The burpee broad jump looks simple on paper. Drop to the floor, jump up, jump forward, repeat. Nope. In reality, this exercise often catches people out because of how brutal it can be on your cardiovascular system. But if you’ve ever practised the BBJ (burpee broad jump), you’ll know it’s one of the most effective movements for building real-world conditioning, work capacity, and aerobic fitness.
It’s why it’s a staple across functional strength workouts, hybrid programming, and even sport training because it combines power, coordination, muscular endurance, and cardiovascular demand, all without any piece of equipment. Burpee broad jumps aren’t like traditional cardio or even isolated strength work; they’re an explosive full-body exercise that tests your ability to produce power as your heart rate climbs.
It’s also the fourth station in the Hyrox race, where you’re covering 90 meters while hitting that mid-race dip. This is the exercise that will expose any cracks in your pacing… It’s widely considered one of the toughest Hyrox stations because poor pacing and inefficient movement patterns are put on blast quickly, with moderators looking at technique closely and handing out penalties to anyone not doing the movement correctly. At this point, it becomes less about how explosive you are in a single rep and more about how efficiently you can repeat the movement without breaking rhythm.
So whether you’re Hyrox training or just trying to improve your overall fitness levels, this guide will show you how to perform burpee broad jumps properly, how to improve them, and how to use them in your training so you actually see performance results.
What Is a Burpee Broad Jump?
A burpee broad jump combines the full-body exercise of a standard burpee with a forward jump, meaning you move your floor position with every rep rather than staying on the spot.
The movement is broken down into three phases:
You quickly drop to the floor from a push-up position, with your chest and thighs making contact with the floor
You push back up with your arms and feet into a crouched standing position
You jump forward as far as you can with control
The main difference from a standard burpee is that it’s a combo move. You have to treat it as one fluid movement, immediately projecting yourself forward and going into the next rep. If you treat each part as separate, you slow the movement down and lose efficiency. That stop-start rhythm becomes brutally expensive once fatigue kicks in, draining more energy and making it harder to recover between reps.
One of the biggest mistakes beginners make is turning the floor portion into a full push-up every time. You’re only making it harder for yourself that way. When training for Hyrox, most athletes use a sort of “flop” to the floor type method, allowing gravity to do some of the work rather than lowering themselves slowly under tension. This saves you valuable energy and prevents upper-body fatigue so you can keep pushing out the reps.
The key is learning how to absorb the landing and rebound efficiently before you flow into the next jump. Linking them together and creating a rhythm actually makes the movement more manageable, especially as you start to wear out.
How to Do a Burpee Broad Jump (Step-by-Step)
1. Start stance (feet, posture)
Start standing upright with your feet about hip-width apart and your weight balanced through the middle of your foot.
2. Drop to floor (chest + thighs contact)
Drop your hands to the floor just in front of your feet.
As you jump or step your legs back, lower your chest and thighs to the ground so they make clear contact with the floor.
Hyrox tip: Avoid half reps here (they won’t count), and poor positioning will slow you down over time.
3. Hand placement (under shoulders)
Place your hands under your shoulders and press through the floor to bring your feet back underneath you.
You can jump or step your feet into this position.
As your feet land, stay low. You do not need to stand fully upright.
Hyrox tip: Keeping your feet in line with where your hands were placed also helps you meet HYROX movement standards, as stepping too far forward can lead to a no-rep or penalty in competition.
4. Explosive jump forward
From a crouched position, drive forward into your jump.
Think about pushing the ground away and projecting your body forward rather than upwards.
5. Landing mechanics (soft knees, stable base)
As you land, absorb the impact, keeping your knees soft.
Land with your feet roughly where your hands will reconnect with the floor, helping you stay efficient and meet HYROX movement standards.
Immediately bring your hands back down to start the next rep.
The faster you reconnect with the floor, the smoother your rhythm will be.
6. Immediate reset into next rep
Smooth and continuous beats fast and erratic.
If you pause between reps, you’ll lose time and use more energy than necessary.
Beginners do not need to rush the movement. A brief pause on the floor and stepping the feet forward instead of jumping can actually help conserve energy and make the movement more efficient while you're still learning the technique.
