I’ve been talking a little about emphasising the propulsive overload whilst reducing landing overload. However, your landing, braking or eccentric forces shouldn’t be avoided, and in fact you may want to emphasise them. For example, you should emphasise the landing or vertical eccentric braking forces as they are thought to be critical pre-requisites to safe plyometric or jump training. That is, you should ensure the athletes have adequate technique and eccentric strength to prepare them for the intensity of their jump training.

So how do you prepare your athletes to handle the significant landing forces associated with jump training? You need to expose them to progressive eccentric overload. One idea is to use drop landings from progressively higher heights and distances. The data on the slide is from Guy Mothersole’s Master’s thesis and shows the vertical ground reaction forces (VGRF) associated with various heights and jump distances. For example, if you dropped from a height of 30 cm and stepped out 80 cm your VGRF are 3.55 times your body weight. Any other ideas?