maratoolFront Box Jump
How to do the front box jump
- Begin with a box of an appropriate height 1-2 feet in front of you. Stand with your feet should width apart. This will be your starting position.
- Perform a short squat in preparation for jumping, swinging your arms behind you.
- Rebound out of this position, extending through the hips, knees, and ankles to jump as high as possible. Swing your arms forward and up.
- Land on the box with the knees bent, absorbing the impact through the legs. You can jump from the box back to the ground, or preferably step down one leg at a time.
Muscles worked
The force comes from the hamstrings, which extend the hip and bend the knee, frequently at both joints in the same repetition.
A plyometric repetition is over before a slow contraction could contribute anything, so they have to produce that force immediately on contact.
Because more than one joint is moving, the work does not stay in one place: the abductors stop the knee collapsing inward and hold the pelvis square; the adductors steady the thigh against the pull away from the midline; the calves control the ankle and hold the heel position.
The glutes and quadriceps take a share of the work as well.
Every exercise for:HamstringsAbductorsAdductorsCalvesGlutes
How this movement works
The working muscles shorten as they drive the load away from you, and more than one joint changes angle to do it. Load spreads down a chain instead of sitting on one muscle, which is why a compound push handles more weight than any single-joint alternative — and why joint position, not the muscle, is usually what fails first.
It is filed under plyometrics, which trains the stretch-shortening cycle: loaded fast, released immediately. Contact time matters more than volume, so these belong early in a session.
What you need
These train the hamstrings too, using equipment this one does not:
- Front Leg Raisesbody only
- Glute Ham Raisemachine
- Good Morningbarbell
- Hamstring-SMRfoam roll
- Kettlebell Dead Cleankettlebell
Difficulty
Listed at beginner level: the pattern is simple enough to pick up without coaching, and a position that goes wrong mid-set is obvious enough to correct on the next repetition.
Of the 86 hamstrings exercises in this database, 37 are listed at beginner level.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.