3.8 Jump Training and Vertical Power

The short version

Jumping is not a basketball thing. It is the cleanest, most honest measure there is of how quickly you can put force into the ground, and that quality sits underneath nearly everything athletic. A fighter dropping levels, a winger cutting infield, a sprinter leaving the blocks and a volleyball player blocking at the net are all solving the same problem in different shapes. Train the jump properly and you are working on the engine, not the party trick.

So this article treats jumping as two things at once: a skill you learn, and a number you can track. It covers how a jump is actually produced, why going up and going forward are different jobs, how to test yourself without kidding yourself, and how to fit jump work into a training year without collecting more tiredness than progress.

It suits complete beginners, lifters who have got strong but somehow not springy, coaches who need a testing setup they can defend, and anyone returning an athlete to impact after injury. The one idea underneath all of it: a jump is a timing problem far more than a muscle problem.

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The four jump families, ordered by ground contact timeMatrix of four jump families ordered by ground contact time, with mechanism and representative exercises.The four jump families, ordered by ground contact timeNon-countermovementCountermovementHorizontalReactiveTypical ground contactFrom a static start orpause300–500 ms250–400 msUnder 200 msDominant mechanismPure concentric forceproductionStretch-shorteningcycle, slow typeHorizontal impulse andhip extensionElastic return andreflex stiffnessWhat it exposesConcentric strengthdeficitAbility to use acountermovementHorizontal forcecapabilityTendon stiffness andreactive abilityRepresentative exercisesSquat jump from pause,seated box jumpCountermovement jump,box jumpBroad jump, triple jump,boundsDepth jump, repeat hops,drop jump

Figure. The four jump families arranged by ground contact time. As contact time falls, the dominant contributor shifts from concentric force production to elastic energy return and reflex stiffness.

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Part 1 — The Beginner Section: What a Jump Actually Is

Why jumping is worth your time even if you never dunk

Most people file jumping under basketball and leave it there. That is a shame, because what a jump measures is how fast you can push the ground away, and almost every fast thing in sport is that same question in a different kit. If your jump improves, something real improved.

It also tells you the truth every day. This is the underrated part. You cannot talk your way into a higher jump, argue with it, or have a good day on paper. Measure it before a session and it tells you honestly whether you are fresh or fried — and almost nothing else gives you that for free.

The bathroom scale picture

Imagine pressing your hand down on a bathroom scale. How high you jump is not decided by the biggest number the scale ever shows. It is decided by how big the number was multiplied by how long you held it there — the whole area under the curve — minus your own bodyweight. That total is the only thing that changes how fast you leave the ground.

Which clears up two things that confuse everybody. First, why some very strong people jump badly: they can make the scale reading enormous, but they take far too long getting there. Second, why a lighter, springier athlete out-jumps them anyway: a smaller peak, applied much faster, with almost nothing wasted on bad timing. Strength is the raw material. Speed of application is what turns it into height.

Four kinds of jump, and why you need all of them

Almost every jump you will ever do belongs to one of four groups. Knowing which group you are in tells you what you are chasing, how long to rest, and how much it will cost you.

• No dip. Sink down, hold still, then jump. No bounce to help you, just pure pushing. Squat jumps and seated box jumps.
• With a dip. Drop and come straight back up. The standard vertical jump, and probably the most common athletic movement on the planet.
• Bouncy. You are already moving downward when you land and have to reverse fast. Depth jumps, hurdle hops, pogo hops. Very short contact, tendons doing most of the work.
• Forward or sideways. Broad jumps, bounds, skater bounds. The push points ahead of you or across you, which is where most sporting acceleration actually lives.

Live in only one group and you become good at exactly one thing. Most beginners spend all their time on the standard dip-and-jump, then cannot work out why they are slow off the mark.

Where to start if you are starting from nothing

If you have never trained jumps on purpose, the first month is not about height at all. It is about teaching your body to accept load on the way down. Small stuff: ankle hops, dropping off a low box and sticking the landing, ordinary jumps landing soft and held still for two seconds. Nothing maximal, nothing impressive to watch.

And here is the rule that keeps beginners in one piece. If you cannot land it quietly and hold it still, you have not earned the right to jump higher. Noise is information. A loud landing usually means arriving stiff-legged, absorbing everything through the knees instead of the hips, or dropping from a height your tissues are not ready for.

