From Box Jumps to Breakaways: How Hockey Players Can Improve their Game with Smart Training

A quick internet search will yield numerous videos of individuals attempting to jump on exceedingly high boxes. Occasionally, you may even stumble upon clips of failed attempts. Although visually impressive when they land on the box, the activity ultimately serves as a mobility exercise instead of a power exercise. Rather than getting their hips higher off the ground which would require a lot of lower body power, the individuals merely lift their feet high enough to land on the box. Even though this may look impressive, it is not an effective technique for improving lower body power.

Before we get into the benefits of why performing box jumps correctly will improve your lower body power and breakaway speed we need to know the difference between jump training and plyometric training.

Jump Training vs Plyometric Training

Jump training and plyometric training are both types of exercises that involve explosive movements aimed at improving athletic performance. However, there are some subtle differences between these two types of training.

Jump training typically refers to exercises that solely focus on jumping as a means of enhancing lower body power, explosiveness, and overall athleticism. These exercises focus on improving vertical or horizontal jumping ability by performing various exercises such as jump squats, box jumps, broad jumps, lateral bounds, linear bounds, and other variations of jumps or bounds. All these variations can be performed either single or double-legged. These exercises typically involve using a combination of body weight and/or external resistance to strengthen the lower body muscles involved in jumping and bounding.

Plyometric training, on the other hand, involves a wider variety of exercises that aim to improve overall power, force, speed, and agility. Plyometric exercises also involve jumping, hopping, bounding, and other explosive movements. While a lot of the exercises may be similar as jump training exercises the biggest difference is that plyometric training utilize the stretch shorting cycle at a faster rate than jump training. The stretch shorting cycle works by rapidly stretching and contracting muscles involved in the particular movement (ie. depth jump). Plyometrics are also classified as either “slow” or “fast”. A “slow” plyometric exercise has a ground contact time (how long you spend on the ground) greater than or equal to 0.251 seconds and a “fast” plyometric exercise has a ground contact time of less than or equal to 0.25 seconds. The goal of plyometric training is to improve the body’s ability to generate force quickly and efficiently, which can enhance athletic performance and increase your breakaway speed.

In summary, while both jump training and plyometric training involve explosive movements, jump training is a subset of plyometric training and focuses solely on jumping exercises to improve the total amount of power produced, and how quickly this is done isn’t as important, while plyometric training focuses on producing power as quickly and reactively as possible.

How the box jump can help

Box jumps are a highly effective exercise for improving lower body power due to several reasons. Firstly, in order to perform a box jump, the body needs to recruit fast-twitch muscle fibers in the legs, such as the quads, glutes, and calves. These muscle fibers are responsible for generating a high level of force in a short amount of time, which is essential for executing the explosive movement required for the jump. By regularly training the body this way, it can produce more force and power more efficiently and thus improve your speed when skating, this will ultimately lead to improved performance on the ice.

Secondly, box jumps can help your breakaway speed by increasing muscle activation in the lower body like the quads, glutes, and calves. And over time, these muscles will improve their strength and power, becoming more effective at generating the force needed for skating fast.

Thirdly, box jumps utilize the stretch-shortening cycle, which involves a rapid eccentric (lengthening) contraction, isometric contracting (stopping),  followed by a concentric (shorting) contraction. This entire process helps improve lower body power by allowing an explosive movement to occur. By becoming more efficient at the stretch-shortening cycle, the body can generate more power and improve overall athletic performance.

In conclusion, box jumps are an important exercise for improving lower body power due to their ability to recruit fast-twitch muscle fibers, increase muscle activation, and utilize the stretch-shortening cycle, ultimately leading to improved speed and performance on the ice.

Why the height doesn’t matter

When jumping on a box, it’s all about how high the hips get off the ground, not how high you can lift your feet up in the air. Vertical height is measured by hip displacement not how high you can lift your feet while in the air. When standing on the ground measure the height of your hips and then when you jump in the air measure the hips at peak height, this difference is how high you actually jumped, the height of the feet has nothing to do with it. The reason we use a box with our training is to reduce the landing forces (stress) and soften the land.

We want to reduce the amount of landing force because the body can only handle so much stress (ie. lifting weights, jumping, sprinting, running, etc..) in a training session and we don’t want to always waste it on landing. Landing forces can affect performance, if the body absorbs too much during a session it will start to decrease its energy and power output. The other thing we need to be aware of is the risk of injury component. Each and every time we jump and don’t land on a box the joints of the ankles, knees, and hips take on some of that force and over time this can cause some wear and tear on these joints. 

So in order to get the most out of a power training session we must incorporate the box with our jumps. By choosing the appropriate size of box for our box jumps we can focus on the jumping part of the exercise and not be worried about trying to lift our feet up as high as possible to land on the box. Performing box jumps this way will allow us to get more jumps in a training session because there is less stress on the body because it doesn’t have to land on the ground after each jump.

Watch the video below to learn more. 👇

Conclusion

Jump training typically refers to exercises that solely focus on jumping to enhance lower body power, explosiveness, and overall athleticism. 

Plyometric training utilizes the stretch shorting cycle faster than jump training. Plyometrics are also classified as either “slow” or “fast”. The goal of plyometric training is to improve the body’s ability to generate force quickly and efficiently.

Make sure you choose the appropriate box height to allow you to focus on the jump part of the box jump and be worried about the landing part. Also, incorporating the box into your power sessions will allow you to get more jumps in because you’re reducing the amount of stress the body has to deal with so you can produce more power longer.