Box Jump Follow Up
Wow, yesterdays traffic was huge. 14,000 views here and over 60,000 reached on Facebook. Guess Box Jumps are popular.
I got an interesting response yesterday that made me realize that I should take this post a step further. The video below shows a good box jump. Interestingly, the athletes vertical jump approximately corresponds to the box height ( 24″ box, 25″ vertical). Sorry for the injection of logic.
The next video shows what a “too high” box jump looks like:
As I said yesterday, it’s not how high the box is, it’s the movement of the center of mass. High boxes can be dangerous.
To learn more you can order my Plyometric Training DVD from Perform Better.
Michael Boyle's Strengthcoach.com Blog 
December 19, 2015 at 3:49 pm
Mike- exactly. The key is to move center of mass, not develop explosive hip flexors. As for confusion with jumps and plyometrics, I’d agree. Most of our jumping is just that , jumping. Certain exercises we do are plyometric in nature but, we work up to those by “jumping”.
December 19, 2015 at 3:47 pm
Absolutely. I think the eccentric strength development of “sticking” a landing position is a key to all jumps.
December 18, 2015 at 1:57 pm
we feel it is how far you can move your center of mass during the jump that counts. we look for center of mass to move somewhat proportion to the height of the box and not just sucking the legs up underneath center of mass to reach the top of the box. works well for our clients.
there also seems to be a lot of confusion between box jumps and plyometric training. cheers.
December 18, 2015 at 7:11 am
Mike would you say one of the reasons for looking the same at take off and landing is to teach controlling your body during the eccentric landing phase and not just letting the body fall into the bottom of your range of motion and resting on the joints when jumping onto a box that is to high?