Are you considering your bodyweight (specifically non-lean muscle mass) for your squat jumps? If you’re a heavier guy, this could create problems. I believe the research says when you’re squatting you are pushing about 75% of your own bodyweight and on jumps it’s obviously (impact wise) going to be 100% of bodyweight + gravity, so if you add your bodyweight to the jump impact plus your squat % you’re starting to get pretty heavy. I’ll always go for lighter on a barbell squat jump. Michael Boyle has a pretty bright formula (albeit a bit conservative) on squat jump load:
I think there still has to be consideration for fat mass vs lean mass as bodyweight and consideration towards training age, etc., but Michael’s formula will give you a much better standard and his experience gives him the ability to give more broad suggestions than mine. Also make sure to not (for whichever way you decide to do the barbell squat jumps) create hesitation on the jump. The higher loads will tend to do this and will decrease the effectiveness of the exercise. Most people want to slow the weight on the descent so be careful to not remove the stretch-reflex from the movement. As Charlie has said, you don’t want to spin your wheels and not go anywhere.
So are you saying that Michael Boyle is DB Hammer now? I thought we agreed it was David Brad Nutall? Or Erik Lukas? Or Kelly Baggett? Or You? But seriously, let’s not hi-jack this thread.
Yeah speed good point!!! I like to go on the lighter side of things as well to make sure these guys are not losing that stretch-reflex during the jumps and then in subsequent workouts i may move the weight up by 2-3%.