Touch Jump Touch to Box Intervals: MTI’s Most Intense Work Capacity Event?

 

Above: US SKi Team Downhiller, Tommy Beissemeyer completing a 20:40 round of Touch/Jump/Touch to Box intervals.

By Rob & Emmett Shaul

Development of Touch Jump Touch to Box Intervals followed classic MTI design method: Identify fitness demands of the sport or event, identify exercises that train to that demand, and then interate and simplify. 

Training what we call “leg lactate tolerance” for alpine skiing drove us to development of these intervals occured over several years of iteration. 

“Leg lactate tolerance” is an MTI term – you won’t find it in scholary journals or physiology text books, but when you’re downhill skiing deep powder, moguls, or making as many turns as possibly skiing a steep groomer, the ability to tolerate the buring in your quads is the “tolerance” we are referring to. 

In our own skiing and with my athletes, leg lactate tolerance took the form of avoiding or putting off the time to stop the ski run and rest, and the ability to quickly recover if you do take a rest – even if that rest is done while still moving by standing fully on your skiings and taking stress off your quads. So both the ability to put off rest is important, but also important is fast recovery when you do get to rest. 

I was first introduced to the Touch/Jump/Touch exercise around 2012 by some visiting coaches. I’m not sure who developed this exercise, but TJT intervals were sneaky hard, and surprisingly difficult both strength endurance-wise on the athlete’s quads, and because the legs are hammered so hard – on the lungs. This is a great work capacity conditioning exercise as it requires no equipment and limited space. What made them difficult was the squat jumps from depth (the athlete must touch the ground for each jump). Soon I found using simple work/rest interval training was the best way to deploy this exercise.

As I moved deeper into Dryland ski training, leg lactate tolerance, along with eccentric leg strength and leg strength endurance quickly rose to be the most important fitness attributes to train. We’d already developed and deployed a Leg Blaster progression to address eccentric leg strength. 

MTI’s journey to Touch/Jump/Touch to Box as our primary leg lactate tolerance training tool for Dryland ski training took 2-3 years.

We deployed several exercises along the way including lateral hops over a sandbag, actually putting athletes in their ski boots, skis and poles and hopping back and forth between sandbags, and for our Freeski Team, compiling together several exercises including wall balls, kettlebell swings, lateral box jumps, etc. with skier tuck holds between into one long interval-based circuit. 

All these worked, but the multi-exercise circuit, especially, was simply too complicated. 

So then we combined the Touch/Jump/Touch with lateral box jumps into the Touch/Jump/Touch to Box exercise and decided to simplify and this exercise and intervals alone to train leg lactate tolerance for Dryland skiing. 

Initially, I’d have athletes touch their outside hand to the ground on each landing. This standardized somewhat knee bend before each jump. One of my pro-skiers, Griffin Post, noted that the exercise would be more “sport specific” if athletes touched their inside hand to the ground each landing. He was right, and we immediately made this change. 

With the leg lactate tolerance training exercise determined, next was the interval and total event design. 

A long day of skiing is a leg strength endurance effort. Individual parts of individual runs can demand max effort leg strength, but overall, a skiing day demands strength endurance. 

This meant our Touch/Jump/Touch to Box intervals needed to be extended – and I landed on 20 minutes total of intense intervals. 

Next was the interval design within that 20 minutes of total effort. My initial design was built around 20 rounds of 1 minute efforts, with the work/rest internal to each minute progressed over the start of the cycle. Usually I’d program in 3x sessions at each progression, and 4x sessions at the final 30/30 progression, and over the course 6 week cycle. See below. 

Week  (T/J/T to Box Intervals Trained 2x/week	Progression Level	Work : Rest
Week 1-2	1	10 sec work : 50 sec rest
Week 2-3	2	15 sec work : 45 sec rest
Week 3-4	3	20 sec work : 40 sec rest
Week 4-5	4	25 sec work : 35 sec rest
Week 5-6	5	30 sec work: 30 sec rest
Week 6	6	30 sec work: 30 sec rest

You may look at this and think that the first progression of 10 seconds work, 50 seconds rest was too “easy” to start – but I’d challenge you to try 20 minutes of this. Click HERE to see then US Ski Team down hill racer Tommy Biesemeyer complete a 20/40 rounds at a 17″ box.

This progression worked for several years, but there’s are two major programming problems with it. First, when designing any progression, I aim to “progress” just one element. I’ve found that progressing more than one element can often be too agressive at worse, and provide confusing data at best. 

In the case of my initial progression for T/J/T to Box Intervals, two elements are progressed together – the work interval increases, and the rest interval decreases with each progression level. 

So – one improvement we can make is to simply the progression by either standardizing the work interval and progressing the rest, standardizing the rest interval and progressing the rest. 

Second, the work required each interval isn’t assessment-based. Until now, our T/J/T to Box progression was simply time-based … and the athlete was forced to work longer with less rests, but the work itself, wasn’t dictated. So, it’s possible the athlete could take a round or more, off … and not push himself for more reps. 