Part 2 goes into the detail: impulse and why peak force is the wrong thing to chase, the physiology behind each jump family, honest testing protocols, and how to lay jump work out across a training year. It is more technical, so read it when you want the mechanism rather than the map.

Part 2 — The Advanced Section: Physiology and Mechanics

Impulse, not force

The impulse-momentum relationship states that the change in momentum of a body equals the net impulse applied to it. For a vertical jump this reduces to one useful sentence: Take-off velocity equals net impulse divided by body mass. Everything a coach can manipulate — strength, rate of force development, countermovement depth, arm swing, technique — acts on one of the three terms in that equation.

This is why chasing peak force alone is a dead end. Peak force is a single instant. Impulse is an integral. An athlete who reaches 2.4 times bodyweight of peak ground reaction force over 180 milliseconds of propulsion can easily out-jump one who reaches 2.8 times bodyweight over 110 milliseconds, because the second athlete ran out of runway.

The four phases of a countermovement jump

Unweighting. The athlete relaxes and drops. Vertical ground reaction force falls below bodyweight. Nothing useful is being produced yet, but the depth and speed of this phase set up everything that follows.

Braking (eccentric). The descent is arrested. Force rises rapidly above bodyweight, muscle-tendon units are stretched under high load, and elastic energy is stored — predominantly in tendon and aponeurosis rather than in the contractile elements. This is where most of the difference between average and elite jumpers appears.

Propulsion (concentric). Force stays above bodyweight while the centre of mass accelerates upward. Joint extension sequences from proximal to distal: Hip, then knee, then ankle.

Flight and landing. Height is already determined at the instant of take-off. Nothing done in the air changes the trajectory of the centre of mass, which is why hang-time cues are physically meaningless.

Why the countermovement adds height

A countermovement jump typically exceeds a squat jump by 2 to 6 centimetres in trained athletes (Bobbert et al., 1996). Three mechanisms contribute, and they are frequently conflated.

Time to develop force. The most underappreciated mechanism. During braking the athlete is already building tension, so at the moment upward motion begins, force is already high. A squat jump starts from near zero and wastes milliseconds climbing to useful force levels. Most of the countermovement advantage is explained by this alone (Bobbert et al., 1996).

Elastic energy storage and return. Tendon and aponeurosis behave like springs. Energy stored during stretch is returned during shortening with high efficiency, provided the transition is fast (Komi, 2000). Delay the transition and the stored energy dissipates as heat.

Reflex contribution. Rapid stretch excites muscle spindles, producing a short-latency stretch reflex that raises motor unit activity during the concentric phase (Komi, 2000). Golgi tendon organs signal tendon force through Ib afferents, but that feedback is integrated with spindle input and descending drive rather than acting as a fixed protective brake, and whether it damps or assists output depends on the task and the phase of movement. Training does not simply switch a safety limit off — the same qualification the traditional autogenic-inhibition account of PNF stretching has already run into.

Recall from Article 3.2 that these mechanisms depend on the amortisation phase being short. The stretch-shortening cycle is a timing phenomenon before it is a strength phenomenon.

Joint contributions and proximal-to-distal sequencing

In a maximal countermovement jump the hip typically contributes the largest share of total work, the knee somewhat less, and the ankle least in absolute terms — but the ankle contributes disproportionately to final velocity because it acts last and fastest. Reported joint work distributions cluster around 40 to 45 per cent hip, 30 to 35 per cent knee and 20 to 25 per cent ankle, with substantial individual and technique-dependent variation.

This sequencing matters practically. Athletes who extend the ankle early — a common fault in tall, long-limbed jumpers — leak force because the calf has nothing left to give when it matters. Athletes who never extend the ankle at all, common in those trained exclusively on heavy bilateral lifts, lose the final velocity increment entirely.

The arm swing

A coordinated arm swing adds roughly 10 per cent to jump height, and in some athletes considerably more. The mechanism is not simply momentum transfer. The arms decelerate near the top of the swing, and that deceleration pushes down through the shoulder girdle onto the trunk, increasing the load on the legs during propulsion. Higher load means higher force, and because the legs are still extending, that force is converted into impulse.

The coaching consequence: Arm swing timing is a trainable skill worth several centimetres, and it is almost never coached. Teach athletes to swing the arms back during the dip and drive them up aggressively, finishing with the hands above the head at take-off.

