Some great ideas about how to overload the landing phase from Chris Brandner using unilateral landing and John Mikula using aqua-training. Another variation of drop landings to enhance the vertical eccentric overload is by simply adding wearable resistance (WR) to you or your athletes. Fowler et al. (1994) studied landing mechanics from a drop jump and reported significant increases in peak vertical ground reaction forces (vGRF - 5.2%) and loading rates (26.2%) when comparing trunk loading (~11.5% body mass - BM) to an unloaded condition. Interestingly, MacAdam et al. (2017) found no significant differences to peak landing vGRF when using loading of 3% and 6% BM. So it seems some loading between 6-11% BM, becomes a statistically significant overload. However, in terms of practical significance it would make sense to overload the eccentric phase in a progressive manner (e.g. 3-6-9-12% BM) and observe landing mechanics and how the loading is affecting ground contact times, then progressively overload based on these observations.
Check out the research here:
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