At our core, we physical performance coaches are stress managers. Adaptation is our goal, and exercises are just tools to elicit those adaptations. The body doesn’t care what tool we use, as long as we create the necessary exercise conditions to trigger a generalised stress response, and the specific adaptation that follows. If you operate in a sport where there are inherent time limits available to produce force (which is almost all of them), some of the most important adaptations you’ll pursue are:
Explosive Strength- the ability of the neuromuscular system to generate force under conditions of high velocity
Reactive Strength- The ability to quickly switch from eccentric to concentric muscle action (typically under conditions of high velocity)
Rate of Force Development- the peak force or the slope of the force-time curve that can be produced under a given time constraint, typically 100 or 250ms.
All lend themselves to the ability to maximise impulse. And if you can’t increase impulse, you won’t run faster, jump higher, cut quicker or hit harder. You’ll need a blend of these different qualities to optimise performance, and the amount of each will be determined by the demands of your sport or position, and individual strengths and weaknesses. It can be quite complex and costly in both time and resources to figure out in which area you should invest your training, so for simplicity’s sake let’s hedge our bets and be sure to include all three in our programming at some point throughout the year.
The purpose of today’s post is to explore that various ways these qualities can be stimulated with weighted jumps. There are many reasons that I like to use weighted jumps. They are remarkably simple to learn. In fact, from day one athletes can record high power outputs, which is not the case with Olympic lifts, where several weeks of practice often needs to take place before heavy loads can be moved with maximal intent. The efficiency that weighted jumps lend themselves to is important if you have a high turnover of athletes year to year, or if you have small window of opportunity to elicit gains in performance, which is most semi pro or pro sports teams.
This is not an article debating loaded jumps vs Olympic Lifts. Myself and other coaches associated with Strength Coach Network have debated this topic to death. In the right context Olympic lifts can be useful, and there are great coaches who have used them extensively to produce great results. But I am not one of them, so I will write about what I know and what I have used to produce results with my athletes. What follows is a breakdown of a non exhaustive list of the weighted jump variations I use, and how these can be adapted to produce more or less of the above qualities.
When jumping with heavy loads I prefer to use the Trap Bar. I’ve found it to be easier on the spine than barbell squat jumps and easier on the wrists compared to clean variations. These are two areas that are almost always beat up in contact athletes, who form the bulk of my clientele, so I am not inclined to add more wear and tear. As you’ll see, trap Bar Jumps can be performed from the floor, from the hang and from a pause, and they can be loaded in a variety of ways i.e. straight weight, band only, or in combination. The open bar trap bar is also a useful tool for utilising split jump variations.
I should note that one advantage of the Olympic lifts is knowledge of results, which can be a powerful driver of motor learning. Athletes get the immediate feedback of whether they were successful or not when they catch a clean or snatch or end up having to dump it. With jump variations it can be possible to complete lifts with less than maximal intent or continue to rep out with declining output. For this reason I like to pair jump variations with VBT tools like Gym Aware. Not only does knowledge of results like velocity or power provide motivation and feedback to the athlete to self organise to more powerful strategies, it can be used to monitor the quality and output from rep to rep.
Trap Bar Jump from the ground
This is the bread and butter variation. The lack of a countermovement means it is more likely to result in concentric adaptations. The large range of motion is likely to transfer to longer contact time movements where a load is accelerated over a large distance or time. This variation allows for potentially very large loads to be used as the bar can be dumped mid air. I’ve personally witnessed athletes perform jumps like these with upwards of 180kg for the development of strength-speed.
This variation allows the athlete to focus on the concentric portion of the lift. Because it is performed from the ground a large range of motion is utilised. It is simple to execute and heavy loads can be utilised. I typically use this exercise at the beginning of a plan and in a more extensive fashion to prepare the joints and tissues for more intense work to come.
Paused trap bar jump from the hang
Whenever a significant pause is added, any benefit of the stretch shortening cycle (both parallel and elastic components) quickly dissipates. To produce large amounts of force the athlete therefore has to take up slack in the muscle tendon unit and produce force as quickly as possible, which Frans Bosch has suggested is an important quality for sprinting and jumping athletes to possess. This is especially true in joint positions associated with the hang, where the athlete doesn’t have the benefit of large times or distances to increase impulse. Think of this as the opposite end of the concentric spectrum to the trap bar jump from the ground.
