Stress fractures are an incredibly frustrating injury, especially for young runners. Even though the science behind recovery from stress fractures—more properly called “bone stress injuries”—has advanced significantly in the last several years, sustaining a bone stress injury can still completely derail your season.
Of course, far better than a swift rehabilitation is simply not getting a stress fracture in the first place (or at the very least, avoiding another one). That’s what we’re concerned with today.
Thanks to advances in the fundamental science of bone injuries, we now know that a powerful lever at your disposal for increasing your resistance to bone injuries is improving your bone strength. The best way to do that? Targeted plyometric training, a.k.a. “jump training.”
This kind of high-load, high-loading-rate intervention is especially effective at improving bone strength in young runners—roughly, teens and pre-teens, with some wiggle room on either side for individual differences in puberty and growth spurts.
However, if your goal is building bone strength, you should not use a general-purpose, performance-oriented plyometrics program for runners. Plyo programs that target bone strength need markedly different components for maximum efficacy.
Below, I’ll walk you through the science behind building a plyometrics program for bone strength, including total contacts, types of jumps to include, and appropriate programming during the week.
If you just want to get the final plyo program as a printable PDF, you can download it here:
📋 Download the bone strength plyometrics program here
Otherwise, read on to learn the science and practical programming behind this plyo routine!
