maratoolStride Jump Crossover
How to do the stride jump crossover
- Stand to the side of a box with your inside foot on top of it, close to the edge.
- Begin by swinging the arms upward as you push through the top leg, jumping upward as high as possible. Attempt to drive the opposite knee upward.
- Land in the opposite position that you started, on the opposite side of the box. The foot that was initially on the box will now be on the ground, with the opposite foot now on the box.
- Repeat the movement, crossing back over to the other side.
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 hamstrings take a share of the work as well.
Every exercise for:QuadricepsAbductorsAdductorsCalvesHamstrings
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:
- Thigh Abductormachine
- Weighted Jump Squatbarbell
- All Fours Quad Stretchbody only
- Cable Deadliftscable
- Dumbbell Lungesdumbbell
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.
Photos: free-exercise-db — public domain (Unlicense) Full attribution →
ⓘ Informational only — not a substitute for professional fitness or medical advice.