Faster, Stronger, Longer

These simple but explosive exercises will make your running feel lighter and faster than ever

Must-do training moves to try today. It’s a simple session but the results will be explosive

WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT

IMPROVING your run times, the obvious strategies come to mind: speedwork, hills, strengthtraining. But something is too often overlooked: power. Adding the right mix of plyometrics – explosive, energy-honing exercises – to your training regime can make your usual miles, whatever your level, feel like you’ve switched to warp-speed mode.

‘ Plyometrics are a great way of converting strength into speed and explosive power,’ says strength and performance coach Adam Rosante. The movements help runners cover more ground with each footstrike, reinforce minimal ground contact and promote full extension with every stride, such as when you’re running all out, he adds.

The big problem is that most people don’t understand what these movements truly are. ‘ Plyometrics involve a fast, high-intensity and involuntary eccentric contraction of the muscles and tendons, followed by an immediate, powerful concentric contraction,’ explains Rosante. ‘ It’s based on the stretch-shortening cycle: when a muscle tendon is placed in an involuntary forced stretch, it will contract with greater force.’ Imagine a rubber band: if you pull it tight, then quickly let go, it flies extremely fast, says personal trainer Kenny Santucci. ‘ It’s about stretching [the muscle] to its furthest extent so it can shoot the farthest.’

There are a lot of exercises that may look plyometric – box jumps, squat jumps, jumping lunges, for example – but some feel these don’t actually fit the true definition. ‘ In order for a movement to be truly plyometric, it has to be executed in less than two-tenths of a second,’ says Rosante. ‘This is the amount of time in which your body can experience the shock that elicits the involuntary stretch and use the accumulated energy for the returned action. If the action takes any longer, your body will use effort to perform the return movement instead.’

Let’s consider that for a moment, because two-tenths of a second really isn’t a lot of time. (It probably took you longer to read ‘ two-tenths’.) How, you may wonder, can you perform an entire exercise that fast? Minimal ground contact, says Rosante. Think of stepping off a box and, the instant your feet hit the ground, immediately exploding back up. The key to doing that well is a small number of good, strong reps. You should not feel as though you’re totally exhausted after doing some plyometric movements – they are not a conditioning tool, says Rosante. But you’ll probably feel a sense of fatigue the next day, because each rep is harnessing all of your power.

Even though they’re not body conditioners, plyometric moves can quickly transform your running. In a recent study in Thejournalof Sports medicine and physical Fitness, 24 men – none of whom regularly performed plyometrics – went through traditional, resistance or assisted plyometric programmes three times a week. After a month, they’d slashed seconds off their sprint and agility times, regardless of which style of training they did. And in a separate review of studies by the Singapore Sports Institute, athletes who did a minimum of one month of twiceweekly plyometric workouts improved their running economy and performance, regardless of gender or running ability.

Santucci says plyometric-based training is also critical for runners who regularly tackle high weekly mileage. ‘ It builds up your body’s durability,’ he says. ‘ When you run for miles on end, you want to overprepare the muscles, joints and ligaments to take that beating, and the best way to do it is to put them under tension with plyometrics.’

Of course, that doesn’t mean you should randomly throw plyometric work into your training. To ensure your workouts are of a consistently high quality, and to reduce your risk of injury, it’s best to do exercises that are the toughest on your central nervous system, such as plyometrics, first. That’s why Rosante suggests doing the plyo workout (which he designed) on the pages that follow at the beginning of a strength-training day, before a run or even on its own for a quick power session. Then give yourself a 48-72-hour break from plyometrics – your body needs that much time to fully recover. And you will definitely have earned it.