There was a time several years ago when seeing someone jumping on and off a box in a mainstream gym would have seemed crazy.

Jump training ultimately enhances your ability to develop great amounts of power- Matthew Muscat Inglott

With the advent of functional training and the soaring popularity of the crossfit exercise phenomenon, however, it suddenly doesn’t seem all that crazy anymore. Jumping for power has been a popular method of sports training in the athletic arena for quite some time, and it’s only recently that the fitness industry followed suit by providing adapted elite training systems based on those used by champions.

Jumps are ‘dynamic’, or ‘plyometric’ in nature, to quote some of the more traditionally entrenched fitness terms. Nowadays however we classify jumps into a broader context often referred to as explosive training, and while we may not all aspire to dominate the competitive athletic arena, we could certainly see our goals of greater functional strength, improved agility, and more muscular hips and legs jump to dizzying new heights. Incorporating jumps will also drive your heart rate up adding cardiovascular and fat burning elements to your routine.

So how exactly do jumps help us? Take a simple upward jump for height, just as though you were trying to touch the ceiling or a point high up on the wall. You would instinctively bend at the knees and tilt slightly forwards at the hips. You would quickly reverse direction and explode upwards with some help from your arms swinging forwards and upwards for added momentum.

If we had to film and freeze-frame at the precise moment you finished bending your knees between switching directions for the upward thrust, we would see what we call the ‘power position a universal position found in most sporting movements that require the production of great force such as shooting in basketball, putting the shot in athletics, throwing a punch in boxing, and the list goes on.

In this position, the muscles of your thighs and hips are taut like stretched elastic bands, loaded with potential energy ready to be converted into explosive upward kinetic energy through rapid extension of the knees and hips: the essence of power. Jump training hones this fine process, ultimately enhancing your ability to develop great amounts of power.

Sounds simple, but is this really enough to elicit continuous gains in strength and power? Is this really a productive and meaningful addition to your workout or just a passing fad to momentarily boost motivation and add fleeting variety?

I never took much particular interest in jumping around myself, but the penny finally dropped a couple of years ago while, funnily enough, designing a weightlifting platform for our gym. At the time, we were situated on a third floor, and anything other than ground floor is definitely not ideal for dropping heavy stuff on the floor.

I enlisted the assistance of my friend and colleague who happens to have a background in aeronautical engineering. Together we worked out a bunch of equations that let us know what sort of forces our platform would have to safely absorb to avoid damaging the floor or indeed the very structure of the building itself.

Between our powerlifters lifting weights of up to about 220 kg to upper-thigh height, and weightlifters lifting up to about 110 kg to overhead height, our platform had to contend with some pretty hefty forces should weights be dropped from either height.

The lighter but higher bar however would achieve greater acceleration than the heavier but lower bar thus generating, to our great surprise, substantially greater force. As a clever fellow called Sir Isaac Newton once explained, force is dependent not only on mass, but on the acceleration of that mass.

To put it simply, while in traditional weight training we can generate progressively increasing muscular force by adding mass, in explosive training we can generate more muscular force by adding more acceleration.

If acceleration is the key to generating force, and in itself may be defined as the rate of change of speed, then it is ever-increasing speed for which we must continuously strive when jumping. So how can we put all this together?

Here are a few easy moves you can try, suitable after a basic level of strength has already been achieved through regular gym training or bodyweight exercises like squats and lunges.

Box jumps: for this move you will need a box or a bench to jump up onto, ideally with a padded surface. Stand in front of the box, bend at the knees, jump up high, and lift your knees while airborne allowing you to land safely on the box. Step off the box deliberately, and repeat.

A more advanced version of this exercise involves jumping up onto the box and straight off, repeating your next jump without stopping. In other words, your landing itself constitutes the dip from which you immediately jump into the next repetition.

Alternating jump lunges: assume a lunge position with your feet split fore and aft, and knees bent to approximately 90 degree angles. From this position, jump up as high as you can, switch your feet while airborne and land once again in the same lunge position with your other foot forward, switching stance with each jump. Pause between jumps to start out, however as in the previous exercise as you become more conditioned you may eliminate the pause and flow seamlessly from one jump to the next.

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