Box jump height for contrast training

[tomwill]

Hi Ash,
I had a question about your ‘Programming for the back three’ program. I’m following a slightly modified version of the program and today I contrasted power snatch (3 x 5 @ 60%) with box jumps (3 x 10).

The question I had was how high should the box be? I mean this in relative not absolute terms because obviously we’re all different but to give you an idea I used a 30 inch (76 cm) box, my maximum being around 40 inch (101 cm).
I found that doing 10 reps at this height was pretty demanding and I wasn’t being particularly explosive after the 5th or 6th.

So, just wondering if I should use a lower box for the 3×10 contrast for quicker reps and use a higher box for when I do the low rep jumps? Or is the idea here to work on power endurance?

Hopefully you can get some sense out of that question!

Thanks Ash, as always your comments are greatly appreciated.

Cheers, Tom

[ashley]

Hi Tom, fully understand the question and it is something that I am constantly working on with my players, since the program is a 3 week progression, using a linear progression, I want to develop a little power endurance in the first week hence the 10’s but as you say it is all relative, I have played around with using different heights based on a maximum effort jump height and percentages, as you said your max being around 101 cms and 10’s being around 60 – 70% of 1RM I would say that a box height of 60- 70 cms would be about right for this week, then increase the height each week for 3 weeks, but if you are more advanced you may want to try a more reactive jump and go down and up as quickly as you can for the reps then a lower box height will be needed, there is no problem in having 2 or 3 boxes set up and as you feel the reactivity decreasing drop to a shorter box, ideally we would all have force platforms, check out the Performance Force Platform at http://www.fittech.com.au and the Ballistic Measuring Systems software and products at http://www.innervations.com and then as we detect an increase in ground dwell time above a threshhold level say 300 miliseconds then we would adjust the box height till then we will just have to have a keen look at what players are doing and adjust subjectively as we go, cheers, ash

[tomwill]

Ha ha, I wish my gym had equipment like that!

As ever, thanks for the feedback Ash. Much appreciated.

Tom

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