Prepare the body
Run fast. Run efficient
The best runners do two things really well:
Put a lot of force into the ground
Spend very little time on the ground
It’s a skill. And it’s something you can train.
At the core, this comes down to producing force quickly. That’s where plyometrics come in.
Most runners sprinkle in a few jumps or skips and call it good. And sure, a small dose can help. But if you actually want that work to carry over to make you faster, you need to zoom out.
Plyometrics don’t create force. They express it.
Effective plyometrics are a conversion of strength into power.
If you don’t have the strength, there’s nothing to convert.
That’s where a lot of runners get stuck, especially high school athletes and adult recreational runners. They go straight to plyos without building a real strength base. Different populations, same limitation.
The upside? There’s a lot of room for these folks (probably you) to improve. Build the foundation first, and now the speed work actually does something.
This week, I’ll show you how I think when developing athletes in this way. I use a derivation of a progression model inspired by Tudor Bompa as well as some ideas from Olympic XC skier/coach, Jim Galanes that takes you from general strength to high-velocity power. This ultimately translates into faster, more efficient running. It’s a simple framework you can run across your season so your strength work actually translates when it matters.
The one thing that needs to be clear right off the bat is that this progression does not yield immediate results in practice.
Do we see key improvements along the way? Yes.
Will you get faster from the start to the end of a season if it’s done right? Likely so.
But expecting major jumps in your running performance in just a few weeks isn’t realistic. This is a longer game. You have to commit to this across multiple seasons and start looking at progress season to season. That’s an important nuance, and one most runners miss.
Now let’s look at how to do this:
For endurance athletes, I generally break this progression into four main buckets:
Build tissue tolerance and general strength
Develop maximal force production
Convert strength into power
Maintaining through the season
Could you blend some of these together? Sure. Training is never perfectly clean in the real world. But having a general roadmap matters, especially for runners who have never consistently trained these qualities before.
Let’s start with the foundation.
1. General prep (4-6 weeks)
Goal: Build tissue tolerance and movement quality
Low–moderate load strength work
High reps, controlled tempo (2-3 sets, 8-12 reps per set)
General coordination, basic movement patterns
Intro-level plyos (low amplitude: skips, hops, jump rope)
You gotta learn how to move! This is your “don’t get hurt + learn to use your body” phase.
2. Max strength development (4-6 weeks)
Goal: Increase force-producing capacity
Heavier lifts (relative to athlete level)
Lower reps, longer rest, heavier loads (3-4 sets, 3-5 reps per set)
Still controlled, but intent to move weight
You’re raising the ceiling of force production. If you can’t produce force slowly, you won’t produce it quickly. This is the missing piece for a lot of high school + adult recreational athletes.
Important note: This may be a nice time to cap run volume or intensity at a manageable level. You cannot be going hammer and tongs in all areas of training at once. Layering is a nice way to train when you are looking at developing specific attributes.
3. Conversion to power (4-6 weeks)
Goal: Turn strength into usable, fast force
Plyometrics become more central
Jump variations, bounds, short ground contacts
Olympic lift derivatives (if appropriate)
Med ball work
This is where strength becomes speed. Now the athlete actually has something to “convert.” You’ll be able to start to channel your focus toward your run workouts and long runs now that this type of work is less fatiguing and more complementary to your program. This may come in at a time where you are starting your “build” toward a race.
One important note on plyometrics:
Plyometrics are not conditioning. More is not better here, and fatigue is not the goal.
The purpose of plyometric training is to improve how quickly and efficiently you can produce force into the ground. Once contacts get sloppy, ground contact times get long, or you’re simply grinding through fatigue, you’re no longer really training power. You’re just tired and jumping.
Most endurance athletes honestly need less plyometric volume than they think. A handful of high-quality contacts performed with intent will usually carry over better than marathon jump circuits done to exhaustion.
Think crisp, reactive, and coordinated.
What do I do with my weight lifting?
Good question, you may keep a similar scheme to Phase 2, but now the weight is lowered and the weight is moved with speed and intent to reflect the emphasis of the block.
4. Maintenance (In-Season)
Goal: Maintain the qualities you built leading into your competitive season
You still need to keep the lights on with strength and plyometric work, but the dose should come down.
For most endurance athletes, 1–2 sessions per week is plenty during this phase. The goal is not to introduce anything new from the max strength or power phases. The goal is simply to maintain the qualities you already built.
At this stage, volume becomes the enemy.
You are primarily chasing neural recruitment and maintaining coordination, stiffness, and force production without creating unnecessary fatigue.
The overall structure may still resemble the power phase, but now you strip away anything nonessential in favor of preserving energy for the thing that matters most: Performance.
Do you want to make this work for you but not sure how to start?
Get working with me at Elite Edge TODAY! Hit the photo below for more info:
Build the strength. Convert it to power. Maintain it consistently.
Do that over multiple seasons and you give yourself a much better chance of becoming a faster, more durable, and more efficient runner.
That’s the long game. And in endurance sports, the long game usually wins.