Today’s “Plyometric of the Week” is the double hurdle depth jump. This is a powerful movement that sits in the short response, alactic training file. First of all, let’s describe the depth jump portion of the movement.
The Depth Jump Element
The depth jump, as I often talk about, is a great overloading tool to exponentially increase the joint forces on an athlete in a specific jump takeoff. Compared to jumping in a vest, or with a bar on one’s back, a depth jump uses gravity to proportionally distribute force through an athlete’s joint structure in a specific way. A depth jump also is a great way to overload the eccentric phase of the jump, which when performed correctly is actually an “explosive isometric” action. When an athlete lands from the box, the muscles will quickly lock up isometrically, and let the tendon structures and related connective tissue store and release energy.
If the athlete lands in too deep of a position, or really “rides the landing” down to a lower position, it defeats the purpose of the exercise, and the muscle forces will be excessively eccentric, and force will not be stored, but rather, lost as heat energy.
Jumping over a hurdle has huge benefits for jumpers, as it will decrease ground contact time (important for nearly any sport movement, and particularly useful for track and field jumpers), and even increase velocity at toe-off.
Depth Jumps Over Multiple Hurdles
Jumping over an extra hurdle adds an extra element to the movement, and places sensory and coordinative demands on the athlete. Once an athlete can perform one depth jump well, it is useful to teach them to perform two similar jumps in succession. In many cases, the rhythmic nature of the movement can cause the second jump to have an even lower contact time than the first while retaining much, or all of the vertical impulse.
Using the Double Hurdle Depth Jump in Training
The constraints of the double hurdle depth jump are as follows:
- The height of the hurdles
- The spacing of the hurdles
- The height of the box
- The spacing of the first hurdle and the box
- The surface an athlete performs this exercise on
- Double or single-leg takeoffs, and landings. Athletes can perform a mixture as well, jumping off of two feet, but landing the final hurdle on a single leg, or in a lunge position.
This exercise is nice as a stand-alone, or when combined with other jumps. Generally speaking, athletes do well to perform between 10 and 40 depth jump contacts within the scope of a session, so if this is the only exercise performed on the day, this can be done between 5 and 20 repetitions. When performing this exercise on the higher end of repetitions, the constraints of the exercise should be adjusted over the course of the workout.
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