Jumping on a box forces the athlete to put a degree of effort to accomplish the task, and the box height is more of a motivational tool. I find that jumps in place, like tuck jumps and split jumps, are good early activities, but for some reason, no beginners exist, and everyone tends to skip to more demanding exercises. Motivating - Jumping up and down in place is extremely valuable at all levels, and countless options exist.Clearly, a box is a useful way for some athletes to increase the demand of when they jump off them, but why the overzealousness for jumping on them? I believe the three reasons listed are why athletes are doing box jumps. Why do coaches and athletes do box jumps, and why are they so popular? Box jumps are popular because they look impressive and appear to have a value beyond just using the ground. Why are we decreasing the strain of landing and expecting athletic enhancement? Common Reasons Coaches Use Box Jumps Landing on a box means you are not dropping down farther but dropping down less. The overload of one’s body has to be far greater than normal to force adaptation. To make it simple, coaches and athletes are trying to make the landing more demanding than landing on a pillow. Athletes tend to either overload the body with external weighted exercises or use their bodies with a higher strain of gravity.
You can get more improvement in power by doing vertical jumps, but it is very small and only with beginners. When we do vertical jumps for testing purposes, it is to see how the training is improving the expression of power. Vertical jumps with just body weight are low-level exercises in terms of strain on the body, so the return, like the forces they are redirecting, are low in return with power development. Remember that box jumps are just vertical jumps with a landing on a box, something that reduces the impact of the body’s displacement. The rationale for using box jumps in directly improving this quality is questionable because the very nature of plyometric exercise is creating an overload that box jumps do not accomplish very effectively. The primary reason we do jumping exercises is to exploit the stretch-shortening cycle of the legs to improve the use of elastic energy. For example, is the projection from one or two feet, and the initiation from a counter movement or static position? Does the user walk or run to the box, start from a hold, or pre-jump into the projection? How high should the boxes be, and how should we coach the movement? Why are we doing the action in the first place? The above questions exist because many coaches and athletes apply the exercise but do not share a clear rationale for its use and delivery. The devil is in the details, and time after time, the details are lost. When one says we are doing box jumps, it may conjure up different images to different people.īox Jump – A jumping exercise in which an athlete projects himself or herself from the ground and lands with two feet on an elevated box.Īt first glance, a box jump may seem elementary, but be warned. To ensure we are on the same page, a very specific definition is needed before we start breaking down box jumps in more detail.
Figure 1: Athlete jumps up on the box with knees tucked for increased height. Plyometrics and equipment seem to be a favorite combination, but the wrong inclusion can cause injury and stagnation. My hope is that this article prunes the use of the exercise to what is essential and helps coaches think more generally of any exercise application. In this article, I objectively look at the exercise as a teaching and training tool and come up with a healthy perspective of how it can be used and when it should be left alone with athletes. Jumping and landing on a box has very little transfer to performance, and with any exercise, I see more and more abuse of the movement.
It is not that it does not have any value, but the obsession people have with box jumps does not seem to make sense if you look at the big picture. By Carl Valle Are Box Jumps Good Plyometric Exercises?įor years, I have used box jumps judiciously with athletes and find them a not very valuable option.
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