Maggie's Farm

Kinda like saying that the large mouth bass is the classical fresh water fish, but including the three toed sloth in the same category. It doesn't belong!

Look. I like sleds, too. But they are the opposite of plyometrics.

PS: It is possible to do box jumps in a manner that makes them NOT a plyometric exercise. An example is Cross Fit.

Got a lot on my plate today, but I'll try to find my references tonight for the following:

I agree that ballistic movements for older athletes are more likely to result in injury than non-explosive movements. However, seniors tend to lose power to an even greater degree than they lose strength. That said, the issue then becomes (1) how much power - versus plain strength - does grandpa need/want?, and (2) what's the trade-off, i.e. the risk of injury versus the benefit of more power?

We lose power and we become more prone to injuries from explosive movements because (1) we don't train explosively as we age, and (2) as we age, our tissues become less elastic. Whether the latter process can be slowed down/halted/reversed by the careful addition of ballistic movements is what we need to examine if we agree that gramps would be better off with more power.

In my experience, the type of movements that are most likely to cause problems in seniors (other than sitting on the sofa and doing nothing) are negative (eccentric) ballistic movements. Picture the catching phase of Cross Fit's wall ball exercise or the receiving phase of a squat clean.

In my experience, seniors often get injured because they can't handle ballistic forces, i.e. they get injured when they fall not only from the impact with the ground, but also from the sudden force that caused the fall. Indeed, many orthopedic docs state that when granny falls and breaks her hip, it was the break that came first, not the fall, and the break was due to a sudden force that she couldn't handle (often because she had no muscular strength/power to handle the stress with the result that the stress was fully applied to her already fragile - osteoporotic - skeleton).

PS - I would never allow BD's trainer to institute a program involving ballistic movements for my granny!

https://www.stevecronshawcoaching.com/post/power-speed-force-strength-what-is-more-important

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3245773/

https://www.stack.com/a/why-older-adults-desperately-need-power-training-and-how-to-do-it-right

RE Plyometrics - several strength coaches for pro teams have personally told me that an athlete should be squatting 2.5X body weight before incorporating plyometrics, e.g. box jumps, into their training as ploys are essentially designed for the purpose of converting strength into explosive movement (rate of force development). In other words, many of the people doing ploys have no business doing them and are simply jumping on a fad.