Falling Stars or Drop Squats

I created this exercise for myself to test out the effect of hypertrophy (muscle building on my legs) do not try this. I call it “The Fallen Stars” this exercise is evil by nature and If you’re not fit you will most likely mess up your knees. Allot of time we use squat jumps, long jumps, burpees, box jumps etc, but we forget about jumping down or the impact at what we hit the floor with. This is called eccentric contrition where you lengthen your muscles back to its original position from where you have started and make them even stronger than the jumping up phase or concentric contraction.

                                                                     

The down phase or eccentric contraction is where you can build the most strength, for the simple fact that you come down harder with gravity depending on how far you jump down plus the weight you carry will determine your weight of force when your feet hit the ground. In short it means you can probably turn 100kg into 200kg by jumping down a step. If you can develop the skill of controlling the weight on the down phase which is hard to do without the risk of injuries ,you will gain strength with lighter weights almost similar than using much heavier weights. 

If you’re already fit and want to push yourself to the next level and don’t have the needed weight, you can step up and jump down in a controlled manner to strengthen and build your legs. I do not recommend this to anyone, but I am testing this theory to see how practical it is. I will also measure my bone density and muscle mass with an bioimpedance scale to make sure I don’t mess up my knees and to see that I actually am getting stronger and building muscle doing this. 

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Dirk O'Kennedy.