Neural determinants: Recruitment, rate coding and RFD

Force production is governed by how many motor units are recruited and how fast they are firing. Henneman's size principle dictates recruitment from smallest to largest, but during ballistic actions recruitment thresholds compress dramatically and high-threshold units are brought in almost immediately (Cormie et al., 2011). This is why explosive intent matters even at submaximal loads.

Rate coding — the frequency of motor unit discharge — is the dominant determinant of rate of force development in the first 50 to 100 milliseconds of contraction (Maffiuletti et al., 2016). Trained jumpers show higher initial discharge rates and more frequent doublet firing, where two action potentials arrive within roughly 5 to 10 milliseconds and disproportionately increase early force.

Practically, jump training is a nervous system intervention as much as a muscular one. The quality of every repetition matters more than the quantity, and fatigue destroys the adaptation you are trying to buy.

Tendon stiffness and mechanotransduction

The Achilles and patellar tendons are the primary elastic elements in jumping. Stiffer tendons return energy faster and suit short-contact reactive work; more compliant tendons store more total energy but return it more slowly, which suits longer-contact countermovement jumping. Neither is universally better.

Tendon adapts through mechanotransduction: Mechanical strain is sensed by tenocytes, which upregulate collagen synthesis and cross-linking. The stimulus is high strain magnitude held for a meaningful duration, which is why heavy slow resistance and long isometrics build tendon stiffness effectively while high-volume plyometrics alone often do not (Bohm et al., 2015). Tendon also adapts far more slowly than muscle, on a timescale of months rather than weeks (Bohm et al., 2015). That mismatch is the single most common source of jumper's knee and Achilles problems in athletes who add plyometric volume quickly.

Energy systems and jump work

A maximal jump takes well under a second and is fuelled almost entirely by stored adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and phosphocreatine (Haff & Triplett, 2016). Phosphocreatine resynthesis is roughly 50 per cent complete at 30 seconds and around 95 per cent at three minutes. This is the physiological basis of long rest periods in quality jump work. Cutting rest to 30 seconds does not make the session harder in a useful way; it converts a power session into a glycolytic conditioning session with poor mechanics.

Force-velocity profiling

Two athletes can jump the same height for opposite reasons. One produces very high force slowly; the other produces modest force very quickly. Loaded jump testing across a range of external loads allows the force-velocity relationship to be plotted as an approximately linear function, from which a force-velocity imbalance can be estimated (Samozino et al., 2012).

The practical value is direction. A force-deficient athlete should spend a block on maximal strength and heavy loaded jumps. A velocity-deficient athlete should spend it on unloaded and lightly loaded ballistic work (Samozino et al., 2012). Giving both athletes the same programme is why generic jump plans produce inconsistent results.

Part 3 — Testing Jump Ability Honestly

Testing is not a formality. It is how you decide what to programme and how you find out whether it worked. The battery below can be run with a jump mat, a phone slow-motion camera, or a linear position transducer, in descending order of convenience and ascending order of precision.

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The core testing battery

• Countermovement jump (CMJ). Measures overall lower-limb power and stretch-shortening cycle function. Typical trained range 35 to 70 cm. Use as the headline number and as a daily readiness check.
• Squat jump (SJ). Concentric-only force production from a paused position. Usually 3 to 8 cm below the countermovement jump (CMJ). Used to isolate the elastic contribution.
• Eccentric utilisation ratio (CMJ divided by SJ). Quality of the stretch-shortening cycle. Typical range 1.05 to 1.15. The single most useful diagnostic ratio in the battery.
• Drop jump and reactive strength index. Jump height divided by ground contact time. Trained values commonly 1.5 to 3.0 and above. Used to set reactive training dose and drop height.
• Standing broad jump. Horizontal impulse. Typical trained range 200 to 300 cm. A practical proxy for acceleration ability.
• Single-leg CMJ. Limb asymmetry. Aim for under 10 per cent side-to-side difference. Essential in return-to-sport screening.
• Ten-to-five repeated hop test. Reactive strength endurance, with contact times typically 150 to 220 ms. The best field measure of elastic fatigue.

Interpreting the eccentric utilisation ratio

If CMJ and SJ are nearly identical the athlete is not using the stretch-shortening cycle. They are strong but stiff, and the answer is reactive and elastic work, not more squatting. If the ratio is very high — above about 1.2 — the athlete is elastic but under-strengthened, and heavy strength work will produce the fastest gains. This one ratio redirects more training programmes correctly than any other field test.

