Improve Your Fight Gone Bad Score – Box Jumps

You’ve just mastered the Sumo Deadlift High Pulls and now your moving on to box jumps. We’ve been doing a lot of jumping practice and technique work over the last month (August 2013).  It’s surprising how many athletes have poor jumping mechanics.  Coach Lauren has seen some excellent improvements in her jumping form, so I asked her what advice she can share:

Lauren’s Jumping Tips:

1. Jumping is virtually an unloaded dynamic squat. Loading up for a jump is very similar to preparing for a squat: tilt your torso forward slightly, loading up the hips and hamstrings, screw your feet into the floor and drive your knees out.  Aim to keep your shins as vertical as possible and keep your chest up.  Athletes who drive their knees forward and/or turn their feet outwards will experience ankles collapsing, valgus knee faults, overextension in the lumbar spine and numerous other energy leaks / losses.  Not to mention the increased chance of injury as jumper’s knee is caused by irritation of the patella tendon due to bad jumping mechanics.  Remember to keep your knees out when jumping and landing.

2. Throw your arms up in the air! If you ask a group of “athletes” to jump up and down on the spot, it’s surprising how many of them with throw their arms down as they try to jump up. You will jump higher/further is you swing your arms up as you jump. “Arm swing and strength of the shoulder girdle contributes as much as 15 per cent of the vertical jump” (Poliquin, Ten Tips to Increase Your Vertical Jump).

After teaching people to throw their hands during the jump, I’ve seen a number of people smash their hands into the side of the box.  Not a nice feeling!  We want to stay as close to the box as possible (see point 4) and bend our arms (elbow flexion) just enough so we don’t hit the box as we jump up.

An athlete should also try to internally rotate their arms as they swing them back and down.  This will place their shoulders in a more stable position, help them keep their back flat while tilting their torso forward slightly and swinging the arms back. (Kelly Starrett, Becoming a Supple Leopard)

3. Face you fears – it’s surprising how many athletes are scared of throwing themselves on top of a box. The fear of not making the jump and crashing into the side of the box is a mental hurdle we must overcome.  There are a couple of tools we use to help people overcome these fears
a. Start small and build up – it’s best to start with a small box and slowly increase the height.  A simple way to do this is to stack weight plates on top of each other and slowly increase the height as the athlete successfully achieves the jumps.  Step-by-step, or plate-by-plate we can build the confidence required to get on top of the box.

b. Lend a helping hand – the support and open arms of a partner can make box jumps a little less terrifying. By standing on the opposite side of the box, a partner can place their hands out over the box and catch the jumper’s hands as they jump onto the box.  This changes the focus of the jump as the jumper aims to grab their partner’s hands.  This simple but effective change of focus can make all the difference.  After a few jumps the athlete will have the confidence to jump on the box without and assistance.

4. Mobilise your anterior hips by stretching the hip flexors.  Lack of mobility in the hip flexors and ankles can lead to faulty movement mechanics.  Tight anterior hip muscles will inhibit the hip extensors (glutes and hamstrings) from maximum contraction and power (i.e. jumping).

5. The size of the jump matters – it’s extremely important to think about being as energy efficient as possible when performing box jumps.  The distance you travel both vertically and horizontally and the time you spend on the ground can make all the difference. Try to start close to the box and return to the same position when you jump off the box.  The further away you are from the box the more energy you will use to jump up and forward.

If you need to rest you should do this on top of the box.   As we land on the ground our muscles act like and elastic band, and we can use this elasticity to help us jump back on top of the box.  If you step down, or if you pause in the bottom position you will lose this elastic potential.

6. Land as tall as possible – try to jump onto the box and land as tall as possible.  If you land is a deep squat position you will need to use more muscle force to stand up straight. If you can jump onto the box and land with your knees just off lock you will already be at the top of the movement. It’s important to remember to finish the reps by standing tall and squeezing your glutes.  We don’t want to hear that “NO REP” call and we don’t want to see any overextension in the top of the movement.

7. Try to find a rhythm that you can maintain comfortably. If you smoke yourself too hard at the start you’ll quickly build up lactic acid, which will prolong your recovery, and lower you total repetition output.

Fight Gone Bad Tips continue:  Once you finish the 60 seconds of Box Jumps you are going to be moving onto the push-press.  More on this in tomorrow’s post.