Hop, bound and land: plyometric progressions for the foot and ankle

Most foot and ankle rehab stalls in the same place. The athlete is strong, pain-free and balancing well on one leg, and then we put them back into a sport that asks the ankle to absorb several times body weight in a fraction of a second. Strength in the gym doesn't automatically become control at speed.

That gap is where plyometrics earn their place, and where re-injuries tend to happen when they're rushed or skipped. The good news: plyometric progression doesn't need a lab. It needs a clear order, honest criteria to move on, and a coach's eye for a good landing.

IN SHORT

• Progress jumps by take-off and landing: 2→2, 2→1, 1→1, then 1→other.

• Change one thing at a time: height, direction, or a held landing to a rebound.

• Quality earns the next step, not time in the phase.

• Side hop, figure-of-eight hop and drop-jump RSI catch what a hop for distance misses.

Progress by how they take off and land

The simplest way we've found to organise jumps is by feet: what the athlete takes off from, and what they land on. Each step puts more load through one ankle and gives it less time to organise.

2 → 2 Jump

Two-footed take-off and landing. Start with box jumps up onto a box, which reduces landing load, before drop jumps down from one.

2 → 1 Land on one

Take off on both, land on one. The athlete has to stick the landing on the injured side without a push-off from it.

1 → 1 Hop

Same foot to same foot. This is where most deficits show up: hop and stick first, then hop and return, then continuous hops.

1 → other Bound

One foot to the other, forwards then laterally. Lateral bounds load the ankle in the frontal plane, where lateral sprains happen. Landing a bound onto an angled wedge adds a controlled inversion challenge once flat landings are clean.

Change one thing at a time: height before distance, vertical before lateral before rotational, and a held landing before a rebound.

What earns the next step

Time in a phase isn't a criterion. Before moving up, we want to see four things.

Quiet landings

Soft and controlled, without a slap of the forefoot or a heel crash.

Alignment

Knee tracking over the foot, no collapse into pronation, no hip drop.

Repeatable quality

The last rep looks like the first. Fatigue is when the old pattern comes back.

No next-day reaction

Pain or swelling the morning after means the dose was too high, not that the athlete is "soft".

Coaching the detail on the course

Measure it

The eye is good; numbers are better for the final decisions. Single-limb hop tests are a validated way to pick up ankle deficits: the side hop and figure-of-eight hop in particular stress the ankle sideways and show differences that a straight-line hop for distance can miss (Caffrey et al., 2009; Docherty et al., 2005).

With a force plate, a drop jump adds a second number to jump height: how long the athlete spends on the ground. The reactive strength index (jump height divided by ground contact time) tracks the fast stretch-shortening ability that sport relies on (Flanagan and Comyns, 2008). Comparing single-leg drop jumps side to side shows asymmetry long after a hop for distance looks equal.

Turning test data into decisions

Where it fits

Plyometrics are the bridge between rebuilding strength and returning to sport, not a finishing touch. In our ankle sprain framework they sit in the "retrain" thread and start well before the athlete feels ready for them, at low intensity, so that by the time they're cleared they've already landed thousands of times.

GO DEEPER

We coach this progression hands-on across the Sporting Foot & Ankle course, with time to practise the drills and the cues on each other.

See the next course dates

References

1. Caffrey E, et al. The ability of 4 single-limb hopping tests to detect functional performance deficits in individuals with functional ankle instability. J Orthop Sports Phys Ther 2009;39(11):799–806.

2. Docherty CL, et al. Functional-performance deficits in volunteers with functional ankle instability. J Athl Train 2005;40(1):30–34.

3. Flanagan EP, Comyns TM. The use of contact time and the reactive strength index to optimize fast stretch-shortening cycle training. Strength Cond J 2008;30(5):32–38.