Reactive strength index in practice

RSI is only meaningful alongside the contact time that produced it. An athlete achieving 40 cm from a 260 ms contact is doing something categorically different from one achieving 34 cm from a 170 ms contact. Set a contact-time ceiling before the test, commonly 250 ms, and discard trials that exceed it (Flanagan & Comyns, 2008).

RSI is also the best available tool for prescribing drop height (Flanagan & Comyns, 2008). Test from 20, 30, 40 and 50 cm. Use the height that produces the best RSI, not the tallest box the athlete can survive. Drop height is a dose, not a badge.

Using the CMJ as a fatigue monitor

Jump height alone is a blunt fatigue instrument because athletes compensate by changing strategy. More sensitive markers are time to take-off, countermovement depth and the shape of the force-time curve. A neuromuscularly fatigued athlete typically shows a longer, deeper countermovement and a lower peak force for the same jump height (Gathercole et al., 2015). In plain terms: If the jump takes noticeably longer to produce, the athlete is fatigued even if the number looks normal.

A workable field rule is a rolling seven-day baseline with a meaningful-change threshold of around 5 to 8 per cent. More than that below baseline on two consecutive days is a reason to reduce reactive volume, not to push through.

Part 4 — The Practical Section

The progression ladder

Do not skip stages because the athlete looks capable. Capability under fresh, low-volume conditions is not the same as tissue tolerance across a season. The most common injury pattern in jump training is an athlete with sufficient strength and insufficient tendon preparation being handed a depth jump programme.

Volume, intensity, frequency and rest

Volume is counted in ground contacts, not sets. A contact is one ground impact — a landing or a rebound — and contacts taken in practice, matches and other running or cutting work count towards the same weekly total, not just the ones programmed in the gym. A workable weekly framework, offered as a conservative starting point rather than a validated prescription:

• Introductory (weeks 1 to 4): 40 to 60 low-intensity contacts per session, twice weekly. Ankle hops, pogos, landings, submaximal CMJ.
• Developmental: 60 to 100 contacts per session, mixed intensity, twice weekly.
• Intensive reactive blocks: 20 to 40 high-intensity contacts per session — depth jumps, maximal bounds — once or at most twice weekly, and conventionally not on consecutive days — a sensible default while an athlete is new to the work rather than a rule with direct evidence behind it.
• In-season maintenance: 30 to 50 contacts, once or twice weekly, sharply reduced within 48 hours of competition.

Intensity is defined by ground reaction force and contact time, not by how tired it feels. Ranked from least to most demanding: Ankle hops, submaximal CMJ, maximal CMJ, box jumps, broad jumps, hurdle hops, single-leg bounds, depth jumps from optimal height, depth jumps from supra-optimal height.

Frequency. Two quality sessions per week outperform four mediocre ones. Reactive work is usually spaced 48 to 72 hours apart on the reasoning that tendon and connective tissue recover more slowly than muscle, but that spacing is a conservative coaching default rather than a tested threshold. Set it by contact intensity, by what the sport is already supplying, and by how the athlete's jump quality, soreness and tendon symptoms respond.

Rest periods. For maximal jump work, 60 to 180 seconds between sets and at least 10 to 15 seconds between individual maximal repetitions. If the athlete is breathing hard, the rest was too short and you are no longer training power.

Placement in the session. Jumps go after the warm-up and before heavy strength work, when the nervous system is fresh (Haff & Triplett, 2016). The only exception is deliberate contrast or complex training, where a heavy set potentiates a subsequent jump.

A sample training week: Developmental block, off-season

• Monday — vertical power and lower-body strength. CMJ 4 x 3, box jump 3 x 3, trap bar jump 4 x 3 at 20 per cent of one-repetition maximum, then squat and single-leg accessory work. Roughly 40 contacts.
• Tuesday — upper body and elastic base. Pogo hops 4 x 10, line hops 3 x 10 seconds, then pressing and pulling. Roughly 70 low-intensity contacts.
• Wednesday — recovery and mobility. No jump contacts.
• Thursday — horizontal power and posterior chain. Broad jump 5 x 2, skater bound 4 x 6, sled push, Romanian deadlift. Roughly 35 contacts.
• Friday — reactive quality. Hurdle hops 4 x 5, depth jump 4 x 3 from the tested optimal height. Roughly 32 contacts.
• Saturday — aerobic or play. Optional low-amplitude skipping, under 40 contacts.
• Sunday — off.

