Whenever we are looking to improve our overall fitness and athleticism, we look to strength training and some sort of activity or sport-specific training to complement it. There is a widely used style of training known as plyometric training. What is plyometric training? It is a style of training where a person uses rapidly loaded movement patterns that elicit a very strong elastic response from our muscles to create high forces and speeds. Exercises for the lower body, like jumps, hops, skips, and the upper body, like throws and slams, are excellent ways to produce these high forces and speeds in these movement patterns. Most sports like football, baseball, hockey, and so many others require rapid force production from your muscles. On the other end of the spectrum, sports like distance running require more low-intensity plyometrics to be performed over and over to create efficient and smooth locomotion of the body. Let’s talk about how they can fit into your other training and what they can do for your outcomes.