Certain sports have always looked at strength and conditioning as ways to improve sports performance. Football is a perfect example of this as Boyd Epley is widely recognized as the first to introduce a s&c program to the University of Nebraska in the late 1960s.
Other sports, particularly endurance ones, have been slower to look to the weight room to gain an advantage. This may have been due to mis-held beliefs that strength training would make the athlete slow, heavy and lacking in mobility. For a distance runner this would compromise speed, their mass and stride length.
So yeah, three strikes and the weight room is out.
Plus there's also the problem that some athletes do not want to do what they're not good at. Endurance athletes tend to be leaner and carry less muscle than a speed or power athlete. The endurance athlete will therefore do well in things that require them to move their own bodies i.e. running, skating, cycling, swimming, and may struggle with physical pursuits that require moving an external force or load i.e. a barbell, dumbbell or opponent in football.
A recent review examined the benefits of jump training in endurance runners.
The review looked at 21 studies which comprised over 500 athletes (n=511) both male and female.
What they found is that jump training helps improve time trial performance in events from 2-5 km. The improvement in jump performance was related to an increase in the rate of force development, an improvement in sprint performance, increased reactive strength and running economy. Typically we don't see improvements in VO2 max.
In terms of how often runners should incorporate jumps into their training, they found one to four sessions were most the common over a four to twelve week plan. Athletes new to plyometrics should start with fewer days and work up to a manageable frequency.
As to what the exercise should look like, the drills should be high intensity with an emphasis on minimizing ground contact time. Exercises could be both unilateral and bilateral, and although the paper didn't make suggest this, it would be our position that it is safer to start bilateral and then progress to unilateral, if and when this would be appropriate. Jumps should be performed both horizontally and vertically i.e. broad jumps and hurdle jumps.
Benefits could be seen when as little as 5 minutes of jump training was added to a training session. From a programming perspective, it is more advantageous to track the number of foot contacts rather than the duration of a session.
Within a training session, reps can be completed in rapid succession or with less than 5 seconds between. Two minutes rest between sets is the average. When the rest is too short, the nervous system doesn't regenerate completely enough. But more is not better and if the rest is too long, some of the plyometric benefits are lost.
If you are a runner, and don't currently do any plyometric training, you should add this to your program. Don't over do it as it can take a while for the fascia to adapt to the stimulus. If you're not clear as to what you should do or how to get started, send a message to
Citation
Ramirez-Campillo, R., Andrade, D. C., García-Pinillos, F., Negra, Y., Boullosa, D., & Moran, J. (2021). Effects of jump training on physical fitness and athletic performance in endurance runners: A meta-analysis: Jump training in endurance runners. Journal of Sports Sciences, 1-21.