What each element in the week is doing

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• Countermovement jump, 4 x 3 (Monday). The reference expression of concentric lower-body power and the simplest way to monitor readiness. If jump height falls while everything else is unchanged, the week is too heavy.
• Box jump, 3 x 3. Trains maximal take-off intent while removing the landing impact, which is why it sits early in a week that already contains reactive work.
• Trap bar jump, 4 x 3 at 20 percent of one-repetition maximum. Loaded jumping shifts the stimulus toward the force end of the force–velocity curve without slowing the movement enough to change the pattern.
• Squat and single-leg accessory work. Builds the maximal strength base that determines how much force is available to express quickly (Suchomel et al., 2016). Jump training without a strength base plateaus early.
• Pogo hops, 4 x 10 (Tuesday). Low-amplitude, high-frequency contacts train ankle stiffness and short-contact elasticity, which is the foundation the reactive work on Friday draws on.
• Line hops, 3 x 10 seconds. Develop rapid ground contact and foot placement accuracy at a contact volume the tissues tolerate easily.
• Pressing and pulling. Upper-body strength contributes to arm-swing contribution in jumping and keeps weekly training balanced while the legs recover.
• Recovery and mobility, no jump contacts (Wednesday). Contact-free days exist so tendon and joint tissue can complete the remodelling that the loading days initiated.
• Broad jump, 5 x 2 (Thursday). Expresses power horizontally, which does not transfer automatically from vertical work and is trained separately for that reason.
• Skater bound, 4 x 6. Adds the lateral vector and single-leg landing control, covering the plane most sports actually load.
• Sled push. High-force, low-velocity horizontal work with minimal eccentric cost, so it can sit on the same day as bounding.
• Romanian deadlift. Strengthens the hip extensors and hamstrings eccentrically at long lengths, supporting both take-off force and landing control.
• Hurdle hops, 4 x 5 (Friday). Force the athlete to reverse quickly at height, training the stretch-shortening cycle with a fast transition under a meaningful load.
• Depth jump, 4 x 3 from the tested optimal height. The highest-intensity reactive exposure of the week. Height is individually tested rather than assumed, because too high converts the drill into a landing exercise.
• Optional low-amplitude skipping, under 40 contacts (Saturday). Maintains elastic quality and tissue tolerance at a dose that adds no fatigue.
• Contact counting across the week. Ground contacts, not sets, are the load variable in plyometric training, which is why every day carries a contact estimate — and why the jumps, landings and cutting done in practice have to be added to it before the week is judged.

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Note the shape of the week. The highest-intensity reactive session sits on Friday, 48 hours after the last significant jump exposure and with two low days behind it. Total weekly contacts land near 220, which is moderate. Figures like 600 weekly contacts get passed around as a ceiling, but no such universal number has been established; what the contacts were, how fast the total climbed, and how much jumping and cutting the sport already contributes matter more than the count itself.

Contrast and complex training

Post-activation performance enhancement is real but narrow. A heavy set, typically 3 to 5 repetitions at 80 to 90 per cent of one-repetition maximum, transiently increases subsequent explosive output, with the effect usually peaking somewhere between four and eight minutes later (Cormie et al., 2011). The effect is larger in stronger, more experienced athletes and can be negative in weaker ones, for whom the heavy set is simply fatiguing (Suchomel et al., 2016).

A defensible pairing: Back squat 3 repetitions at 85 per cent, rest four minutes, then 3 countermovement jumps, repeated for three to four rounds. Measure the jumps. If they are not higher than the athlete's unpotentiated baseline, the pairing is not working for that athlete.

Monitoring fatigue in jump training

• Contact time drift. The first and most reliable sign. When contact times lengthen by more than about 10 per cent within a set, that set is over.
• Landing noise. Free, immediate and surprisingly sensitive. Louder landings mean less eccentric control.
• Jump height decay. Stop the set at a 5 per cent drop from the session best for reactive work, or 10 per cent for general work.
• Morning CMJ against a rolling baseline. The most reliable weekly load-management tool available without laboratory equipment.
• Tendon morning stiffness. Subjective but valuable. Patellar or Achilles stiffness lasting beyond the first few minutes of the day is an early warning.

