Getting results from workouts is not only about what exercises you do. Find out how many jump squats you should do to see progress in different areas.
To improve muscle power and vertical jump height, you generally want to do between 1 to 5 jump squats for 3 to 20 sets in one workout.
If you are somewhat stronger and your body can deal with it, you likely want to add weights to see more and faster results.
These weights can range from 1% to 40% of their 1RM for beginners and even up to 70% of 1RM for experienced lifters. As you can see, more research for precise numbers would be helpful.
Next, to grow and strengthen muscles you want to do 5 to 15 jump squats and 2 to 15 sets with loads up to 40% of 1RM.
Something to note is that plyometrics could be too suboptimal to see progress in these areas for experienced lifters.
You could also use jump squats to burn calories and potentially improve muscle endurance. However, for these goals, other exercises will generally be better choices.
How many jump squats to increase height and power
Muscle power is the main fitness component people are typically trying to improve by doing jump squats. In turn, better leg muscle power can lead to things like a higher vertical jump height (1).
Muscle growth and strength training can also help with muscle power. However, there are also specific repetition and set ranges for this goal.
To improve leg muscle power and jump height with jump squats you generally want to do around 1 to 5 repetitions per set for 3 to 20 and potentially even more sets.
If your body can handle them, you can consider doing weighted jump squats to get more and faster results.
To my knowledge, exactly how much weight is optimal for improving muscle power with jump squats is not that well-studied.
However, some typical muscle power recommendations would be doing jump squats with weights that are somewhere between 1% to 40% of their 1RM (one rep max) weighted squat for beginners and even up to 70% of 1RM for experienced lifters.
Something important to note is that jump squats can be relatively challenging for your body. By adding weights this becomes even more the case and potentially too much.
If that is the case, you likely want to consider other leg muscle power movements like speed squats or box jumps.
How many jump squats to grow and strengthen muscles
Some people think you have to do heavy barbell back squats and similar exercises to be able to grow and strengthen your leg muscles.
While this can be the case for more experienced lifters, there are also some study results that imply plyometrics like jump squats can be reasonably effective for growing and strengthening leg muscles (2, 3).
In the studies one review above looked at, the plyometrics were done from different amounts ranging from 5 to 15 repetitions and 2 to 15 sets with loads up to 40% of 1RM (2).
Something to note is that as your muscles become bigger and stronger, plyometrics seem to become less effective for muscle growth and strength progress.
That being said, the above amounts of jump squats will be enough for many people to see results for at least some amount of time.
How many jump squats to improve muscle endurance
You should get some improvements in muscle endurance as your muscles get bigger and stronger. However, there are also more specific ways to train this fitness component.
More precisely, doing an exercise for 25+ repetitions for 2 to 6 sets at a moderate to slow pace is typically the way to improve muscle endurance.
As you can expect, jump squats are generally not a good choice for improving muscle endurance.
That being said, if this is your goal with jump squats, you want to get strong and then do enough of them. Likely somewhere around the amounts of repetitions and sets above.
How many jump squats to burn 100 calories
While you likely don’t want to choose jump squats if your main goal is to burn calories, they do help with this to some extent.
Exactly how many calories jump squats will burn for you depends on your personal body weight, body composition, hormone levels, intensity, etc.
That being said, there are some ways to make rough estimations. Let’s say you do about 24 jump squats per minute.
With that and MET values you can estimate that people of different body weights will have to do the following amounts of jump squats to burn 100 calories during the workout (4):
- 125 pounds (56 kg) body weight: 305 jump squats
- 155 pounds (70 kg) body weight: 246 jump squats
- 185 pounds (83 kg) body weight: 206 jump squats
- 215 pounds (97 kg) body weight: 177 jump squats
When it comes to the number of calories they burn per minute, jump squats are good. The main issue is that it is challenging to do this exercise for a long time.
Something else that should become clear is that your body weight plays a big role in how many calories you burn. That is why adding some healthy mass in the form of muscle can be helpful for weight loss.
