Most strength coaches are still cleaning. Every Monday. Every offseason block. Hang cleans, power cleans, full cleans. The same lifts they learned in grad school, run the same way, with the same kids who can barely front squat.
And every year they lose two weeks re-teaching technique after winter break. They lose another week after summer. They watch a kid drop a bar and almost get hurt because the catch position wasn't there. They know the kid only cleans once or twice a week. And they know that's not enough reps to build real proficiency.
Here's the thing nobody wants to say out loud: you don't need Olympic lifts to develop power. You need to develop power. The tool you use matters less than whether the tool actually fits your setting.
This article breaks down how I program loaded jumps at the University of Rhode Island. Four methods. A nine-week progression. And position-specific data from our football team that will change how you think about loading.
Why I stopped cleaning
I learned this lesson the hard way.
Back in 2016, I had an athlete named Carly Muscaro. Six-time All-American. One of the best 200/400 meter runners in the country at any level. We were doing hang clean testing. She missed a rep. Wanted to go back. She's a competitor. That's who she is.
She dropped the bar on both quads. Bruises straight across. I thought I ended her career. I thought I just took out a potential 10-time All-American because I couldn't shut down a testing session fast enough.
She was fine. But I wasn't. That moment stuck.
Could I have pushed her harder with trap bar jumps? Absolutely. Would the injury risk have been the same? Not even close.
That was the wake-up call. Here's what sealed it.
Technical demand is too high for my setting
I get football players in-season two days a week. The day after a game. After practice. They're beat up. Sore. Sometimes injured. I don't have the reps available to build and maintain clean technique at a level that actually transfers.
The schedule is too inconsistent
They go home for breaks. They come back detrained. I need one to two weeks just to re-groove technique before I can push adaptation again. That's dead time I can't afford.
If you only clean once a week, you're not really cleaning
Think about it this way. Imagine you only practiced tackling once a week. One drill. Ten minutes. 8 to 12 reps. Good luck improving. That's what once-a-week cleans look like from a motor learning standpoint.
Programming limitations are real
With loaded jumps I can go bilateral, staggered, split stance, single leg. I can remove the stretch reflex. I can adjust stance width. I can use a trap bar, dumbbells, a vest, a med ball. Try doing all that with a barbell clean.
And here's the one nobody talks about: if a kid has a bad wrist or a banged-up shoulder, he can't catch a clean. But he can almost always do a trap bar jump.
Where loaded jumps fit on the curve
If you get nothing else from this article, get this: loaded jumps live in the sub-max, medium tier.
Matt Watson's jump classification system lays it out clearly. You've got your pinging tier at the top. Stiff, high-velocity, reactive. That's ankle jumps and short contacts. You don't add load there.
Then you've got deep tier. Full range. Split squats. Squat jumps. You could add some load here, but it's not the sweet spot.
Loaded jumps belong in the middle. The sub-max zone. A little weight. More stiff than deep. Intentional, not reflexive. Higher force than bodyweight jumps but not maximal. This is their home.
And when we're talking about the force-velocity curve, loaded jumps are your tool for that peak power zone in the middle. You still need to train the extremes. Heavy lifting on one end. Sprinting on the other. But the middle matters. And loaded jumps are the best way to train it for football.
The chart that should be on every whiteboard
I stole this from Bryan Mann, Nick DiMarco, and Max Schmarzo. No shame. It's too good not to use.
Here's the breakdown by training zone. Read it left to right and the same story shows up in every column: as load comes down, velocity and jump height climb.
| Strength Type | Lifting (%1RM) | VBT mean (peak) m/s | Jump Height (% Max VJ) | Loaded Jump (%1RM of BS/TBDL) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Absolute Strength (Max Effort) | 80–100% | <0.5 (<1.1) | 10–20% | 60–80% |
| Accelerative Strength | 65–80% | 0.5–0.75 (2.0–2.2) | 20–35% | 45–60% |
| Strength-Speed | 45–65% | 0.75–1.0 (2.2–2.4) | 35–50% | 30–45% |
| Speed-Strength | 25–45% | 1.0–1.3 (2.4–2.6) | 50–80% | 10–30% |
| Starting Strength | 10–25% | >1.3 (>2.6) | 80–100% | <15% |
Shoutout to Bryan Mann, Nick DiMarco, and Max Schmarzo. BS = back squat, TBDL = trap bar deadlift.
