Full disclosure...I'm not a very good leaper. I was a swimmer for most of my athletic career. I also played a little basketball and volleyball. And while jumping is a key aspect of most sports it wasn't my forte. Even later in training I was never the best at box jumps. I remember a friend, Chris Lebihan, coming in to the gym one day to train. And the plyo boxes were stacked totalling 54" tall or 4 feet 6 inches. Anyways, a number of young athletes were training. And one of them commented that jumping that high just wasn't possible. Lebs had just walked in the gym in street clothes with his gym bag slung over his shoulder. I called to him and asked him to jump up on the boxes. He dropped his bag off his shoulder and proceeded to jump atop the boxes with ease. He picked up his bag and carried on to the change-room. The young athletes were stunned and speechless. Now to be fair it didn't hurt that Lebs was an Olympic medallist in a power sport i.e. bobsleigh. And it definitely made a huge impact on those young athletes. So besides impressing people in the gym what else is jumping good for? Well, it's an important quality in many team sports. The striker in soccer may need to get up on a corner to head the ball in for a goal. In football, a receiver may need to out jump the defense on a last play Hail Mary. Basketball and volleyball involve constant jumping on every play from a lay up, a dunk or a rebound in the former to a serve, a hit or a block in the latter. When you think about it the highlight plays of most sports involve jumping. This could...

Is there a lift or exercise that you struggle with? And I just don't mean it's a weak-point but that it paralyzes you and almost can't even force yourself to do it.Can you picture an exercise where this kind of scenario exists? Or not even an exercise but something physical such as jumping out of a plane or going cliff diving.[caption id="attachment_4279" align="aligncenter" width="300"] It can be hard to take the first stepI'm sure there are a number of people that never make the jump. And this is how it is for some people with box jumps.You can sometimes feel as though your feet are nailed to the floor. You take a moment to mentally prepare yourself. You visualize yourself successfully landing the jump. You load up, swing the arms back then straighten your body as you are about to leave the ground but don't.Now to make matters worse imagine having failed at a box jump in the past. If this happened on a regular plyo box, and not a soft box, then it's awful the damage this can do to the shins. And while the physical scars will heal the memory carries with it the experience of what happened last time. Try and force your body to do this again in the future and you'll see what it looks like when you can't get yourself to do something.So besides switching to soft safety plyo boxes (which every gym should do) what else can you do to get over a missed plyo box jump and bring them back into your training?Below are 4 Tips for Successfully Completing Box Jumps1. Fully CommitWhen I see someone miss a box jump they failed because they quit on the jump before they even left the ground. They set up properly. They loaded up. They used...