Does anyone do depth jumps from a low box onto a high box?
When you want to progress the difficulty of the exercise, do you increase the height of the box you drop off, or the box you jump onto?
I don’t understand the need for boxes. If an athlete performs a series of contact jumps then, after the first ground contact, he will automatically assume the optimal drop height, i.e. the height at which the force produced by the muscle:tendon complex is equal to the ground contact force.
Depends what you are after in your training. Putting in very general terms, the higher the box you jump onto, the more you are working on your start and very early acceleration.
In theory, the higher box you jump down from should help you resist collapse, so is pretty useful in max v.
Then there’s multi box which are generally of a lower height and a quick springy reactive contact which is also useful more in the speed spectrum
Of course there are limits on heights and you should also train to the phase and your needs.
This was a very fast response cos I have to go…
Hi all. Just a quickie, when you do depth jumps do your heels touch the ground, and if so why not, as I have always read that during sprinting your heels should touch the ground. Is the aim not to mimic sprinting? 
When it comes to vertical plyo’s such as depth jumps it would be to dangerous for heels to touch the ground.
Where-as when it comes to sprinting…
By the time your heel goes TO (read “barely skims”) the ground in sprinting your center of mass should be moving past heel towards being vertically above the ball of your foot. Therefor, in sprinting the calf muscles will be taking the impact after feet and ankles (but not heel.)
In depth jumps it is straight up straight down by comparison to sprints so by the time the feet could be horizontal your center of mass will STILL be partially over the heel. (need basketball shoes for depth jumps. If the heel HIT the ground in a depth jump it could be with a high impact which would be dangerous (unless wearing b-ball trainer.)
Conversely if you wore jogging trainers in a sprint you’d probably jar your back.)
Messy explanation and I hope I’m right on that!
I agree with dcw23. David, could you explain in a little more detail how you plan to use the plyos in your program? As dcw briefly explained, the “up” plyos correspond to early acceleration due to the greater degree of knee bend, whereas the “down” plyos correspond to upright max velocity due to the stiffer knee on impact.
The jump down from one box and back onto another combines both of these aspects. What are you attempting to empahsize and what phase of your training cycle are you currently in? If you’re in an acceleration oriented phase, I would drop down from a lower box and use a high box to jump onto.
You don’t necessarily want them to touch the ground, but they may briefly, just like in sprinting. When sprinting it is merely an observation of something that can happen, certainly not a cue!
With depth jumps a lot depends on height and what you are after. If you are training elastic response, you will want a lower drop height and a ball of foot landing. When you land you will store energy in your lower leg as your heel heads to the ground. This energy is then released as you jump upwards.
If you drop from a higher height, you will probably not be strong enough to use this lower leg elastic response and will most probably have a flat footed landing and instead store the energy in your larger muscles.
If you drop from an insane height you aren’t going to get any elastic response at all, more pure eccentric conditioning… or maybe an injury if you are a kamikaze.
I think the most important lesson for plyos is to keep them very simple and very conservative. It’s very easy to overload.
IN PHASE 1 WHEN JUMPING ONTO A BOX (FOR ACCELERATION) should you go from a standing start with 2 feet on the ground or walk itto it and jump, or run and jump.
also how high should it be?
Thanks DCW. I am mainly training for acceleration for field sports, so I guess the idea is to limit the height and aim for max explosion from teh ground.
I would just use a simple two-leg standing position for the jump. As far as height, you’ll have to figure that out for yourself. It depends on what height boxes are available to you (unless they’re adjustable) and how easily you can clear the necessary height. If in doubt, start lower.
Just a note: I would work on conditioning jumps such as tuck jumps, squat jumps concurrent with GPP before moving into this.
Agree with Flash, start with two leg and try and land on the box rather than crashing into the side of it by trying too hard for height. We have been using the Step Reebok platforms, i.e. the big green ones with the rubber top, stacked on top of one another and then rested against the platform storage bin, which in itself contains the platforms to an equivalent height. It makes a nice safe and deep platform that can be incremented by one platform at a time.
When you have progressed to belly button height and above, the walk in help because it will let you bring in a little elastic response on take off.
why does N.A.S.M. say to do plyos while landing with flat feet?
national academy of sports medicine
think about it
landing on ur toes puts a lot of stress on a small delicate area…you can start a lot of bad problems by doing it that way…stress fractures too probably…be careful…
try that barefeet and see how you go…
You will instinctively land on the balls of your feet in barefeet, or else it will hurt a lot 
I always wondered what was the best height to do depth jumps???I found an old translated article written by verkhoshansky about depth jumps, he says that .75 and 1.15 meters is optimal height because…" special investigation has shown that effective improvement of reactive ability of the nerve-muslce apparatus is acheived in the take-off only from a determined height. At the first height (.75m) maximum speed is acheived in swithcing muscles from yeilding work to overcoming work and the second height (1.10m) corresponds to the maximum dynamic strength developed." The article goes on to talk about how raising the height does not work as well…does anyone have any long term experience with depth jumps and height of them? Just curious!
Peace 
I was briefly looking at Supertraining and our understanding of plyometrics is a bit different from Verkoshansky’s definition of powermetrics, where maximum only plyometrics is your goal. In this case, similar heights might be used.
I hope we are all talking about very well-conditioned athletes here…
Comments?