Three ways to use this chart. You can program by VBT velocity zones. You can program by percentage of vertical jump height using a Plyomat. Or you can program by percentage of squat or trap bar deadlift max.
Every method points to the same place on the curve. Pick the one that fits your equipment and your setting.
Method 1: Velocity zones (if you have VBT)
Start in the sweet spot. Set your target at 0.75 to 1.0 m/s. Load up the trap bar. Keep adding weight until they stay in that window. If they can't hit 0.75, pull weight off. If they're clearing 1.0 every rep, add more. Auto-regulation built in. Ten to twenty total reps.
Phase two, go heavy. Drop the target to 0.5 to 0.75 m/s. Drop total reps to eight to fifteen.
Phase three, go light. Push the target to 1.0 to 1.3 m/s. Bring volume back up.
Or you can run a progressive wave. Start at 60% load and 0.5 m/s. Drop 5% each week. Add a touch of speed each week. That's an eight or nine week block right there.
It auto-regulates. It's competitive. Kids compete with each other at the same weight. You can use it with trap bar, dumbbells, barbell, stagger stance. Anything you can hook a VBT up to.
You need VBT equipment. Competition breeds compensation. Kids will cheat the system and shrug the bar to game the numbers. And it takes humility to pull weight off on a bad day. Some kids don't have that yet.
Method 2: Percentage of jump height (the Plyomat method)
This is where tools like the Plyomat really shine. Find your athlete's max vertical. Then load them up until their jump falls within your target zone.
A 30-inch jumper working the strength-speed zone needs to land between 35 and 50% of his max. That's 10.5 to 15 inches. Keep adding dumbbell weight until he's in that window.
Three-phase approach. Phase one: set the weight so they hit 30 to 50% of max vertical. Ten to twenty reps. Phase two: push them to 20 to 35% of max vertical. Heavier load, lower volume. Phase three: pull back to 50 to 80% of max vertical. Lighter load, higher volume.
The Plyomat makes this dead simple. Grab dumbbells. Jump. Check the number. Adjust. The athlete knows exactly where they need to be. No guessing. No percentages of percentages.
Plus you're getting ground contact time and RSI data that a basic jump mat can't give you. That's real feedback you can use to adjust programming on the fly. If you want to go deeper on what to do with that reactive strength data, I broke it down in the Reactive Strength Quadrant piece.
And here's the part that ties directly into the next method: every loaded rep on the Plyomat also returns a Plyomat Power Score (PPS), one objective power number per jump. So you're not just checking whether the athlete landed in a height zone, you can watch the actual power output move as you add or pull weight, and find the load where it peaks.
Same auto-regulation and competition benefits as VBT. Can be done with dumbbells, which means more kids can work simultaneously.
You need a few jump mats if you're running a team through. One mat for twenty kids doesn't work. And kids will still try to game the numbers.
Method 3: Load power profile (the advanced play)
This is the best method if you have the resources to pull it off.
Find the load that produces peak power. Matt Tomez has a great breakdown of this on YouTube. Here's how we did it at URI.
Over the course of a week, we tested every football player. Day one: bodyweight and 45lb (empty trap bar). Day two: 135lb and 185lb. Day three: 225lb and 275. Day four: 315lb (I would skip this for high school football players). One or two jumps at each load. Built it right into our A block.
Calculate power at each load. Find the peak. That's their number. This is exactly where the Plyomat Power Score earns its keep. Instead of dragging a force plate around, every loaded jump on the mat already gives you one power number per rep, so the load that produces the highest PPS is the peak-power load. Run the ladder, read the scores, and the number that pops to the top is the one you program around.