Shifting to an assessment-based protocal will adress this. We do this all the time at MTI and if you’ve done many of our programs, you’ve likely experienced it. For example, many of our max effort strength progressions begin with a 1RM max, and follow-on percentage-based loading based on the athlete’s most recent 1RM. In this way, I know the athlete is being pushed by the programming. 

Similarly, our signature method for training push ups and pull ups is to require initial time-based assessments, and then follow-on intervals where the athlete must complete a percentage-based number of push ups or pull ups based on his most recent max effort assessment. Again, in this way, the programming automatically “scales” to the current fitness of the athlete and ensures he’s pushing himself. 

Many of our programs also include mid-cycle re-assessments – after which the progressions are re-set and allows the programming to continue to push the athlete as his fitness improves. For example, an athlete who’s 1RM Back Squat is 200 lbs at the beginning of the cycle, and after the mid-cycle assessment has improved to 225 pounds. His subsquent, second half of the cycle percentage-based progressions will be heavier than the first half – so he continues to be pushed. 

We’re currently at work designing this year’s Dryland Ski and Backcountry Ski pre-season training, and are looking for changes to our Touch/Jump/Touch to Box progression. 

The general idea is to do initial and mid-cycle assessments, and then require a certain amount of reps each work interval based on the athlete’s most recent assessment. I think we’ve settled on 30 seconds work, 30 seconds rest for the interval to keep it simple. 

What is more challenging is the assessment. We haven’t determined this yet and need to do some prior testing. Our current thought is to do a 2-mintue Touch/Jump/Touch to Box assessment for reps, where the athlete can rest as needed as long as he continues to work for the full 2 minutes. However, we’re not sure a 2-minute assessment will be long enough to guage work for a full 20 minutes of intervals. 

So all of this has been background for Dryland ski training. Anecdotally, however, both from us and our athletes, Touch/Jump/Touch to Box Intervals are perhaps the most intense work capacity event MTI has ever created.

The best work capacity events are the ones where your muscles and lungs fail together. That convergence is the difficulty in programming true work capacity. Touch Jump Touch to Box strikes both at once, and that’s what makes it the hardest work capacity we’ve ever I’ve trained.

Unlike shuttle sprint repeats, where the athlete can slow down each stride as he fatiques, T/J/T to Box intervals demand a specific level of jump height, and therefore effort, each rep. The box doesn’t get shorter as your legs get more tired. 

The movement is straightforward. Touch the floor with your inside hand, then lateral-hop onto a box, hop off to the other side, and repeat. The inside-hand touch was added to better replicate skiing mechanics. There’s no technical skill to hide behind.

Each landing demands eccentric strength to slow and touch the ground, and each lateral hop demands concentric strength. Just fast side-to-side jumps under a clock, stacking eccentric and concentric leg stress while forcing the lungs to keep up.

MTI defines work capacity as “extended bouts of cardiorespiratory and muscular stress at high, but sub-maximal levels,” typically under 30 minutes, blending VO₂ power, aerobic base, muscular strength, and endurance. Touch Jump Touch to Box fits this definition cleanly — simple movements, tight time domains, and a demand that lungs and legs fail together.

Emmett recently tested 10 rounds at 30 seconds work, 30 seconds rest wearing a Garmin HRM Pro+ and using a 17″ box. Below are his reps for each work interval – with each “rep” being each touch on the top of the box with his feet. 

• Round 1: 17 Reps
• Round 2: 16 Reps
• Round 3: 15 Reps
• Round 4: 15 Reps
• Round 5: 14 Reps
• Round 6: 14 Reps
• Round 7: 13 Reps
• Round 8: 14 Reps
• Round 9: 13 Reps
• Round 10: 13 Reps

By the middle of Round 2, breathing was already heavy. Around rep eight or nine of each round, the thighs began to burn, and the fatigue only stacked as the rounds went on. Across the session my heart rate averaged 178, with a peak of 190 (I’m 30, so my max heart rate using 220-Age is 190).

During work bouts it climbed steadily higher each round — from 182 in Round 3 to 190 in Round 10 — while rest only pulled it down slightly, from about 171 early to 184 in the later rounds. The 30-second work intervals stretch long, and the 30-second rests shrink short, especially as fatigue builds. Recovery itself becomes uncomfortable: walking, sitting, or lying down between rounds all feel the same under burning legs and elevated breathing.

This effort was time-based, not work-based (requiring a specific number of reps each round) – so the event scaled naturally. How many reps the athlete makes depends on fitness and willingness to suffer. 

This isn’t just physical. Touch Jump Touch to Box pushes mental fitness. MTI has written extensively on mental fitness — clarity, control, and action under stress — and this event embodies it. Once fatigue sets in, your body argues to stop every round. The only way through is sticking to simple rules: don’t waste transition, start every interval, commit to the next rep.

Panic breathing is common. 

Touch Jump Touch to Box trains eccentric and concentric strength in the legs, drives your lungs to their limit, and pushes mental fitness when fatigue sets in. We’ve run countless work capacity events over the years, and believe this is the best one we offer. It’s minimal equipment, brutally effective, and punishes both lungs and muscles at once. That rare balance is what makes it simple, honest, and punishing — and why it stands at the top.