Recovery considerations

Reactive jump work produces meaningful eccentric muscle damage and connective tissue loading. Practical priorities in order of return on investment: Sleep duration and regularity, total protein intake spread across the day, sufficient carbohydrate to support training quality, and time. Cold water immersion immediately after a session can blunt some of the adaptive signalling, so it is better reserved for congested competition schedules than for development blocks.

Part 5 — Sport Applications

The jump is universal; the reason for training it is not. What follows is how the emphasis shifts by sport.

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Combat sports

mixed martial arts (MMA). Vertical jump height is largely irrelevant in itself. What transfers is the ability to produce force from awkward, partially flexed positions and to reverse direction quickly during level changes and scrambles. Emphasise horizontal and lateral jumps, single-leg landings, and low-amplitude reactive work that tolerates the enormous total training load of a fight camp. Keep contacts low; combat athletes already accumulate substantial eccentric load in sparring.

Boxing. The rear-foot drive in a cross is a miniature horizontal jump. Train short-contact horizontal and rotational bounds, and pair jump work with medicine ball rotational throws. Maximal vertical jumping has limited direct transfer but remains a useful readiness monitor.

Wrestling. Level changes are eccentric-dominant, deeply flexed and repeated under fatigue. Prioritise deep-position strength, sled work and repeated low-amplitude bounds over maximal depth jumps. Reactive strength endurance matters more than peak reactive strength index.

Brazilian jiu-jitsu (BJJ). Jump training is primarily a health and general athleticism intervention rather than a sport-specific one. Low-volume CMJ and pogo work maintains tissue quality and offsets the sport's overwhelmingly isometric, flexion-biased demands.

Field and court sports

Football (soccer). Repeated jumping in headers plus a very high change-of-direction load. Single-leg horizontal and lateral jumps have the clearest transfer. Manage hamstring and adductor load carefully, because bounding volume competes directly with sprint volume for the same tissue.

American football. Position dictates everything. Linemen need enormous force in a narrow, short-contact window from a three-point stance, so heavy loaded jumps and short horizontal bounds dominate. Skill positions need max-velocity elastic qualities: Hurdle hops, bounds and depth jumps.

Basketball. The highest jump volume in sport, most of it single-leg and reactive off a run-up. Training must respect this: In-season plyometric volume should be low because the sport itself supplies the contacts. Emphasise landing quality, single-leg control and patellar tendon resilience.

Volleyball. Even higher jump density than basketball, with a highly specific approach-jump technique. Approach mechanics — the penultimate step, the arm swing, the last-step braking — should be coached explicitly. Jumper's knee prevention through heavy slow resistance is non-negotiable.

Hockey. Skating produces force laterally with almost no ground contact in the running sense. Lateral bounds, skater jumps and single-leg lateral landings transfer best. On-ice athletes typically face low ankle stiffness demands and can tolerate more vertical jump work in the gym than they get on the ice.

Rugby. Combines the collision demands of American football with the repeated-effort profile of soccer. Bilateral and single-leg horizontal power dominate, with lineout jumping a specific technical case for locks and hookers.

Tennis. Overwhelmingly lateral and rotational. The serve is a vertical jump with a rotational overlay. Split-step training, lateral bounds and deceleration work outrank maximal vertical jumping.

Baseball. Rotational power with a lead-leg blocking action that is mechanically a horizontal jump into a rigid front leg. Broad jumps, lateral bounds and single-leg landings transfer; maximal vertical jumping is mostly a monitoring tool.

Individual and strength sports

Sprinting. Jump training is closest to being sport-specific here. Horizontal bounds relate to acceleration; short-contact vertical reactive work relates to maximum velocity. Reactive strength index is genuinely predictive of sprint performance.

Olympic weightlifting. The second pull is a loaded vertical jump with a bar in the way. Loaded jumps and short-contact vertical work reinforce triple extension timing. Depth jumps are usually unnecessary and add avoidable joint stress on top of an already heavy loading programme.

Powerlifting. Jump training is used sparingly, mainly to maintain rate of force development during long strength blocks and as a fatigue monitor. Two sets of three countermovement jumps before squatting is often the entire appropriate dose.

