The Abuse of the Box Jumps

NYC personal trainers and sports performance coaches use the “Box Jump” as a tool to help with power. The box can be a very useful tool that’ll force the athlete to get X height and generate a specific amount of force. The problem I’ve come across is that the “Box Jump” is now being abused, you’ll see guys landing in an awkward position

and/or making the jump more about how high they can tuck their knees up, instead of how high you can actually JUMP!

Situations like the above pic are all too common, and while landing in a posterior tilt squat position doesn’t automatically equate to an injury, it does however significantly increase risk of injury. Keep in mind the point of the box jump is to force the athlete to generate a force and NOT to focus on how high I can tuck me knees up.

My goal as a sports performance coach and personal trainer is to obtain speed, strength, and power in the most efficient manner possible, all while focusing on reducing risk of injury. While you maybe thinking that I’m way too cautious and over reacting, I rebuttal with this: why would I take the chance of injuring my athlete that I have for 6 weeks for a measly few extra inches? How will those last few inches translate to the athletes sport? How would I explain an injury from the box jump to the sport coach and parent? I wouldn’t be able to, therefore we take out this method of execution for “box jumping”.

How We Use the Box Jump

Fusion Trained athletes and clients use the box jump as a first progression for jumping. We keep the box high enough to challenge the athlete but low enough so that they still can land in a 1/4 squat position. This allows the athlete to focus more on the JUMP portion of the box jump and not so much the landing point, where most people get hurt. With that said to be clear, we still work on the landing position progression with our athletes but for time sake, let’s keep the focus on box jumps.

For the advanced athlete, we’ll utilize the box jump as a way to “unload” the athlete while still stimulating the nervous system. With that said, during this phase we still focus on landing in a 1/4 squat or 1/2 squat, our athlete and training client will never land in a full squat/posterior tilt position.

Common Sense?

Another consideration you’ll need to take into effect is that not everyone is coordinated. You can have a low enough box that you can step on and someone will inevitable do something dumb: