Tamara McDonald A former professional women’s basketball player and college standout. Played colligate basketball at Pepperdine University, under the direction of Mark Trakh University of Southern California women’s basketball coach.   McDonald earned her B.S. in Physical Education from Pepperdine University.  Currently working on her certification from the National Strength and Conditioning Association (NSCA) as a Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist (CSCS) and personal training. McDonald serves as strength an conditioning coach for Calabasas High School girls basketball program, with respect to athletic development and young athlete-based conditioning.   Over the past 5 years, McDonald has worked with many athletes of all ages and abilities. Her major focus and passion has been in the athletic development of young athletes. McDonald has created several pre-season and post season programs to assist parents and coaches in developing successful plyometric programs.   Plyometrics is a form of training that links speed and strength together to produce greater speed of movement. Plyometric training is used for the lower body, upper body and core to enhance speed of movement in many specific skills. Plyometric training will help athletes learn greater balance, coordination, quickness, agility, speed and power. Plyometric training takes advantage of the elastic energy that the muscle will store when stretched.   One of the properties of plyometric training is called the stretch-shortening cycle. If a muscle is lengthened it is called the eccentric phase and if it is shortened it is called the concentric phase. Both phases will produce muscular force. When the eccentric and concentric phases are used in combination, it is termed the stretch-shortening cycle. How this applies to plyometric training is the speed at which the eccentric changes to the concentric to result in a faster more explosive contraction. This is only one aspect of a complex system that needs to be coordinated to produce plyometric.   Plyometric training trains the nervous system as well as the musculature system. To increase speed of movement of a group of muscles, there will be several factors involved. These factors include; intramuscular and inter-muscular coordination, neural pathway development, myotatic reflex and much more. In general, plyometric training boils down to the muscles (or the sensory organs) receiving a stimulus, then sending this stimulus to the spinal cord for the spinal cord to read the demand placed on the muscle and sending back a response to meet the demands placed on the muscle.

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