Single Leg Box Jump

Single Leg Box Jumps are a dynamic lower body exercise that build explosive power. This exercise requires you to use one leg to propel yourself onto a box while controlling your descent so that you land with both feet together on the box. As you become more comfortable with the exercise, you can increase the height of the box to further challenge your lower body. Single Leg Box Jumps are a great way to increase athleticism and core stability.

Transcript

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This is Brent of the Brookbush Institute, and in this
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video we're bringing you more power
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stability, or reactive stability, exercises on this continued mission to
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bring control to our explosive exercise regimen. Power is only important, it's
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only effective, it only has an effect on performance if the athlete has the
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ability to accurately dispense that force, stabilize that force, and eccentrically
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decelerate that force. So, I'm going to have my friend, Brian, come out here. He's going to
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demonstrate a very simple progression that is often not recommended, very under-
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recommended. So, we're going to take this box jump, and instead we're going to do
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it on one leg. Right, how often do athletes jump off of one leg? Probably as
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often or more often than they jump off both legs, but they never practice it in
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here. So we're going to go ahead and start with the same cues we'd start with a normal
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box jump. So you're going to start in that upright position,
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hands up, because I want him to be able to load that you eccentric phase, right, and then
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a quick amortisation phase, and explode upward. The only difference is you notice
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he lifted his leg. That's it, all the other form cues stay the same. Now,
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when you land, heel to toe, soft landing. You ready?
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Good, that was pretty good. He landed a little flat-footed. I do like my my athletes, my
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clients, my patients to try to work on heel to toe to get that soft
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roll back.
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Much better, let's go even softer, right. Power exercises are to be seen and not heard. I
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want you to sound like a ninja.
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That was still a little flat-footed. Let's give you one more, and this time stay. Remember, we're working on accuracy,
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so as I get through all those cues, getting him back to a good-looking box
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jump. If we're doing this progression, our primary focus is to be able to land
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accurately, softly, and stabilize. He should be able to get up here and stay
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in this position forever, and then he can step down and start working on his
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next repetition. What I don't want is the controlled falling, where I see somebody land on
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one leg, and then they just kind of fall over and do the next rep. That's not all though,
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guys. So, this is a good start,
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notice that you got the one legged box jump down pretty good in the sagittal
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plane, but we don't only move in the sagittal plane. So progressions for this
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exercise are frontal and transverse planes. I'm going to have you face the camera.
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Now, I'm going to make one little caveat to this exercise. These frontal and transverse
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plane progressions get a little scary, because you're not facing the box, you're
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not looking directly at the box that you're jumping on. If I'm going to put
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this exercise in somebody's program, it's because I have faith that they are a
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good enough athlete that if they were to catch the lip of this box, they would
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recover without doing too much damage to themselves. Keep that in mind. There's risk
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with all exercise, but I obviously wouldn't do this with my mom who I think
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might catch the lip of the box and then fall over and really hurt herself.
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That's a bad idea.
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Brian's already caught the lip of the box couple times since we've been practicing,
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and he just steps right over the box. We're fine. This is going to
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happen as we get used to these exercises. Are you ready?
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Stabilize, stabilize, stabilize. Nice job. And for this one,
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guys, you could make an argument of jumping off either leg. So it can be left
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leg to left leg, or in this case, standing on the right side of the box, you
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could've gone right leg to right leg landing. That's that's also frontal plane.
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Almost, almost. You almost have that stabilized. It was good though, something for you to
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practice a little bit. Now transverse plane, you're going to start facing the camera
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and then end facing this way. Once again, heel to toe soft landing.
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That was a little flat-footed, I think you can do better get. You're getting this down. I like this.
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Almost, almost. Maybe this is the one Brian's got to work on a little bit maybe
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this is the one we should leave in his program for a couple weeks before we do
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any further progressions. That was really good. And again, we could go left leg or right
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leg from this side, because this is kind of like that turning out thing you just
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did. And then if we were on right leg, we kind of have that turning in thing. But we
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do both in sports, so either way, you want to work both legs into that progression
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from both sides of the box. Now, I do want to make the point,
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notice this box is fairly low. Brian is definitely capable of a 30 inch box
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jump, no problem. When you switch from two legged box jumps to a single leg box jump,
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the amount of force it takes that you have to generate off one leg, it's going
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to seem pretty rough. It's kind of analogous to going from a two legged
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back squat to a pistol squat. It just feels like that much more weight, because
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lifting twice as much body weight on one leg maybe. It takes a lot to
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get that up.
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Be careful before you start upping in this box. Start low, master it. Add a few inches at
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a time.
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These soft plyo boxes, which you can see in the corner here, sometimes come in
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handy for stuff like this, especially if you're falling over and you're catching
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the box a little bit. It's nice to have a soft surface. The downside, of
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course, which is why we switched to this, is it's very hard to stabilize when you land
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on a soft box. Thank you, Brian, that was really nice technique on those. I hope
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you guys get a nice little jump in your performance going from a two legged box
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jump to a single a box jump. Really work on that control. And then if you'd like,
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retest yourself on a two legged box jump. Chances are if you master this, that two legged
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box jump is not going to seem difficult
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at all. I also want to hear about how you feel
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playing your sport after practicing these for four to six weeks. I think
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you'll find that your cuts are a little bit better, your jump shot's a little bit
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more accurate, because you're able to control that power output. I look
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forward to hearing from you guys about how you use this exercise and the