Front Cone Hops (or hurdle hops)

🎯 Quadriceps🏋️ OtherBeginnerCompoundAbductors (2°)Adductors (2°)Calves (2°)Glutes (2°)Hamstrings (2°)

How to do the front cone hops (or hurdle hops)

  1. Set up a row of cones or other small barriers, placing them a few feet apart.
  2. Stand in front of the first cone with your feet shoulder width apart. This will be your starting position.
  3. Begin by jumping with both feet over the first cone, swinging both arms as you jump.
  4. Absorb the impact of landing by bending the knees, rebounding out of the first leap by jumping over the next cone.
  5. Continue until you have jumped over all of the cones.

Muscles worked

The force comes from the quadriceps across the front of the thigh, which straighten the knee and, just as importantly, control it on the way back down.

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 hamstrings take a share of the work as well.

Every exercise for:QuadricepsAbductorsAdductorsCalvesGlutes

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 quadriceps too, using equipment this one does not:

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 173 quadriceps exercises in this database, 70 are listed at beginner level.

Related exercises

Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →

ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.