Plyometric box jumps are a proven method to improve jumping ability and overall body power. When I began training figure skaters in the 80s, you might expect box jumps to be an essential part of the workouts I designed for these athletes. They were not.

First, competitive figure skaters often put in 20+ hours of on-ice practice per week, year-round. Such a high training volume is necessary for these athletes to perfect the skills that win championships. This workload, combined with the stress of landing on unforgiving ice, puts these athletes at high risk of overuse injuries, particularly patellar tendinitis. The skaters’ footwear doesn’t help the cause.

Skating boots are stiff and tight, and prolonged wear weakens the foot, ankle, and calf muscles. Have you ever seen an atrophied arm or leg after a cast was removed? Same concept.

My colleague Paul Gagné is a strength coach and Posturologist who trained Olympic champions in pairs skating and ice dancing. Gagné assessed the skaters’ posture and found they all had varying degrees of valgus feet. In valgus feet, the foot arches collapse (as in flat feet, which is considered Level 3 valgus). In addition to creating postural imbalances, fallen arches reduce the foot’s shock-absorbing ability, increasing stress on the knees, hips, and lower back.

Although boots protect the lower extremities from injury while skating, the resulting muscle weakness may lead to injuries off the ice during everyday activities. My skaters frequently made perplexing comments such as, “Coach Goss, I sprained my ankle putting groceries in a shopping cart,” or “Coach Goss, I injured my knee stepping off an escalator.”

Even with close supervision and attentive spotting, box jumping carries a risk of injury if an athlete mistimes a jump or lands awkwardly. Scraping the shins on wooden boxes results in a bloody mess (trust me on this!), and open-ended metal boxes pose a high risk of the feet catching on the underside of the landing surface, leading to awkward falls. If you Google “box jump fail,” you’ll see countless horrific accidents, especially when athletes stack bumper plates on top of the boxes for extra height.

Image 1: The author trained figure skaters for over a decade and authored numerous articles on off-ice conditioning for these athletes.

Bigger Faster Stronger has taught box jumping to thousands of high school athletic programs, and instructors rarely received negative feedback about this training. That said, competitive skating is not a “welfare sport.” Coaches must address the risk vs. reward question, especially if those working with these athletes want to keep their jobs.

Skating parents invest a considerable amount of money in coaching, ice time, costumes, and other expenses associated with the sport. Parents often spent $25,000+ a year on the sport. In fact, one ice dancing team told me they had invested $85,000 in skating-related expenses the year before the Olympics.

In figure skating, each qualifying competition builds on the next. Unless they are elite skaters who have earned a bye to the Nationals, skaters must place in the top four at their Regional and then their Sectional competitions to qualify. Performing well at the Nationals opens the door to international competitions.

Competing at the national or international level puts an athlete on the fast track to joining the pro circuit and becoming a well-paid coach who attracts the best athletes. If an athlete makes it to the Nationals, their coach’s marketability increases, allowing the coach to attract higher-level athletes and justify raising their coaching fees.

If a skater is injured during their off-ice workouts and can’t compete in these qualifying meets, their season is over, and, unfortunately, often their skating career. I say this because skating parents tend not to be thrilled about taking out a second mortgage to watch their child play a mermaid or sea captain in the skating club’s annual “Sailing the Seven Seas Ice Spectacular.”

Having my skaters jump on and off boxes, or any athlete in a sport connected to overuse injuries, can be a bad idea. Consequently, I looked for other ways to incorporate off-ice jump training into their workouts. I used the power rack.

The On-the-Spot Training Solution

Legendary strength coach Charles Poliquin coined the term “On-the-Spot Training” to describe setting up equipment for several exercises in a small area. This approach was useful in commercial gyms, especially when using supersets and tri-sets, because leaving an exercise station for more than a few minutes often results in “use it or lose it.”

In the 1990s, I ran an off-ice training gym in Plano, Texas. It was located in an ice skating facility called Ice Bound (so, naturally, I called my gym Muscle Bound). One of the central pieces of equipment in my gym was a power rack. The power rack provided a safer, practical solution for jump training for my skaters.

The power rack enabled my skaters to perform assisted jumps while holding a barbell for support. The barbell provided stability and compensated for limited ankle flexibility or weak ankles and feet. Applying resistance from the arms during these jumps reduces landing stress, which is valuable if there is a lower-extremity overuse injury, and increases takeoff force. (Note: These jump exercises can be performed with portable squat racks, as shown in two of the accompanying videos. However, for single-leg squats, I prefer a power rack because the unit is less likely to tilt.)

While skating coaches may call it by other names, they often use assisted jump methods in training. For example, a fishing-pole-type device with a harness attaches to the skater to help with jumps. By lifting the pole as the skater jumps, the coach can assist the jump and slightly reduce the landing impact. The strength coaching community has also embraced the concept.

