Better Jump Training For Weightlifting
Everyone loves a good jump, but most of us have made at least a few curious choices about what jumping exercises we use and how we do them. Here are some ideas on getting the most out of jump training specifically for weightlifting.
Step 1: Lower Box
When doing box jumps, don’t forget the point: jumping. We get caught up in how cool higher boxes look, but that often means actually doing a lower quality jump and putting more of the effort into mid-air contortionism to reach the feet higher. Instead, use a box well under what you can jump onto and focus on jumping as high as possible and coming down onto the box with less leg bend.
Step 2: No Arm Swing
When’s the last time you helped accelerate the pull of a snatch or the drive of a jerk by swinging your arms? We need to maximize power production of the legs and hips—the height of the jump is incidental. Try taking the arm swing out of your jumps—keep your hands loosely in front of your chest so you have them quickly available to avoid disaster if needed.
Step 3: Vertical jump instead of onto box
Box jumps look cool, but they force us to jump forward. Vertical jumps have the same training effect on explosiveness, but allow us to use the same whole-foot balance we want in a lift.
Jumping up onto a box creates less impact upon landing, so that should be taken into consideration, but most of us end up jumping down off the box anyway, making that largely meaningless. Also, landing from a vertical jump is a depth drop, which trains our ability to productively absorb force and load elastic energy—so that’s a double whammy.
Step 4: No Countermovement
We can further make jumping more specific to the snatch and clean by eliminating the elasticity of a countermovement. We can pause for 2-3 seconds to wait out the effects of the stretch-shortening reflex and then jump.
There are a huge number of jumping exercises and ways of doing each—spend some time considering their purpose in your program and ensuring you’re meeting it as well as possible.
See more jump exercises in my exercise library
Step 1: Lower Box
When doing box jumps, don’t forget the point: jumping. We get caught up in how cool higher boxes look, but that often means actually doing a lower quality jump and putting more of the effort into mid-air contortionism to reach the feet higher. Instead, use a box well under what you can jump onto and focus on jumping as high as possible and coming down onto the box with less leg bend.
Step 2: No Arm Swing
When’s the last time you helped accelerate the pull of a snatch or the drive of a jerk by swinging your arms? We need to maximize power production of the legs and hips—the height of the jump is incidental. Try taking the arm swing out of your jumps—keep your hands loosely in front of your chest so you have them quickly available to avoid disaster if needed.
Step 3: Vertical jump instead of onto box
Box jumps look cool, but they force us to jump forward. Vertical jumps have the same training effect on explosiveness, but allow us to use the same whole-foot balance we want in a lift.
Jumping up onto a box creates less impact upon landing, so that should be taken into consideration, but most of us end up jumping down off the box anyway, making that largely meaningless. Also, landing from a vertical jump is a depth drop, which trains our ability to productively absorb force and load elastic energy—so that’s a double whammy.
Step 4: No Countermovement
We can further make jumping more specific to the snatch and clean by eliminating the elasticity of a countermovement. We can pause for 2-3 seconds to wait out the effects of the stretch-shortening reflex and then jump.
There are a huge number of jumping exercises and ways of doing each—spend some time considering their purpose in your program and ensuring you’re meeting it as well as possible.
See more jump exercises in my exercise library
