The Importance of Track High Jumping

Today’s podcast features track and S&C coach, Matt McInnes-Watson.  Matt is the owner of Plus Plyos, an online coaching platform that provides plyometric training programs, courses, and systems for coaches and athletes. His initial coaching experience was as a track coach for jumpers and multi-eventers, which led him to work as the lead S&C coach for Itchen College Basketball in the UK.  Matt teaches and delivers seminars around Europe and the US, while working with athletes from football to figure skating, using his expertise in jumping and plyometrics to enhance performance. Plyometrics, in the general sense, are as old as time.  How we have classified them and integrated them into training for sport started with track and field, and now is branching out more and more into team sport.  Within both track and team sport, we have aspects of specificity, rhythms, coordination and integration that we can consider to really hone in our plyometric efforts on the ultimate progress of the athlete. For today’s podcast, Matt covers his background as a soccer player, and the role of swing leg dynamics in kicking, and in its link to jumping.  We talk about various plyometric combinations from the perspective of direction, height and distance, and how this factors into common exercises like bounding and hurdle hops.  Extensive plyometrics in team sports, especially in season, is a debated topic we cover, and we finish with Matt talking about the origin and implementation of the “deep tier”, or full range plyometric exercises. Today’s episode is brought to you by Lost Empire Herbs and Exogen wearable resistance gear. For 15% off your Lost Empire Herbs order, head to lostempireherbs.com/justfly. To try Pine Pollen for free (just pay for shipping), head to: justflypinepollen.com. View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage. Timestamps and Main Points 2:36 – Matt’s background in soccer, and his introduction to jumping and track through basketball 11:42 – Single leg jumping in light of locomotion and the gait cycle 14:25 – The usage of the swing leg in a soccer kick, and how that fits with a single leg takeoff, or a bound 21:38 – How Matt looks at plyometrics for the sake of team sport development as opposed to track and field 31:52 – Matt’s take on high hurdle hops, and bounce-combos, in bilateral plyometric execution 42:00 – Thoughts on how much team sport athletes need to do extensive, high-contact volume, plyometrics, in light of their team sport demands 52:54 – Matt’s development and integration of “deep tier” plyometrics for athletes Matt McInnes-Watson Quotes “A big thing for me was speed on the ground in my takeoff, I went from .22s, to .17s when I jumped my best” “In terms of my abilities to pick up skills with my feet (a background of soccer was a huge help)” “It saddens me when you get a basketball player who cannot jump off of one leg” “One of my favorite combos is 2 forward, and 1 back, I think the real pinnacle of athletic movements is 2 hops forward 1 hop back, or 2 hops forward, 1 hop upward” “Especially for basketball players, lighter extensive work is hugely important for ankle rolls, if they have a history of ankle rolls” “I play with those (multi-lateral) rhythms with team sport guys, not so much with track guys” “You can’t hide in movements that are (inherently reflexive)” “(Deep tier) paired with the rudimentary stuff seems to be a recipe that is working really really well for us” “The deep tier is such great fun; there is a therapeutic side to achieving that full range of motion’ “There’s a safety net of providing a regular stimulus (with deep tier, stretch range plyos)” “So I play with a variation of deep tier, called a double dip, so when you drop down, you drop again quickly, and you pop out of it, and it plays with passive reflexes at the bottom ranges” About Matt McInnes-Watson Matt McInnes Watson, MSc,