How to train speed at home during quarantine

Speak, bolerada! Training a lot at home during quarantine? I know it's not an easy situation, but we can't be discouraged and we must always look for options to optimize our training in a reduced space.

Here's the deal... Many athletes who follow RumoAoPro already know how to do resistance training at home as I showed in the Youtube video below

Anyway, now the question is...

How to train SPEED at home? Is this possible? Is it possible to get faster without running?

As Cristiano Ronaldo says: "SIIIIIIII!"

The solution has a first and last name and is already known by RumoAoPro followers and it is called: PLYOMETRY

I already explained what plyometrics is in this video below: 

First, let's bust a plyometric myth:

You need to squat 2x your body weight to start doing plyometric exercises.

LIE! I bet when you were in elementary school you jumped rope in gym class, right? But probably back then you didn't have the strength to do a squat with weights equivalent to 2x your body weight.

There are different levels of exercises, from basic to more advanced so that all types of athletes can benefit.

Another thing, some of the exercises I'm going to share here are not truly plyometric since they don't have the stretching-shortening cycle, like the Box Jump for example. However, they are a form of jump training and they provide similar benefits over true plyometric exercises.

On the ideal amount of plyometric training during the week, influential people in the fitness world suggest that you have no more than 120 contacts. As long as they are basically repetitions.

And it's worth remembering that plyometrics is not meant to be used as a quarantine hack, you can enjoy its benefits all season long as these exercises will increase the lengthening cycle shortening the ankles and this will basically help you use more elastic energy , which in turn will help you run faster and is basically free energy! 

There are 4 levels of plyometric exercises (the first 3 are not truly plyometric as I mentioned before).

Level 1

Box Jumps (2 legs) and Box Hops (1 leg) and Bounds: Basically Box Jumps and Box Hops would be jumping onto a higher surface like a box, a step, or even the couch. 

In these exercises, focus on jumping as high as you can and obviously on landing to avoid unnecessary injuries.

Bound would be jumping with one leg and landing with the opposite leg (can be lateral, frontal, diagonal, etc.). In bound, we want to jump high and far but also focusing on landing movement.

Level 2 

In level 2 we will just remove the box, step or sofa and add a barrier like a hurdle or even a cone. This will cause us to add more eccentric stress to our body. When we use a box, we decrease the landing force.

Level 3

At level 3, let's add double contact, for example... If I'm jumping over a cone, instead of jumping, landing and jumping again, I'll jump, make a small control jump and jump again. 

Level 4

Fourth and final level would be the continuous jumps without the control jump. For example, if I'm doing jumps over hurdles in a straight line, I'll jump, "attack" the ground and take off as quickly as possible, having minimal contact with the ground.