Have you ever watched a top sprinter and considered just how fast they are running? Usain Bolt would get a speeding ticket in built-up areas! And what about the slam-dunk in basketball? How on earth do players like Shaquille O’Neal leave planet earth and attain such heights? And what of Sir Christopher Hoy and Alberto Contador? Unbridled, these cyclists would seem to be able to tear their bikes apart!Wherever you look in the world of top-class sport, power counts; and one of the best ways to develop this most precious commodity is through plyometric training.Put plainly, plyometric exercises develop fast muscle fibre. It’s based on the understanding that a concentric (shortening) muscular contraction is much stronger if it immediately follows an eccentric (lengthening) contraction of the same muscle. It’s a bit like stretching out a coiled spring to its fullest extent and then letting it go: immense levels of energy are released in a split second as the spring recoils. Plyometric exercises develop this recoil. Muscle fibre stores more elastic energy and transfers more quickly and powerfully from the eccentric to the concentric phase.It’s a form of training that offers you a huge amount of athletic reward because it develops precious sporting commodities like speed and power through replicating the speed and movement patterns of your chosen sport.And on top of this plyometric training can be practiced absolutely anywhere. All you need are the necessary workouts to do it.general sports-specific movement pattern conditioning.The first stage provides you with a series of exercises that work on developing a strong foundation of power as well as increasing your speed and reactions. Stage two increases the workload and incorporates a further selection of dynamic exercises before upping the intensity in stage three by using a combination of running drills. The final stage focuses on using plyometric training to increase your speed endurance.Combine these workouts together and you’ve got a four part plyometric training programme packed full of quality drills that will ensure you possess the power to take your performance to a whole new level.

» Read more: How to Release the Awesome Power of ‘Plyometric Training’