Depth Jump
Depth Jump is an exercise that combines explosive plyometric movements with eccentric (lengthening) muscle contractions. It involves jumping off a box, platform, or stair and immediately rebounding back up to a higher height. The aim is to increase explosiveness and strength in the lower body muscles, specifically the calves, quads and glutes. This exercise is perfect for athletes who want to improve their power, speed, and agility by developing a better vertical jump.
Transcript
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This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute, and
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in this video we're doing a very
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challenging progression of the box jump, the depth jump. I'm going to have my friend
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Jeremy come out and help me demonstrate this video. Now we're going to use all of
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the same cueing we did for our other power training videos: we're going to talk
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about form, we're going to talk about the eccentric load which the depth jump is
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all about, the quick amortisation phase, speed and of course control and landing
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soft. So the big addition that the depth jump adds to our box jump exercise is
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now Jeremy's going to jump off of a box, which is now going to create a bunch of
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momentum which is going to increase the amount of eccentric load. So that
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eccentric load of course is what we need so that we can use things like myotatic
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reflex, the elasticity of our connective tissues to increase our force output
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with volitional muscular contraction. The hard part about this exercise from a
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practical standpoint as Jeremy already knows because we've practiced this a few
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times, is trying to learn how to land and quickly spring back up. So he's going to
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start with his hands up just like he did before, and just like on the Box jump how
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we have to go down as our hands go down, he's going to have to practice the timing
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so that his hands are at the bottom of this movement when he's at the bottom of
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his movement on the floor. You with me? (Yep). Alright and then the other big cue,
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make sure when they land they land on the ball of their foot or the area
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just behind the ball of their foot. Sometimes it helps if you have seen
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the tibialis posterior activation video for somebody to step out this way
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lift up their toes, and aim the ball of their foot off the floor and
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then just fall off the box.
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Pretty good, pretty good that was a lot of leg let's try to get a little bit
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more of those upper body mechanics back into it. If you have to just land, let's
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try it just landing a couple times. So what I want you to work on is just fall
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off and I want you to land at the bottom right here with your arms at the bottom,
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nice and soft. There we go that was nice, let's try doing that a couple more times.
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Pretty good, your arms actually beat you down that time. Okay better, let's try a
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little quieter this time, ninja. Alright now let's do that followed by
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the jump. There we go, okay so now we're starting to get the form together,
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remember form counts more than anything else on power exercise. For some reason
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people forget about that, they think height, they think speed, they're like
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I have to make this as explosive as possible and form goes out the freaking
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window. Power is a lot about technique, so let's see that wonderful thing
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you just did except this time I want you to one notch up on the speed.
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Okay that was like four notches up on the speed, let's make sure we get to
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the bottom of our squat, make sure our arms match up. Yeah your arms beat you down,
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this takes some time this does take some time, but if you get their technique
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straight you are going to see huge huge huge improvements in their power
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training, much better than you've had in the past. Alright so start with your
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arms up, now we're getting somewhere. That started looking
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really good. Let's do a couple more like that, this time I want you to concentrate
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on landing soft two heel to toe. That was fantastic,
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that was fantastic. Now think about this, how would we progress this exercise?
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Again a few ways to go, weight is not the . Be
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careful just with going with a higher box here
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because we still want to make sure that this doesn't become a hip flexion
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technique, where people are landing up in here. We could increase the height of
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this box a little bit, but that would be tough. Make sure when you guys do that
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you increase the height of the box they're jumping off of, you're doing that
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in like four or six inch increments. You don't want to go up a foot,
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somebody's going to really feel that probably not in the place they want to,
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like their low back or their knees, or something like that, so we could
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increase the height of this box. If Jeremy really started producing some
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more power we could increase the height of this box. So let's try, lets
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start increasing the height of that box first. Let's see how good Jeremy is at
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eccentrically decelerating here. It's going to be tight, this is a New York clinic
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space is a little tighter out here in New York. That was nice, how did that
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feel? Felt alright. That puts a lot more load on his legs,
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you have to remember acceleration due to gravity -the higher he gets the longer he
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has to accelerate through that fall that increases the amount of momentum a
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tremendous amount, if you don't believe me just ask a physics professor. There
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you go, that was pretty good. Now we could go the other way, and sometimes you're
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going to have to experiment with this see which one you think is going to get a
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better result. This is kind of where the art of training comes in, do I need
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to increase that box or that box. Nice job, let's try that a little quieter, that
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looks pretty good that look like a challenge. Really nice job. Now a huge
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huge monumental step and you can you can stop for a second here Jay, a huge
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monumental step would be trying to do this on one leg. Now if I was going to
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have him do this on one leg I would actually need much much shorter boxes.
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You'll find that even like a 12-inch box to a 12-inch box is a
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significant challenge. You want to give it a try? I'm not sure we'll do the 18
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inch box here but maybe just for demonstration purposes we'll go
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with 12-inch and then we'll just jump on the 6-inch box. So I'm landing on one foot
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and then jumping up one. Yep remember all your
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mechanics still apply. It's really tough, even just a little bit of
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height creates huge force, think about it when he landed not only did the
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stability component increase by a ton because his base of support went from
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this to just the width of his foot, but he also increased the load on that leg
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by double. So that is a huge jump, I wouldn't normally do this with somebody
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same height box, I would have started over with like a 6-inch box and 6-inch box
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here. Jeremy's a beast though. Not bad. Alright there you go, so we did
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that depth jump let's do a real quick review, recap here Jay. Remember your
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goals of form counts, eccentric loading, quick amortisation phase at the bottom,
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speed is the most important thing which we talked about in this video as I
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started slowly speeding him up, and then of course he tried to land soft. If we're
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talking about a depth jump his amortization phase is the bottom here, so
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it's real important to get his mechanics to line up so that his arms match the
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bottom at the bottom of the floor and he doesn't beat himself before he gets
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there, and then try to get up as fast as he can. I hope you guys enjoyed this
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video, I look forward to hearing your questions, please leave those in the
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