How to master the drop jump and work with gravity to increase your strength and speed
While most exercises involve you working against gravity to increase your strength, the drop jump uses gravity to supercharge your strength and speed
Fitness routines can seem as if they are only geared towards the body working against gravity in order to work the muscles. Popular examples of these are incline walks and box jumps and hill runs. But these are not the only way to use gravity to your advantage; you can also do so by practicing landing exercises. And there is one exercise in particular that takes the cake when it comes to its overall effect on the body, which goes beyond just the ability to withstand force. This is the drop jump.
The drop jump, or the death drop as it is also known, is one of the most popular exercises among those who want to work on their strength and speed. The ease of learning the exercise and modifying it while jumping from a height, with very little equipment, makes it one of the first moves that runners learn when they start getting serious about the activity.
I wrote a piece for Lounge on landing and its importance in December 2021, which included multiple exercises that can help in landing during plyometric training. The drop jump is more specific though, as it eventually progresses to a drop jump followed by a box jump. The exercise is probably also the most risk free plyometric move that even beginners can accommodate in their routine. That said, be careful.
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You can start doing this off a bench as well, or any platform for that matter, including stairs. Just make sure you’re wearing the right footwear, or you can train this barefoot. There are many studies that show that doing plyometrics without shoes can increase the activation of foot muscles and decrease the load on the knees. “For individuals unaccustomed to barefoot activity or those with weaker intrinsic foot muscles who wish to improve their foot strength, commencing barefoot with lower-intensity plyometrics such as Pogo variations, low box jumps, or hopping may be prudent before advancing to higher-intensity exercises like bounding and depth jumps," says a health+high performance article on the topic.
However you choose to do it, start with a low height so the body learns to recognise the sensation of landing. The technique will get better over time but the execution is simple. Here’s what to do: get on the platform and then let one leg hang over the edge in preparation for the landing and just jump, making sure you land in a soft cushioned quarter squat. It’s fair to wonder if that’s all there is to the entire exercise. There is one more step though—and it’s so much fun. Because as soon as you land, you make sure you take a small spot jump after.
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Running and strength training coach Lucy Molloy recently posted the findings of a fascinating 2019 research about death drop jumps in an Instagram post which also shows how she does the exercise. She cites the study, Effects Of Plyometric Training On The Performance Of 5-km Road Runners, published in the Journal of Physical Education and Sport, which trialled 24 runners and split them into three groups.
The group which did this exercise as part of their plyometric protocol showed stunning results in increase of speed. These are the results: The run-only group showed an average 4.75s improvement; the run and squat jump group showed an improvement of 140.5 seconds and the run and drop jump group showed a 170.63s improvement.
“The benefit of death drop jumps to runners is it increases the capacity of explosive strength and also works to decrease foot contact time with the ground, ultimately decreasing the amount of energy used for a given speed," Molloy writes in her post.
Executing the drop jump is in itself is quite easy when you consider the scale of other exercises that also work on increasing speed and running mechanics. And even the progressions are quite interesting. The death-jump-to-box-jump is the best progression. It is challenging, works up a sweat, and makes your lower body coordinated when it comes to quick movements. The difference here is that you do the drop off a bench, and then jump straight onto a box, using the upwards momentum from the landing to fuel the jump onto the box.
There is also a playground element to this exercise. Very much like turning large tyres in a functional training session, or slamming them with a hammer. Doing drop jumps with a circle of gym friends can give in to a childlike excitement of executing the perfect landing and jump and the challenges can keep increasing. For example, one could use ankle weights to do them and get stronger. There are many exercises that can help amp your speed up, but none is simpler than the drop jump.
Pulasta Dhar is a football commentator, writer and podcaster.
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