Exercise Library

Each entry follows the standard library format used across this handbook. Full records, including video where available, live in the site exercise library.

Countermovement Jump

• Purpose. Develop and measure maximal lower-limb concentric power with an elastic contribution.
• Primary muscles. Gluteus maximus, quadriceps.
• Secondary muscles. Hamstrings, gastrocnemius, soleus, erector spinae.
• Movement pattern. Bilateral triple extension.
• Difficulty. Beginner. Equipment. Bodyweight.
• Coaching cues. Dip fast and only as deep as you can reverse quickly; swing the arms down with the dip and up with the drive; extend ankles, knees and hips together.
• Common mistakes. Dipping too deep; pausing at the bottom; ignoring the arm swing; testing while fatigued.
• Progressions. Loaded CMJ, single-leg CMJ, continuous CMJ. Regressions. Submaximal CMJ, squat jump, jump-and-stick.
• Sport applications. Universal; the primary monitoring tool in every sport.
• When to use. Early in a session, fresh, as a power stimulus or readiness test. When not to use. As a conditioning finisher or in high-repetition circuits.
• Programming. 3 to 5 sets of 2 to 4 repetitions, 60 to 120 seconds rest, twice weekly.

Depth Jump

• Purpose. Develop reactive strength and short ground contact times.
• Primary muscles. Quadriceps, gluteus maximus, triceps surae. Secondary muscles. Hamstrings, tibialis anterior, trunk stabilisers.
• Movement pattern. Fast stretch-shortening cycle, bilateral. Difficulty. Advanced. Equipment. Plyo box.
• Coaching cues. Step off, do not jump off; stiff ankles on contact; touch and go.
• Common mistakes. Drop height beyond current reactive capacity; sinking into a deep squat on contact; using them before landing mechanics are competent.
• Progressions. Increased drop height once RSI is maintained; single-leg drop landings. Regressions. Drop landings without rebound, hurdle hops, pogo hops.
• Sport applications. Sprinting, basketball, volleyball, American football skill positions.
• When to use. Off-season and pre-season blocks, fresh, low volume. When not to use. In-season for high-jump-volume sports; with any current tendon irritation; within 72 hours of competition.
• Programming. 3 to 5 sets of 3 to 5 repetitions, 2 to 3 minutes rest, once weekly.

Standing Broad Jump

• Purpose. Develop horizontal impulse and the ability to project the centre of mass forward.
• Primary muscles. Gluteus maximus, hamstrings. Secondary muscles. Quadriceps, triceps surae, trunk.
• Movement pattern. Bilateral horizontal triple extension. Difficulty. Beginner. Equipment. Bodyweight.
• Coaching cues. Load the hips back; throw the arms forward and up; jump out along a 45-degree line; land in an athletic quarter-squat.
• Common mistakes. Jumping flat and low; passive arms; stiff-legged landings.
• Progressions. Repeated broad jumps, single-leg broad jump, resisted broad jump. Regressions. Broad jump onto a mat, half-distance jump-and-stick.
• Sport applications. Sprint acceleration, football, rugby, combat sports.
• When to use. Early in a session, or as a horizontal power test. When not to use. At high volume on hard surfaces, or with acute hamstring sensitivity.
• Programming. 4 to 6 sets of 1 to 3 repetitions with full recovery.

Trap Bar Jump

• Purpose. Bridge maximal strength and unloaded jumping by training the high-force end of the force-velocity curve.
• Primary muscles. Gluteus maximus, quadriceps. Secondary muscles. Hamstrings, erector spinae, triceps surae, grip.
• Movement pattern. Loaded bilateral triple extension. Difficulty. Intermediate. Equipment. Trap bar.
• Coaching cues. Chest tall; drive the floor away; finish the ankles; land where you took off.
• Common mistakes. Loading so heavily that the jump disappears; landing stiff with a loaded bar; rounding the back on the descent between repetitions.
• Progressions. Increasing load while monitoring bar velocity; cluster sets. Regressions. Unloaded CMJ; dumbbell jump with the weights at the sides.
• Sport applications. Linemen, rugby forwards, throwers, wrestlers.
• When to use. Strength-speed blocks, and for force-deficient athletes identified by profiling. When not to use. With athletes who cannot yet hinge and land safely unloaded.
• Programming. 4 to 6 sets of 3 repetitions at 10 to 30 per cent of trap bar deadlift one-repetition maximum.