I’ve seen strength coaches, particularly those working with basketball and volleyball players, attach elastic bands to the top of power racks with the other ends hooked under their armpits. As the bands stretch, they amplify takeoff power and reduce landing stress. A 2020 study in the Journal of Sports Science and Medicine suggests these band-assisted jumps may be as effective as traditional plyometrics for improving vertical jump height.

Before getting into how to perform some of these on-the-spot assisted jumps, let’s start with squats.

Image 2: The author’s private figure skating gym in Plano, Texas. The gym featured a heavy-duty power rack that the author used for plyometric training.

Building Power with the Power Rack

Before jump training, I like my skaters to build a strong base with single-leg squats. Professor Yuri “The Father of Plyometrics” Verkhoshanky emphasized the importance of building substantial leg strength before performing higher-intensity plyometric exercises, particularly depth jumps. One frequently cited recommendation is the ability to back squat 1.5-2x bodyweight.

I prefer to start athletes with assisted single-leg squats rather than barbell back squats. During a single-leg squat, the working leg supports approximately 75 percent of your body weight. As such, you can perform considerable training without adding additional weight.

For skaters, I prefer the athlete perform a single-leg squat with the free leg extended in front, allowing them to squat lower. The extended leg posture also resembles the “shoot the duck” move in skating. Additionally, high levels of single-leg strength make it easier for a skater to bend their knees more deeply upon landing, improving stability.

Lacking sufficient knee bend, a skater often compensates by leaning forward excessively on landing, which can disrupt balance and lead to a fall or an unstable landing. I first heard about this compensation involving an elite female skater attending a skating camp in Colorado Springs. Primarily for aesthetic reasons, coaches told this skater to land more upright.

A local sports medicine doctor told me he believed the issue with this athlete wasn’t technique but a lack of strength to bend her knees further, so she compensated by leaning forward when she landed. After she corrected the fault by improving her leg strength, she landed a triple axel during a practice session at a competition; at the time, only two women had landed this jump in competition. Success leaves clues.

Working the legs through a full range of motion also helps prevent Achilles injuries (https://env-simplifastercom-sandbox.kinsta.cloud/articles/limit-acl-achilles-injuries-elastic-strength-training/) and improve athletic performance on the court and the field. When an athlete moves laterally to change direction, they briefly support themselves on one foot. Increasing single-leg strength may improve agility and help prevent knee injuries. I experienced these benefits firsthand.

After I left my off-ice training facility in Texas, I became the Editor-in-Chief of Bigger Faster Stronger (BFS) magazine. In my free time, I helped design and supervise the strength and conditioning workouts for a local high school women’s basketball team in Salt Lake City. Head coach Heather Sonne was concerned about her athletes’ ankle injuries because she had to spend considerable time taping their ankles before every practice and game.

Because of my success with my figure skaters, I had them perform single-leg squats using a power rack. The athlete rests a barbell across the bar catches, raised to about chest height. Athletes must position the body so the supports stop the bar if the athlete pulls back too hard, as a hard yank can result in a serious fall (again, trust me on this!).

“After about six weeks using these exercises, my athletes’ conditioning improved so dramatically that I no longer had to tape any ankles,” says Sonne. “In fact, the only ankle injury we suffered since performing these exercises occurred in the final playoff game of the year, and it was an unavoidable accident that happened when one of our players’ feet landed on top of the foot of one of the opponents.”

I like to start a single-leg squat progression with athletes holding the bar with both hands and squatting as low as is comfortable. The depth may be only a quarter of the way down at first, but progress is quick. When they can easily perform 10 reps all the way down, they relax their grip on the bar (or release it) on the descent and use their arms on the way up. We then progress to assisted jumps; Video 1 shows this progression.

To increase resistance, the athlete can wear a weight vest or hold a dumbbell in one hand. The second part of Video 1 shows my 145-pound weightlifter, Christian, performing three single-leg squats while holding a 100-pound dumbbell. Again, during a single-leg squat, you are squatting with approximately 75 percent of your bodyweight, so this lift is especially impressive.

Video 1: A progression of single-leg squats in a power rack, along with a variation of the exercise being performed while holding a dumbbell for added resistance.

Leaps of Faith

While many jumps in figure skating fail because the technique isn’t optimal, other reasons exist. Some jumps don’t have enough height to complete all the necessary rotations, or the athlete may lack sufficient eccentric strength to “stick” the landing.

Reaction forces in the lower extremities can reach up to seven times body weight when a person drops from a height of only 15.74 inches (40 centimeters). Skaters often jump higher than this, especially now that quad jumps have become common in international competitions. (Fun Fact: Llia Malinin has performed a quadruple axel, completing 4.1 rotations and reaching a peak height of 30 inches!)

The high impact force explains why I found that a figure skater’s landing leg is usually significantly stronger than their takeoff leg, due to the eccentric strength required to absorb the landing force.

