Mini Study Results: Loaded Jumps and Cleans Give Marginal Boost to Broad Jump—Less than 2% Gains Too Small for Strong Conclusions

 

By Jackson Mann

BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front)

Four MTI Lab Rats completed a 5-week mini-study to evaluate which lower-body training protocol produced the greatest improvement in standing broad jump distance. Each athlete followed a different approach: the hinge lift, power cleans, and loaded broad jumps.

Loaded broad jump training and power clean training produced the most consistent—but modest—performance gains. However, with improvements averaging around 1–2%, the results were not substantial enough to make definitive claims about transfer to broad jump performance. The hinge lift yielded minimal or negative results in horizontal power development.

Key Outcomes:

• Emmett (Loaded Jumps): +2.1% (7’10” → 8’0”)
• Seung (Loaded Jumps): –1.2% (8’3.5” → 8’2.5”)
• Sam (Power Cleans): +1.4% (9’1” → 9’2.5”)
• Jackson (Hinge Lift): –2.0% (8’2” → 8’0”)

Seung’s regression by the final test, despite initial gains at the mid-cycle assessment, means only a net gain of 0.9% between him and Emmett which is too marginal of an improvement to declare their progression valid for improving broad jumps. Sam’s improvement is similarly negligible and the hinge lift did not transfer effectively to Jackson’s broad jump performance which regressed by the final assessment.

Background 

Horizontal power is a foundational capacity for tactical athletes, mountain sports, and field-based movement patterns. Despite this, broad jump development is often addressed indirectly through general lower-body strength/power work. This mini-study aimed to determine which training method—the hinge lift, power clean, loaded broad jump training—most effectively improves standing broad jump performance.

Understanding which modality delivers the greatest transfer can help streamline programming for explosive lower-body development.

Study Design

Participants:

• Emmett: Loaded Broad Jumps
• Seung: Loaded Broad Jumps
• Sam: Power Clean
• Jackson: Hinge Lift

Initial & Final Assessments:

• Standing Broad Jump (best of three attempts)

Training Cycle (3x/week):

• Emmett & Seung (Loaded Broad Jumps):
  Each session consisted of 8 total sets of 2 reps. The loading scheme progressed weekly:
  • Week 1: 6 sets unloaded + 2 sets with 25-lb weight vest
  • Week 2: 4 sets unloaded + 4 sets loaded
  • Week 3: 2 sets unloaded + 6 sets loaded
  • Weeks 4–5: 8 sets loaded
    Focus remained on maximal horizontal projection and landing control, with increasing exposure to loaded efforts.
• Sam (Power Cleans):
  Each session consisted of 8 sets of 2 reps.
  • Load increased progressively across sets to a “hard but doable” top effort
• Jackson (Hinge Lift):
  Followed the same structure as Sam—8 sets of 2 reps per session.
  • Load increased progressively across sets to a “hard but doable” top effort

Results

Discussion

Among the three approaches tested, loaded broad jump training produced the most consistent improvements in standing broad jump performance. Emmett improved by 2.1% over the course of the cycle, while Seung initially recorded a 4.5% gain at the mid-cycle mark before regressing slightly by the final test. While this suggests that training loaded Broad Jumps may offer advantages, the overall magnitude of improvement was modest. A 2% gain may fall within the margin of day-to-day testing variability and does not represent a large enough effect size to justify strong claims about the superiority of this method for increasing Broad Jump distance.

Sam, who trained the power clean, improved by 1.4%, indicating that general explosive power training can provide negligible benefits for horizontal power development. However, Olympic lifts like the clean are primarily vertical in nature and require high technical proficiency, which may limit their direct transfer to horizontal movement patterns such as the standing broad jump. 

Jackson, who followed a hinge lift progression, experienced a 2% decline in broad jump performance despite progressing in load through the cycle. This outcome highlights a key limitation in relying on posterior chain strength alone to improve horizontal explosiveness. While the hinge lift can build foundational force production capacity, its transfer to ballistic tasks like jumping may be limited if not paired with dynamic movement-specific training. The isolated nature of the hinge lift—typically performed in a slow, controlled tempo under heavy load—does not adequately stimulate the high-rate force production or elastic qualities required for an explosive jump.

It’s worth noting that Seung showed mid-cycle improvements that were not sustained through the final test, raising questions about the influence of accumulated fatigue, under-recovery, or overexposure to training volume. In Seung’s case, it’s possible that the transition to fully loaded jumps (8 sets with a 25-lb vest in Weeks 4–5) exceeded his ability to recover, leading to diminished performance on testing day. 

All athletes were concurrently involved in other mini-studies, including upper-body pressing, a high-frequency pull-up protocol, and chassis integrity testing. These overlapping demands introduced substantial systemic fatigue that likely interfered with recovery and compromised peak explosive performance on test days. Since horizontal power relies heavily on neural freshness and high-intensity motor output, even small deficits in readiness can have a disproportionate effect on results.

Taken together, the data is not substantial enough to suggest that explosive movements, like the power clean and loaded broad jump, at least within the context of the progressions MTI deployed, improve broad jumps. 

Limitations

This study was limited by its small sample size (n=4) and the absence of a control group, both of which reduce the ability to generalize findings or draw definitive conclusions about the effectiveness of each training progression. With only one athlete assigned to each protocol (and two for the loaded jumps), the data is more reflective of individual response than reliable group trends. For example, a participant’s improvement—or lack thereof—could stem from unique factors like training history, fatigue management, or even day-to-day readiness, rather than the progression itself. Without a control group or repeated trials, it’s impossible to know whether changes in performance were due to the training or natural fluctuations in athletic output.

Additionally, all athletes were engaged in multiple concurrent mini-studies during the same training cycle, including upper-body pressing, high-frequency pull-up training, and chassis integrity progressions. This overlapping workload introduced considerable systemic fatigue, which likely blunted adaptation to any single intervention. Athletes were often training two or more qualities per session, and the cumulative volume may have outpaced their ability to recover fully. This is especially relevant in explosive power development, where high neural demand and fatigue can easily mask performance improvements, even if underlying adaptations are occurring.

These uncontrolled variables, combined with the high training volume and limited sample size, make it difficult to isolate cause and effect in this study’s results.

Next Steps

While loaded jump training and power cleans showed modest improvements in broad jump performance, the gains were small—averaging around 1–2%—and may not represent meaningful changes beyond normal performance variability. Furthermore, the hinge lift only produced negative gains. These results suggest that while movement-specific or explosive lifts may contribute to horizontal power development, the effect sizes in this short cycle were too limited to draw strong conclusions.

A future progression could be designed to compare three targeted plyometric protocols as well as a power clean progression. The first group would perform traditional unloaded broad jumps. The second group would complete loaded jumps using a weight vest. The third group would complete a broad jump to box jump progression. The fourth group would follow a power clean progression. A comparison between the results of the different groups would indicate which approach would be the most effective for improving broad jumps. 

That being said, a more robust design would include repeated trials, a control group, and a consistent testing environment to better determine which modalities produce meaningful and transferable gains in horizontal jumping ability. Until then, conclusions about the efficacy of specific progression—especially loaded jump training—should be considered negligible.