What Are Jump Squats?

Squats are a pretty good way to engage the majority of your lower body into one exercise and are able to strengthen and tighten your thighs, butt, and abs.

However, if you’re thinking about giving your regular workout a boost, then you might want to consider switching them up into a jump squat instead. 

Regular squats are easily accessible to people who are just starting out on their fitness journey, all the way up to regular gym sharks.

The reason that they’re so popular is due to the fact that you don’t need any equipment in order to perform them and also because you’re able to do a squat just about anywhere that you’re comfortable.

Whether they’re part of your regular workout or a daily way to break up long stretches of sitting down, squats are pretty much a staple of casual exercising. 

However, if you think that you’re ready to step up your game then you should try alternating in a couple of jump squat sets every so often. 

Benefits of Jump Squats

Whether you’re wanting to tone up your butt, improve your endurance when running, or just simply give your overall health a boost, the jump squats might be the right exercise for you to try. 

Jump squats are a favorite cardio workout for men and women as they can offer you a bunch of benefits to improve your strength and your aerobics. These benefits include, but are not limited to: building muscle and strength, boosting your aerobic and cardiovascular fitness, improving mobility and balance, and boosting your circulation. 

In fact, in a small study performed in 2016, researchers calculated the benefits of jump squat training done 3 times a week for 8 weeks.

They found that on average, the participants saw a decent improvement to their sprint time, explosive strength (which refers to your durability for short bursts of high-intensity exercises), their vertical jump, max strength, and even their range of motion. 

How To Squat Safely 

Although performing a jump squat might sound intimidating, you’re probably not worried about the squat part. Performing a squat might sound easy enough, but that simplicity is often where people go wrong.

Sometimes, if your form or technique is wrong enough, you can end up doing some serious damage to your knees or back, and so in order to ensure that you’re able to keep squatting for years to come, here is the proper technique:

In order to perform a squat properly and safely, you need to stand with your feet slightly wider than the width of your hips and toes pointing slightly outwards. Tighten your abs, push your chest out, hold your head up and then shift your weight to the back of your heels as you move your hips backward and down. 

Then you need to lower yourself until your thighs are parallel with the floor and repeat. As you continue to lower and raise, be sure that you keep your back, chest, and head in the correct position.

And to ensure that you’re breathing properly whilst doing your squats, you want to inhale on the way down, and exhale on the way back up.  

What About a Jump Squat?

Now that you’ve mastered the squatting portion of the exercise, you might wonder how to do jump squats You want to squat until your thighs are just a bit higher than your knees, then, pushing through the balls of your feet (not your knees), push yourself upward.

You want to try and straighten your legs and get your feet up off the ground. If you’ve never attempted anything like this before you may not be able to get off the ground to begin with but don’t worry! If you keep practicing I’m sure that you’ll be able to with patience. 

On your descent, you want to land back on the balls of your feet, with soft, bent knees, and then return to your classic squat position. 

Please bear in mind that this variation on the classic squat puts a lot more pressure and stress on your joints.

If you have any weaknesses or sensitivities in your knees, hips, or ankles you should probably give this variation a miss. Instead, you could try adding weights in order to add more of a challenge to your typical squats. 

Final Thoughts

Now you know what a jump squat is, you can consider switching out your regular squats for something more challenging. This change is going to help you burn more calories and probably see more of a distinctive improvement for your health a lot faster than doing regular squats. 

As always, take care when trying out a new exercise, and if you feel any significant pain whilst doing it, especially in your hips, ankles, or knees, then you need to stop and ask a professional if you have the right technique or ask your doctor if they think that this move is a safe one for you to be attempting. 

Good luck on your fitness journey! 

Frequently Asked Questions

How Many Sets Of Jump Squats Should I Do? 

In order to build up slowly, you want to start off with 2-3 sets of 3-5 reps, as you become more confident and comfortable with the move you can start increasing the number of reps that you do per set then start increasing the number of sets.

Always work to your own pace, and don’t push yourself too hard. You don’t want to end up doing any permanent damage to yourself. 

Do Jump Squats Make Your Butt Bigger?

So long as you’re doing the squats properly and frequently then yes!

This exercise should build and tone the muscles in your butt, thighs, and abs, and in fact, is one of the most effective ways that you can build up the three main muscles in your butt: the gluteus maximus, gluteus minimus, and the gluteus medius.