IT’S JUST JUMPING up onto a box and risking the skin on your shins, isn’t it? Most certainly not.

Box jumps require a tremendous amount of fitness and power to carry out. They’re difficult — or at least they should be, they recruit your fast-twitch muscle fibres, help you develop core and lower limb strength as well as being a great fat burner.

They can be done any number of ways, but we’re going to illustrate two examples.

Workout Number One — using one box

A few things to remember are;

• These should be done at the start of your workout, just after your warm-up when you are fresh.
• Start with a box you know you can mount comfortably.
• There is an acceleration and a deceleration phase. More on this later.
• Use all your body, hands included.

Method:
1. Using one box of a height of your choice, stand before it.
2. Now squat down as much as is necessary and bound upwards — using your arms to propel you — until you land safely on the top. This is the acceleration phase.
3. Drop down the other side of the box and squat down as low as you can in one fluid movement. This brings your quads and glutes more into play. This is the deceleration phase.
4. Turn around, face the box and repeat
5. Perform this 20 times with no rest for one set.
6. Take a one-minute rest and repeat for two more sets.

Workout Number Two – using two boxes

Method
1. Get two boxes of differing heights and face them against each other with a gap of about 3-4 feet between them so you can fit comfortable in between.
2. The idea is to jump up onto one box, squat down, drop down to the floor, jump up to the higher box, squat down, drop down to the floor and squat down again. This is one rep.
3. Turn around, face the boxes and repeat, this time starting with the taller box and going to the smaller one.
4. Perform this 20 times with no rest for one set.
5. Take a one-minute rest and repeat for two more sets.

In summary:
* The higher and more explosive you jump, the more muscle tissue that is activated, so don’t be afraid to go for higher boxes.
*Box jumps are great to bulk up your quads as the constant accelerating and decelerating recruits more fast-twitch muscle fibres.
* The deceleration phase (dropping down) requires just as much quad strength (as accelerating) to land properly.
*Box jumps are also very demanding on the metabolic system making them a great exercise to incorporate in your fat loss training.

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