jumping

[EarthWormGym]

hi all, im new to this forum,
been training (properly) for about a year, more recently with the goal of improving my anaerobic performance (strength, speed and rate of force development (RFD)).

Basically i was wondering peoples opinion on box jumps, i have recently started to incorporate them into my workouts, with improving RFD in mind, my issue however is in my gym the only 'box' i can use is waist height, and so not very challenging. As i cant use a higher box i have been adding weight and doing one legged jumps. Although i am very conscious of the stress this can put on my knees (especially as a year ago i dislocated my patella in mma training leaving me paranoid of ending up in a cast again).

This leads to my question: would you guys recommend me continuing adding weight (uni or bilateral), or simply trying to jump as high as possible and just landing on the low box height (makes both seeing progression and having a goal an issue, plus alters the mechanics of the exercise).

A little extra info about me:
20yrs old
male
6ft
170 lbs (light i know, but will probably act in my favor as it will be less stressful on joints)

thanks in advance for any advice given

 

[rochabp]

wat do u mean by adding weight?

i used to placce 45lbs plates on top of box (like 4 plates) to increase the boxs height a couple of inches.

 

[ZiR RED]

Look into sport specific plyometrics. Concentric jumps are a good warm up to lower body lifting, and can even be used as part of compound training. But if you really want to improve explosiveness, you need to focus on the stretch shortening cycle (SSC).

Br

 

[JudoJosh]

A variation you can do is to place another box behind you so you are standing in between the two boxes and from a standing position perform sort of like a box squat type movement so you are starting to sit on the box behind you and then explode up and try to jump onto the box in front of you.

You can't stack boxes?

 

[ZiR RED]

You can also do a depth off a short box (6-10") and then focus on minimizing ground contact time and jumping onto the higher box.

 

[jumpshot903]

There should be ways to increase the height of the box weither it be from plates or talk to the people at the gym if you get enough people or even just one asking about some equipment they sometimes order one for the gym. I think box jumps and explosive pylometrics are great not only for overall athletic performance but i feel they really helped define my legs, maybe not add size but more or less give me more ripped legs and not to mention being overall athletic just makes me feel better.

Last year i did a 4 week phase of doing squats directly supersetted with box jumps it was quite the workout you work on the squat then you work on exploding up afterwards it worked very well.

Honestly just work on jumping on this box as high as you can if you honestly can't find a way to make it higher, adding weights to a jump is risky when it comes to joints, jumping with added weight causes immense strain on the joints growing up playing basketball i was always told by every coach i've ever had to never try to jump with weights on it can help increase jumping but it will lead to injury.

 

[EarthWormGym]

cheers for the feedback, by adding weight i meant holding a weight.

i will ask about how i can increase the height, but due to the gym layout (being on different levels) i dont think its really possible.

Have looked into how to perform SSC exercises and will try to incorporate it into my w/o

thanks

 

[dalexander]

strengthen hammys and glutes for the eccentric part of the jump (landing) this will minimize future injuries which may occur during landing