Trap bar jumps from the hang
As above, but now incorporating a countermovement. This will result in greater eccentric stimulation (and the stress and muscle damage that follows), in addition to providing opportunities to better utilise the stretch shortening cycle for those occasions where these movement strategies are possible on the field e.g. longer contact time movements like leg driving under contact, approach jumps, and occasional changes of direction. These exercises typically form the basis of my GPP phase as they provide a mixture of contraction strategies, the eccentric component and velocity is quite manageable, and the rep frequency is lower, as is the technical demand.
Banded trap bar jumps
As we transition to more SPP oriented training blocks all these variables are progressed. One variation which does this job nicely is banded trap bar jumps (combination of band and regular load), which I’ve stolen from Cal Dietz. The addition of band tension pulling the athlete into the floor significantly increases the eccentric stress, ground reaction force the joints are forced to tolerate, while reducing the amortisation between eccentric and concentric muscle action. Cal has reported anywhere from 3-5 times the peak forces in these exercise variations compared to Olympic lifting based on his own research. Stu McMillan of Altis has also anecdotally reported that the trait that seems to link all of his best athletes is the ability to absorb large amounts of force. I believe this exercise and ones like it is a great way to train that.
You can even go a step further in adding eccentric stress/focus by lifting your feet off the floor and dropping down as quickly as possible before reversing into a concentric. This can be ended by returning to the start position or jumping- your call.
Banded reactive jumps
This variation probably results in the highest speeds and lowest amortisation and highest rep frequency of any variation. I’m sure that the eccentric stimulation is still high as a result of the intent and the peak jump height from which you are dropping, just be aware that this comes at the expense of external load. As such this variation may transfer better to unloaded movements like sprinting, jumping and cutting than, say, hitting. For the diehard Cal Dietz fanboys, this would be a classic “peaking” exercise used to fully express and realise gains from previous blocks while unloading the joints in the last few weeks prior to the season.
Band assisted jumps
During the later stages of preparation, I like to focus more on the concentric portion of the lift and speed of movement. Band assisted jumps are an overspeed method that may teach the body to move faster than it is normally capable of- similar to underweight throwing implements for the upper body. By reducing the load below bodyweight, we can expose the body to shorter contact times and higher movement velocities than would normally be possible. Again, the range of movement can be modified according to what strategy it is you want to train- accelerating over longer times/distances, or maximal force production under extremely limited time conditions. Similarly we can modify the eccentric component by adding a drop. This exercise is not limited to basic vertical jumping. I’ve also used a variety of split squat positions.
Sample progressions
As with any training tool, the lower the training age of the athlete, the less stress the body needs to adapt. Generally speaking more intensity in the form of load, speed and eccentric stress in particular will be needed as the athlete increases his or her training status. For this reason I like to program as follows:
Low Level Athletes:
Weeks 1-3: Trap bar jumps from the ground (light load)
Weeks 3-6: Pause trap bar jumps from the hang (light load)
Weeks 6-9: Trap bar jumps from the hang (light load)
Weeks 9-12: Band Resisted Reactive Jumps
High Level Athletes:
Weeks 1-2: Trap bar jumps from the ground (Heavy Load- extensive)
Weeks 3-4: Trap bar jumps from the hang (light load- intensive)
Weeks 5-8: Banded trap bar jumps (drop style)
Weeks 9-12: Contrast Sets:
A1) Trap bar jumps from the ground
A2) Banded reactive jumps
A3) Banded assisted jumps
For this entire article I’ve focussed only on bilateral jumping variations. You can see how versatile one pattern can be if it is loaded creatively and different aspects of the movement or load are emphasised. I have limited myself to one pattern only in this article for illustrative purposes. In the real world I like to use a range of training means to develop power including prowler sprints and pushes, banded KB Swings, banded broad jumps, loaded and unloaded heidens, hang clean pull variations, a wide variety of medicine ball throws and much more. Regardless I have always found success in returning to a few basic principles:
- Keep the learning time short
- Maximise intent and output from day 1
- Minimise orthopedic stress relative to the stimulus
- Only pick something I can use with a large groups or athletes with low supervision
