trianer telling friend to do ply's right away!

[thriller]

my girlfriend is a basketball player too. she has nevr lifted wieghts in her life. never did any sort of triaining for the sport. she wanted to start to so she joined a gym (its an all girls gym she went there cuz she got in for free). the gym she goes to has barly any free weights. so i was just trying to tell her to do my lifts that involved balance and explosiveness after she got the lifts down. well she talked to this triainer and the lady told her to stick to plys (she didnt assess my girls individual differences) because of her postion.
am i wrong or is this not safe for my girl(elisa)?
someone please tell me.
thanks

 

[lemur]

talk to the trainer. it depends on the plyos as well. personally I think it would be dangerous as I just started doing them myself and they are a much different type of activity and I think some level of musculature and especially strength of the tendons/ligaments is needed.

 

[thriller]

thanks for the reply lemur.

I REPLY THATS IT. I THOUGHT YOU COOLCOLJ WOULD HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT THIS.

 

[coolcolj]

I never do plyos - I hate em!

My explosiveness and speed has improved a lot without em.
Playing ball alot, jumping etc is plyo enough.


Just doing weights and Olympic lifts has made me freaky on the court!

 

[erickthegreat11]

I've heard squatting 1.5 or 2.5Xbodyweight something like that is needed to dunk. Never made higher jumps/speed with plyos, just hurt after a while. Kept lifting weights for a while and squatting and my jump went up 8 inches.

 

[coolcolj]

Quote from Dr Squat


I've been noticing a disturbing trend where athletes are doing plyometrics waaaaaaay too often and waaaaaay too early in their training cycle. Realize that plyos are very stressful, and you can easily overtrain on them. Begin 12 weeks or so before competition doing very light skips, hops and jumps no more than 2-3 times weekly...build in intensity (not frequency) until 5 weeks out and begin weighted plyos....stop at 3 weeks out in favor of shock plyos twice weekly until a week out...then stop.

 

[thriller]

thanks alot guys.

well i think the trainer at her gym is more use to training for body building not sport specific training.
thanks again

 

[coolcolj]

here is what Todd WIlson - quoting Charles Poliquin had to say on this


What if anything did he have to say on Plyometrics?


### That "...they're for white guys." Basically if the athlete is already fast, there's no point in practicing what he's good at. Find the weak link that is preventing him from being fast. In some cases that's strength. I agree strongly with Charles on this point. In basketball the new trend is plyo's, medicine ball throws and speed drills. All potentially have there place in a given program, but in basketball most players are already good athletes (i.e., they are fast). Trying to go faster will not make them faster, but increasing maximal strength will drastically improve speed. Now, you can argue that there is a point of diminishing returns and eventually you reach an optimal strength (i.e., further strength improvements will not improve performance), however I'm starting to feel that this does not happen with high school and college athletes and until the athlete has been training properly for 5-10 years you probably don't have to worry about "topping out" with their strength. But that's just my opinion.