The initial jumps my skaters performed in the power rack would emphasize fast eccentric loading, with only a few inches of separation from the floor, as shown in Video 2. (Patella tendinitis is common among skaters, and conventional box jumps might push these athletes over the edge into injury, especially if they leap off the boxes.) I also had them descend into a full squat to strengthen the muscles through a full range of motion, maintain the elastic properties of the connective tissues, and minimize stress on the ACL. To increase resistance, a weighted vest works well.

This type of eccentric-emphasis exercise was especially effective at improving vertical jump ability among my athletes at Hunter High School. Within their first month of using eccentric-emphasis jumps, I often saw athletes improve their vertical jump by 3-4 inches. One semester, we had nine girls in my class, many of them non-athletes, vertical jump: 23 inches, and an all-time Hunter High School best of 27.1 inches by Lusia Angilau, who earned a volleyball scholarship and appeared on the cover of BFS magazine.

Video 2: An assisted squat jump focusing on fast eccentric strength.

The next progression is a single-leg assisted squat jump, which could be called a pistol squat jump. The setup is the same as in the single-leg squat. Grasp a dumbbell in one hand and hold the bar with the other. Extend your non-working leg in front of you so it doesn’t touch the floor. Hold this start position.

Squat as low as comfortable, then quickly straighten your legs and hop a few inches off the floor—do not allow the opposite foot to touch the floor. Immediately squat down, focusing on reversing direction quickly at the bottom—you can also use the hip flexors of the free leg to “kick up” during the ascent. Perform all the reps in a set for one leg, then repeat with the opposite leg. Start with a light weight, such as eight pounds, until the athlete gets the rhythm of the movement down.

Video 3: An assisted, single-leg squat jump using a dumbbell for added resistance.

I also like the assisted split-squat jump for skaters and other athletes. The exercise was valuable for skaters as they took off and landed in a split position, and it could also benefit sprinters.

In my high school PE classes, we called them Iron Mikes. Iron Mikes were not named after Mike Tyson but have their roots in the US military. The exercise involves splitting the legs back and forth while performing a slight jump to clear the ground. Speed is key, and you should split as low as possible without the back knee touching the floor.

Video 4: Assisted split squat jumps. Resistance can be increased by wearing a weighted vest.

Getting Strong from the Start

These exercises can be performed on day one of a weight training class. Instead of spending several weeks having athletes lift light weights to perfect their movements, they can start with assisted single-leg squats and assisted jumps. In fact, I did this last year with a high school girls’ basketball team that had many freshmen with no lifting experience. Image 3 shows the progression of the five exercises described in this article.

Image 3: The progression of five exercises described by the author. (Drawings by Sylvain Lemaire, Hexfit.com)

Box jumping is a proven way to improve vertical jumping ability and power. In addition to the challenges mentioned, the lack of space for a row of box jumps is common in many high school gyms. I say that because in my half-century in the Iron Game, I have yet to meet a strength coach who said his weight room was big enough.

As for the private sector, many commercial gyms lack power racks but often have Smith machines. Although hardcore weightlifters often say the best use of these machines is to melt them down and make barbells, they can be used for assisted squats and jumps. Also, because the bar moves along guided rails, it cannot fall backward, providing an extra level of safety.

“There’s optimal training, and then there’s reality” was one of Charles Poliquin’s favorite sayings. On-the-spot squatting and jumping exercises offer a safe, practical alternative to conventional power-training methods such as box jumping. Give them a shot!

References

American Academy of Pediatrics. “Figure Skating (Care of the Young Athlete).” American Academy of Pediatrics, 2012.

Poliquin, Charles. “On the Spot Mass Gaining Program.” Poliquin Performance, April 29, 2011.

Makaruk, Hubert, et al. “The Effects of Assisted and Resisted Plyometric Training Programs on Vertical Jump Performance in Adults: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Journal of Sports Science and Medicine, May 1, 2020. 19(2): pp 347-357.

Wilhelm, K. “Das Verhalten der menschlichen Achillessehne im Experiement bie statischer und dynamisher Belastung,” Res Exp Medicine, 1974, pp. 162:281-297. (As cited in King, Ian. Understanding Plyometrics, King Sports Publishing, 1999, pp. 58.)

Rossano, George S. “Llia Malinin Quad Axel Analysis,” Ice Skating International: Online. October 27, 2022.

Goss, Kim. “The Hunter High School Experiment,” Bigger Faster Stronger, Jan/Feb 2010. Pp 18-21

Goss, Kim. “The Forgotten Secret to Jumping Power, Bigger Faster Stronger, September/October 2008, pp 32-35.

Siff, MC. and Verkhoshansky, YN. “The Triphasic Nature of Muscle Action,” Supertraining, 4th edition 1999 (1st edition 1993), p. 53-54.