A complete athletic methodology built on three sequential foundations. Every program in Plyo composes from these phases — never out of order, never with a phase skipped.
Slow, grinding repetition through full range of motion. The nervous system learns the position before it ever learns to move fast. The body becomes capable of being there — under load, in a deficit, at the bottom of a squat — before being asked to move quickly through it.
Most strength programs skip directly to load. Plyo's Athletic phase exists because position is a prerequisite for force production. An athlete who can't hold the bottom of a split squat for ninety seconds under bodyweight will never safely express explosive force from that same position.
This phase is uncomfortable on purpose. It's the boring part of every great training program — and the part most apps skip because it doesn't make for satisfying numbers.
Reps are not the metric. Time-to-first-failure is the metric. Athletes hold a position; Plyo's iso-neural timer runs in Space Mono on the screen. When the athlete starts to break form, they tap “failure” — Plyo logs the first failure, allows a brief reset, and resumes.
Across a block, the failure-point clock should move outward. That's the only progression that matters here.
The plyometric shock method. Graduated eccentric loading from 12″, 18″, and 24″ box heights. The body learns to decelerate before it learns to accelerate. Landings are the entire point — never volume, never how-many.
If Phase 1 taught the athlete how to be in a position, Phase 2 teaches the athlete how to arrive at one — at speed, under gravity, with control. The eccentric phase of every athletic action is where injuries happen and where stiffness is built. Depth drops train this in isolation.
The shock method bypasses the brain's safety governor in a controlled, progressive way. It also produces by far the most rapid stiffness adaptations of any drill we know.
The metric is ground-contact time and quality of landing — never how many reps. Plyo coaches mark each landing as STUCK, RECOVER, or BREAKDOWN. Two breakdowns in a session ends the session at that height.
Heights progress only when a coach unlocks them: 12″ → 18″ → 24″. The 24″ box requires a video review on the 18″ box first. No exceptions.
Reactive, explosive, elastic. Force production built on a foundation of position and absorption. This is where athletic output is finally expressed — and where personal records, vertical jumps, broad jumps, and approach-jump heights actually get logged.
Recoil is the payoff. The previous two phases were preparation: position and absorption. Phase 3 is the moment the loaded spring unloads — when stored elastic energy returns through a stiff, well-positioned system to produce peak output.
If an athlete is here without the Athletic and Depth Drop blocks first, they will produce force from compromised positions. Plyo's coach dashboard will not let a coach assign Phase 3 without a Phase 2 completion log.
The metric is peak output: vertical jump height, broad jump distance, sprint split, ball-throw distance. Plyo records video on every PR attempt and tags it in the athlete's progress timeline in gold.
Volume is the lowest of any phase. Phase 3 sessions are short, dense, and explicit. The point is maximal intent — not exhaustion.
A complete Plyo block — 14 to 16 weeks — runs Athletic → Depth Drop → Recoil in sequence. Coaches set the boundary weeks; the app surfaces phase transitions explicitly so athletes feel the shift.