Pogo Hops

• Purpose. Build ankle stiffness and short ground contact tolerance with minimal joint stress.
• Primary muscles. Gastrocnemius, soleus. Secondary muscles. Tibialis anterior, intrinsic foot muscles, quadriceps.
• Movement pattern. Fast stretch-shortening cycle, ankle-dominant. Difficulty. Beginner. Equipment. Bodyweight.
• Coaching cues. Set the ankle in slight dorsiflexion before contact; bounce off the forefoot; short, quiet, rhythmic contacts.
• Common mistakes. Sinking into the heels; excessive knee flexion; chasing height instead of stiffness.
• Progressions. Single-leg pogos, lateral pogos, pogos for distance. Regressions. Ankle hops in place with a hand on a support.
• Sport applications. Sprinting, all court sports, return-to-run rehabilitation.
• When to use. In a warm-up, or as the elastic base of a plyometric progression. When not to use. With acute Achilles or plantar symptoms.
• Programming. 3 to 5 sets of 10 to 20 contacts with short rest.

Recommended Viewing

These channels produce the most technically reliable jump and plyometric content available for free. Individual video links change over time, so each entry names the channel and the exact topic to search within it rather than a link that may break.

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• PJF Performance — search for "jump training progression" and "vertical jump mechanics". The best free coaching of the approach jump and arm swing, and unusually clear at separating a strength problem from a technique problem.
• ALTIS — search for "plyometric progressions" and "bounding mechanics". Track-and-field-derived progressions with careful attention to ground contact quality.
• Squat University — search for "landing mechanics" and "jumper's knee". Useful joint-level detail behind knee valgus and patellar tendon loading.
• E3 Rehab — search for "patellar tendinopathy" and "return to jumping". Evidence-based rehabilitation framing for athletes managing tendon symptoms.
• Cal Dietz — search for "triphasic training eccentric". Advanced framing of the eccentric-isometric-concentric sequence underlying reactive jump development.
• Institute of Human Anatomy — search for "Achilles tendon" and "quadriceps anatomy". Cadaveric anatomy that makes the tendon discussion above concrete.

Frequently Asked Questions

How long until my vertical jump improves? Neural changes appear within two to four weeks. Structural changes in muscle take eight to twelve weeks. Tendon adaptation takes three to six months. Programme accordingly and stop expecting a linear graph.

Do I need to squat heavy to jump higher? If you are force-deficient, yes, and it will be the fastest intervention available. If you are already strong relative to bodyweight and your eccentric utilisation ratio is low, more squatting will do very little. Test before you decide.

Are daily jumps a good idea? Low-amplitude elastic work such as skipping and ankle hops can be tolerated most days. Maximal and reactive jumping cannot. The tissue that limits you is tendon, and it recovers on a slower clock than muscle.

Should I jump in shoes or barefoot? Low-amplitude ankle work barefoot is a reasonable way to develop foot and ankle stiffness. High-amplitude and reactive work should be done in supportive footwear on a forgiving surface.

Why did my jump go down after starting a strength block? Accumulated fatigue masks fitness. This is normal and usually resolves within one to two weeks of reduced volume. If it does not, the block was too much.

Is jump height genetic? The ceiling, substantially. The distance between you and your own ceiling, almost entirely trainable. Most untrained athletes are nowhere near theirs.

Research Summary

The evidence base for jump training is unusually strong for a field-based topic. Meta-analytic work consistently finds moderate improvements in countermovement jump height from plyometric training across a wide range of populations, with effects typically larger in younger and less-trained athletes and in programmes lasting eight weeks or more (Markovic, 2007). Combined strength-plus-plyometric programmes outperform either modality alone (Markovic, 2007). Optimal drop height is individual rather than universal, and the reactive strength index is the most defensible way to select it. Post-activation performance enhancement is real but modest, highly individual, and more reliable in stronger athletes. Tendon adaptation requires high strain magnitude and a longer timescale than muscular adaptation, which is the mechanistic basis for the conservative volume progressions recommended above.

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References

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Bohm, S., Mersmann, F., & Arampatzis, A. (2015). Human tendon adaptation in response to mechanical loading: A systematic review and meta-analysis of exercise intervention studies on healthy adults. Sports Medicine - Open, 1(1), 7. https://doi.org/10.1186/s40798-015-0009-9

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