward, instead of out to the side.


• Karaoke: A funny kind of sideways run where you alternate putting the lead foot in front of the trailing foot, then behind it. Swing your arms as you go The idea is to get your hips moving. Again, I go about 50 or 60 yards 2x per set on this one, sometimes I do multiple sets in a workout.


• Hops: just hop forward as far as you can. You can also try it one-footed.Here is some interesting advice from a British track coach on gaining speed that includes one-footed hops as part of the program: http://www.serpentine.org.uk/advice/coach/fh62.php


• Sprints: Sometimes I will just throw in a 120-150 yard hard sprint or two into the middle of the workout.


• Skaters: and exaggerated side to side jump where you squat low and kick your trailing leg back as you jump. Good training for us runners who have problems with IT bands and adductors.


• Mountain climbers: start in a push-up position, but raise your butt up high. Then start “running” in place. These are exhausting when done right. An alternate version is to spread your feet wide after every left-right combo. I do these up to 20x.


• Jumping butt-kicks: Same as just plain jumping, but try to touch your butt with your heels while in the air.


• Skipping: I’m not so good at this.

Recovery from a plyometric workout is similar to that of a speed workout. That is, to your body it is more like running 200s on a track than it is like doing a hard tempo run, longer intervals or distance running. If you do it hard, you will get sore in the same way.