I spent almost 20 years training to become a powerful athlete… and somewhere along the way, I lost the one trait I didn’t realize mattered until it was gone. Not my strength. Not my speed. Not even my jumping ability. But rather my bounciness.

And if you lift heavy, or you’ve been training for a while, there’s a really good chance it’s happening to you too — and you don’t even know it yet. So today I want to show you exactly how I traded my bounciness for power, and how I’m getting it back — without sacrificing the strength & power that I've worked so hard to build.

When I was a younger athlete I wasn’t strong. I wasn’t powerful. I wasn’t doing anything impressive in the weight room. But I was reactive. I had that natural bounciness that a lot of skinny, weak kids have. I could jump well off one leg, I was quick, fluid, agile, and I moved light on my feet. I didn’t recognize it at the time, but that was my superpower.

And then I spent nearly 20 years trying to become something else: a power athlete. A dense, strong, explosive tank that can take off with the explosive power of a stick of dynamite. And somewhere along the way, without even noticing, I traded one superpower for another.

This is the athletic paradox: you don’t get to keep every trait you once had, and sometimes the ones you gain come with a cost. 

When you’re young and weak, you have to rely on reactivity and elastic energy. You simply don’t have the horsepower to muscle your way through anything, so your body automatically uses tendons more efficiently, it uses the stretch-shortening cycle better, keeps ground contact times short, and moves with natural stiffness and spring. You’re forced to be elastic because you don't have any other choice.

But once you start lifting heavy, especially if you dive into serious strength work — big deadlifts, RDLs, squats, cleans, snatches, etc. — everything changes. You’re no longer relying on tendon recoil. You’re relying on massive force production. And your body adapts to what you ask of it. Strength goes up. Power goes up. But elasticity and reactivity? Those traits slowly erode unless you deliberately train them.

It's an athletic trade-off. You CAN BE strong, powerful, and bouncy… but you CANNOT mindlessly pursue one set of traits without affecting the other.

In my early to mid 20s, I weighed about 160lbs. My back squat was around 430lbs, and I loved power cleans! I was cleaning 3-5x per week. I could walk out there and power clean 120kg from the floor any day of the week. And I was barely doing any sprinting, plyos, or elastic work at all. All I did was squat and clean. But even then, I could walk onto a basketball court, take a few steps, and grab the rim easily. Palm over the rim, and I'm only 5'6 so take that for what it's worth.

I had held my natural reactivity from my teens (basically I managed to not disrupt that process too much), and with the new weight training I was doing actually enhanced it indirectly by way of greater force production capacity and horsepower upgrades to my internal engine. So I didn't lose much of that natural bounciness when I was emphasizing Olympic lifts so heavily, and I gained horsepower that actually allowed me to jump higher and be generally springier. 

But then something changed. Fast forward to my late 20s and early 30s, and I had switched from training like an Olympic lifter to training like a powerlifter. I could squat 530lbs; I was significantly stronger and way more muscular; all of my lifts were leaps and bounds higher than what they used to be in my early 20s, and even my absolute power was higher. I could take a lift that I used to do from the floor and easily pull it from the high hang (the most unforgiving position). I was producing MORE FORCE in LESS TIME. I was both stronger and more powerful. 

But something subtle happened. My approach jumps didn’t feel the same. I wasn’t floating anymore. I couldn't glide. Everything felt forced. I was muscling myself along when I was sprinting. 

And even though my standing vert didn't go down, and I could still accelerate well, I was tight, and stiff, and my top speed was dramatically slower than it was in my teens. My fluidity was gone. My reactivity was gone. My bounciness was gone.

I became a power athlete. I could run through a brick wall and knock the teeth out of a rhinoceros, but I lost the elasticity that I used to take for granted.

Strength is heavy. Elasticity is light. Strength is slow. Elasticity is fast.

Elastic athletes have incredibly short amortization phases — they hit the ground and rebound instantly. Power athletes, on the other hand, often sink deeper and spend longer on the ground because they use muscular force instead of tendon recoil. The wrong kind of strength training can lengthen the amortization phase, making you less fluid and less reactive. But well-balanced power athletes maintain a short amortization phase, because short ground contacts are what make you bouncy and reactive in the first place.

And more importantly: enhanced strength and power increases muscle dominance. Elasticity relies on tendon dominance. If you only train one end of the spectrum your tendons stiffen incorrectly, your fascial recoil decreases, and you spend too long on the ground with every stride. You get stronger and more powerful, but less bouncy and springy (this is what happened to me).

Here’s the fix and it’s very simple...

You don’t need to go full bore with intense plyometrics to regain elasticity, especially not right away. You can regain elasticity simply by doing more low intensity, bouncy movement multiple times per week. Things like:

• jumping rope

• light bouncing as part of your warm-up

• slalom hops

• easy pogo hops

• sprint prep drills (high knees, A skips, straight leg shuffles, etc.) 

• as well as a variety of other low intensity hopping and skipping drills.

Basically if you want to be bouncy... you have to bounce! You need to “teach” your body how to move like a reactive athlete again. And once this becomes second nature again then you'll get even more mileage out of the intense plyometric drills that have become more mainstream in recent years, things like altitude drops with minimal ground contact times, depth jumps of various drop heights, RSI challenges, intense bounding, etc.

In addition to all of that sprinting is the most intense plyometric exercise in existence! Safely segueing your way back into max effort sprinting organically enhances and maintains reactivity pretty much regardless of whatever else you are doing. If you consistently incorporate sprinting into your program you will always be an athlete.

Here’s the good news: you can get your bounce back — even in your 30s, 40s, or potentially beyond — if you train both ends of the spectrum. The formula looks like this:

1. Maintain your power and strength work. Keep your squats, keep your heavy hinges, keep your explosive lifts, just emphasize them a little bit less to free up room for other things.

2. Add near daily low-intensity, bouncy movement into your list of exercises that you do multiple times per week. Things like, skipping, rhythmic hops, jumping rope, low to moderate intensity sprint preparation drills, etc. This rebuilds tendon function and opens up the joints for full freedom of movement and power expression through a full range of motion.

3. Sprinkle in true elastic work once your body is ready to handle it. Pogo hops, bounding, unilateral hopping for speed, unilateral hopping for distance, max effort approach jumps, reactive drills, depth jumps, rhythmic jumping, etc. Elasticity is trained both intensely and infrequently, as well as lightly and frequently. And always with high quality.

4. Stop expecting two superpowers to peak at once. You can be powerful. You can be reactive. You can even be both. But one trait will always try to overshadow the other unless you deliberately keep them in balance. That balance is the real secret to becoming a freak athlete.

So yes, I did lose some bounce along the way! I traded natural reactivity for power and force production. But the truth is: you don’t lose these qualities because you get older. You lose them because you stop training them. If you’re someone who lifts heavy, who’s gotten stronger over the years, but who misses the “lightness” you had as a kid — you can get it back. It just requires intention, and training like the athlete you used to be.