4 Plyometric Drills to Increase Your Running Speed
Increasing your running speed takes patience, consistency, and the right approach. Too often do most distance runners focus solely on running-specific strategies without first ensuring the body possesses the ability to run more quickly.
At this current moment, your body has a specific composition of Type 1 to Type 2 muscle fibers, and a certain degree of strength, power and cardiorespiratory fitness. Is this enough to then push your limits during a track workout, hill repeat, or tempo run? Maybe yes, maybe no.
The great thing is that the human body is very adaptable to the stimulus we place upon it. So even if you are not ready to naturally run at a faster speed, you can implement movement-based strategies that train the body for more speed and efficiency. This is where plyometric training comes in.
First, let’s dig a little bit deeper into plyometrics. Plyometric training is a method that utilizes jumping and landing to enhance neural pathways, power, and elasticity. But, there are a few key principles that need to be followed in order to be successful…
Before implementing a plyometric program it’s important to possess adequate strength, stability, balance, and resilience. I always recommend completing a movement/orthopedic screen to determine your baseline levels in order not to get hurt by exceeding your limits.
Always prepare for plyometrics with a structured and thorough dynamic warm-up. This should focus on joint mobility, tissue temperature, weight bearing functional movements, and locomotion drills.
Plyometrics utilize potential and kinetic energy within the muscles and tendons to store energy and create a quick, powerful movement.
When completing a series of jumps in succession, it’s important to understand what is known as the “Amortization Phase.” This phase is the duration between initial ground contact (landing) and the subsequent jump (push-off). The goal of plyometrics is to limit this time as much as possible which will greatly increase rate of force development and power production.
Rest time is ever so important during plyometrics. Doing a series of jumps with limited rest greatly increases fatigue and reduces explosiveness. Therefore, rest 2-4 minutes between each set of plyometrics to ensure quality is high.
If you are a beginner to plyometrics, you will want to introduce these drills with lower volume. What most don’t realize is that compressive forces, strain on the musculotendinous unit, and overall stress on the body is high during this type of training. Therefore, start with a lower volume and build over 3-6 months by slowly increasing the demand. This will help increase success and reduce the likelihood of injury.
Now that you have a solid understanding about plyometrics, let’s take a look at some basic drills that will carryover to faster running speeds…
Ankle Hops
Ankle hops is a fantastic starting point in the world of plyometrics. Not only does it enhance power and force development, but it is simplified to strictly an ankle movement in order to teach the basics of repetitive jumping.
When performing ankle hops, your main goal is to minimize the time on the ground. Just like I mentioned above, the amortization phase is the duration of time from initial contact (landing) to the subsequent jump (push-off). When the amortization phase is quick, you’ll notice your jump will become much more forceful and explosive.
Because this drill is focused only on one joint and places less compressive force on the body, you can emphasize a quick landing to a faster and more explosive jump. This is the most important principle needed to apply to the other plyometric drills found later in this article. Therefore, ankle hops is often used as a teaching tool just as much as enhancing power and speed.
Exercise: Ankle Hops
Sets: 2-4
Repetitions: 4-8
Rest Time: 2-4 minutes
Single Effort Vertical Jumps
The next plyometric drill in the progression is the single effort vertical jump. Compared to the ankle hop, this vertical jump adds more joints into the mix as it incorporates a greater degree of motion at knees and hips. Therefore, not only do we have greater loading and compressive forces acting on the body, but bigger and more powerful muscle groups that are used throughout the running cycle.
Whenever you add more joints and range of motion into a plyometric drill, it greatly increases the difficulty to speed up the amortization phase and be explosive. That’s why the single effort vertical jump is done with a brief pause between jumps to properly set-up and work on the basics that will be challenged more in future drills.
One key thing worth stating early on is that this movement is not a squat but rather a hip hinge. It’s essential to sit back into the hips during the loading phase so you can utilize the action of hip extension which mimics push-off during running. And, once you commit to loading it’s important to quickly transition into the jump. Performing this drill too slowly will greatly reduce it’s effectiveness and carryover to your running.
Exercise: Single Effort Vertical Jumps
Sets: 2-4
Repetitions: 4-6
Rest Time: 2-4 minutes
Repetitive Vertical Jumps
Now that you are back at a repetitive exercise you will notice that the single effort vertical jump was just a teaching tool to perform the movement properly so we can now speed it up. The repetitive vertical jump is a fantastic plyometric drill that incorporates ankle, knee, and hip motion in an explosive manner.
This is not a simple drill and often one that many runners need to work on for months to master the execution. That is important to realize with plyometrics. If you have not mastered the movement or feel very slow completing it, it’s best not to move on to the next progression. The value comes with mastery and increased force production rather than completing the hardest exercise very slowly.
Two tips to performing the repetitive vertical jumps effectively are to recall the fast transition time you practiced with ankle hops. Plain and simple, can you get off the ground quickly and in an explosive manner? Secondly, don’t worry about going through the full range of motion. Running challenges very little range of motion at the knees and hips. Therefore, the more you load on each landing the more you are getting away from the specific demands of running, and also greatly slowing down each repetition.
Exercise: Repetitive Vertical Jumps
Sets: 2-4
Repetitions: 2-6
Rest Time: 2-4 minutes
Bounds
Did you notice a trend with the previous three drills? They all challenged vertical displacement. But, running happens predominantly in the horizontal plane. That’s where bounds come in!
A bound is a horizontal, power-based movement that utilizes a forceful hip extension motion to propel the body as far as possible. Out of all the movements covered in this article, the bound is the most specific to running. It is also very challenging to perform properly and with the correct execution.
Hip extension and ankle plantar flexion are the two most relevant motions when you look at propulsion and push-off during running. The bound targets both in an exaggerated fashion to make you faster and more explosive.
What’s important to realize with the bound is that you need to get outside of your comfort zone. It’s one thing to jump vertically and land in the same position. But, I often find people are hesitant to jump explosively for a desired horizontal distance. Just like with the other jumps, once you commit to loading the hips with the hinge-like motion, it’s crucial to quickly transition into your jump. This is the same load to explode mechanism you worked on speeding up in previous drills to really increase the explosiveness of the subsequent jump.
Exercise: Bounds
Sets: 2-4
Repetitions: 2-6
Rest Time: 2-4 minutes
Now that you have learned a simple plyometric progression to increase running speed, it’s important to practice patience in moving from one to the next. Just like in your running plan, you usually don’t go out and run a half or full marathon. Instead you progressively increase your mileage over a given period of time which allows the body to adapt to the increased stress and do so with success.
Although the plyometric progression outlined above is a very simple starting point, I do recommend perfecting each drill over 4-6 weeks before moving on to the next one. Completing each drill 3-4x per week is adequate but it’s important to listen to your body and decide what works alongside your running. Typically these will not be the only drills you are incorporating as you should already have a structured strength training routine in place. But if you don’t, please contact me directly so we can create a well-rounded program geared towards your specific goals and limitations.
Please feel free to comment below or reach out directly with any questions or comments. Thanks for reading!