The “Half Kneeling Squat Jump” seems to be making its come back. I believe in the early 2000’s it was VERY popular amongst the powerlifting crew and some sports performance coaches. I can see the appeal to coaches and athletes as this movement forces the body to be extremely explosive and quick.
BUT sadly reality sets in and for every one of these extreme motivational vids, you’ll see about 50 of these in REAL LIFE:
The Truth
If you train regular clients and athletes, this is one of the exercises you more than likely should leave out. We all know the importance of assessing the risk vs. reward of each exercise and understanding the benefit of it, so let’s go over a few scenarios:
Prospective Pro
If you’re working with a young athlete that is trying to making to a professional level, do you take the risk of doing an exercise that COULD potentially risk his/her career? Before you answer this keep in mind that if you injure one of these athletes word will spread and the agents will not trust you and shouldn’t with their clients.
Personal Training Client
What about personal training, you have an hour with a client x2-3 a week do you focus your time on the half kneeling squat or do you try to utilize your time efficiently? For most general population clients, they need as much exposure to the main lifts as possible to become efficient and use weights that will elicit the benefits of the exercise.
Performance Training: College and High School Athlete
For those sports performance coaches out there working with their athletes a few times out of the year, how should you focus your time? Do you focus on the big bang for your buck exercises or spend time teaching these movements that will have little to no transfer rate?
Alternatives for Performance Training
If this was something that the client or athlete is being tested on, then yes it should programmed in, otherwise in my opinion this exercise is probably on the riskier and less beneficial side of the spectrum. You can find far better exercises to develop dynamic speed that will translate to sport. Things such as:
- Med-Ball drills: overhead toss, med ball chest pass to sprint, lateral toss, etc…
- Weight training: Squat jumps, clean pulls, power cleans, jerks, etc…
- Plyometrics- weighted, continuous, band resisted etc…
- Speed work: Sprint, change of direction, deceleration, etc…
The above examples are simple to execute and in my opinion a lot more effective than the half kneeling squat jump when it comes to dynamic strength and speed training.
Conclusion
Remember that the weight room is utilized to develop GENERAL strength exercises and NOT specific. No matter how much weight you move and how fast you squat the bar, if you don’t do sprint work and work on your sprint mechanics you will not run faster. You’ll just be stronger in the weight-room with minimal effects to sprint performance. This same concept goes for your sport skill set i.e. on-field work.
Also please don’t misconstrue this, strength work is beneficial but it’s only a small piece to the whole pie when developing an athlete or reaching fitness goals.
Train smart,
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