Better yet, PPS turns this into something you can track. Log the peak-power load at the start of a block and again at retest, and you can see whether the load that maximizes PPS is shifting as the athlete gets stronger or changes body composition. That's the whole point of profiling: find the load that produces peak power, then watch it move.
One objective power number per rep
The Plyomat Power Score (PPS) is a simple, physics-based metric that quantifies total mechanical work during a jump. It tells you who can move the most mass the highest: true muscular power output. The math is just body weight plus any external load, multiplied by jump height.
For a load power profile, that is exactly the number you want. Test across progressive loads, and the peak PPS value identifies the athlete's optimal power zone, where strength and speed meet. The Plyomat app computes it automatically on every rep, so the load that maximizes PPS is the load you build the block around.
Here's what we found across our roster:
Peak-power load as a percentage of bodyweight, by position, across the URI roster.
Read those numbers again. Your big guys produce peak power at way lower percentages than your skill guys. This makes total sense when you think about it. A 300-pound lineman already needs massive force just to get his own body off the ground. Adding 50% of his body weight on top of that is a completely different ask than loading up a 170-pound receiver.
"Skill guys need more weight on the bar than you think. Linemen need less. If you're using the same percentage for everyone, you're under-loading some guys and over-loading others.
Once you have their peak power percentage, program around it. Three weeks at their number. Three weeks five to ten percent above. Three weeks five to ten percent below. Retest. Their number might shift as they get stronger or change body composition.
Don't forget the eccentric side
People love to argue that cleans teach eccentric deceleration. Catching the bar. Absorbing force. Sure. That's real.
But trap bar snap downs do the same thing.
The force data backs this up. A trap bar snap down at bodyweight produces similar eccentric force to catching a clean at bodyweight. Depth drops from 36 inches produce even more. If eccentric force absorption is your goal, you have options that don't require a clean.
We program snap downs alongside our jumps. I use 80% of squat max as the snap down ceiling. A 500-pound squatter works up to 400-pound snap downs. Start around 55% and climb. If you can hit four sets of two at 90% of that number, you're a bad man.
The nine-week loaded jump progression
Here's a plug-and-play block you can run tomorrow.
| Week | Sets × Reps |
|---|---|
| Week 1 | 6 × 3 |
| Week 2 | 5 × 4 |
| Week 3 | 4 × 4 |
| Week 4 | 4 × 3 |
| Week 5 | 5 × 3 |
| Week 6 | 3 × (2+2) clustered |
| Week 7 | 3 × 3 |
| Week 8 | 4 × 2 |
| Week 9 | 4 × (1+1) clustered |
Use any loading method. If you're using load power profile, start at their peak power percentage and add 2.5% each week for weeks one through three. Weeks four through six, hold at their peak number. Weeks seven through nine, drop 2.5% per week below peak.
If you're using jump height, start at 30% of max vertical. Hold there for three weeks. Bump to 40 to 50% for three weeks. Then finish light at 75 to 80% for three weeks.
If you're using VBT, start heavy (above 0.6 m/s) for three weeks. Middle zone (above 0.8) for three weeks. Fast (above 1.0) for three weeks.
Your action plan
Pick the tier that matches the gear you actually have on the floor.
Beginner
Intermediate
Advanced
The bottom line
- Loaded jumps develop the same peak power qualities as Olympic lifts with a fraction of the technical demand.
- The force-velocity curve has two ends and a middle. Train all three. Loaded jumps own the middle.
- Your linemen and your receivers should not be jumping at the same percentage. Position-specific loading changes everything.
- If you have a Plyomat or jump mat, use percentage of max vertical to program. It's auto-regulatory and competitive.
- Trap bar snap downs replace the eccentric benefits of catching cleans. Program them alongside your jumps.
- Pick the method that fits your setting. Percentage of max, velocity zones, jump height, or load power profile. All four work. The best one is the one you'll actually execute.
Keep the Fire Burning,
Leech