What Muscles Do Burpee Broad Jumps Work?
Burpee broad jumps are a full-body movement that challenges both your strength and conditioning skills. Each phase of a burpee broad jump recruits different muscle groups, and because you’re repeating it continuously with minimal rest, your cardiovascular system has to work just as hard as your muscles.
The muscles used:
Calves (explosive push-off) - Your calves help drive you off the ground and contribute to the forward momentum of each jump.
Quads, glutes (jump) - These muscles are the main drivers in the jump. They produce the force you need to move you forward efficiently.
Chest, shoulders, triceps (floor phase) - As you lower to the ground and push back up, your upper body works in a push-up pattern to support and lift your bodyweight.
Core (stability + transition) - your core keeps you stable as you transition between positions and absorb the impact of each landing.
Burpee Broad Jump Benefits
Full-body conditioning that actually transfers
The burpee broad jump forces your upper and lower body to work at high intensity, which is challenging to do when you're moving from horizontal to vertical positions rapidly and spiking your heart rate. You’re not isolating muscles in this movement; you’re training your body to coordinate effort across multiple systems at once - power, strength, cardio, and endurance. It’s integrated training.
Research on high-intensity functional training (HIFT) has shown improvements in cardiovascular fitness, muscular endurance, and overall work capacity through integrated full-body movement patterns [1]. This type of integrated training has strong carryover into functional fitness, hybrid racing, field sports, and everyday movement capacity, where your body needs to produce force under fatigue rather than in isolation.
Explosive power you can repeat, not just produce once
It’s one thing to jump far when you’re fresh; it’s another to keep producing power rep after rep when the lactic acid builds. Burpee broad jumps are a highly effective plyometric exercise, and training them helps you build repeatable lower-body power and reactive explosiveness, which improves your ability to maintain high output instead of flagging halfway through a set or station [2].
Stronger aerobic engine under pressure
Because burpee broad jumps involve moving continuously with very little rest, your cardiovascular system (the engine) is placed under significant demand. Over time, this strengthens your heart, improving stroke volume, mitochondrial adaptations, and overall aerobic capacity. This improves your ability to recover between efforts and stabilize your breathing even when your heart rate is high. Which in practice means fewer forced breaks and more consistent pacing [3].
Improved coordination and body control
Burpee broad jumps require timing, rhythm, and full-body coordination. Repeatedly transitioning from the floor into an explosive jump teaches your body to move more efficiently, making the movement feel smoother and more automatic over time. Improving control during both the jump and landing also reduces unnecessary movement, helping you stay more relaxed and efficient as fatigue builds [4].
Race-specific carryover (Hyrox, functional fitness)
In a Hyrox race, the burpee broad jump comes when your legs are already tired, and your breathing is hitting threshold levels. Training this movement in the gym, as part of a circuit, prepares you for that exact moment when you’re starting to burn out. Plyometric and explosive training methods have also been shown to improve running economy, just like zone 2 training, which may help athletes maintain efficiency during fatigued race conditions [5]. Movements like these teach you how to manage your effort, control your pace, and keep moving forward when everything in your body wants to tell you to stop.
8 Tips To Fix Your Burpee Broad Jump Technique (Hyrox Approved)
Most burpee broad jump mistakes come down to one thing: wasted energy. Jumping too high, standing fully upright, pausing between reps, or overreaching with your hands all make the movement more exhausting than it needs to be. The goal isn’t just to move fast; it’s to move efficiently. Follow these athlete-approved tips to improve race-day efficiency.
1. Jumping too high → Think forward, not up
If you’re jumping too high and not covering much ground, you’re wasting a lot of energy and not getting anywhere. Focus on moving forward, not up, and pushing the floor away behind you. This is why you want to start your jump from a crouched position, because a lower, longer jump will carry you further with less effort.
2. Burning out too quickly → Use a brief pause on the floor
This will help control your breathing and pacing. A lot of Hyrox athletes talk about taking a short pause at the bottom of the movement as it can actually help you maintain a steadier pace over longer sets. Instead of rushing straight into the next rep and spiking your heart rate, use the floor contact to briefly reset your breathing before driving forward again.
3. Catching your breath at the top → Losing time
It’s tempting to stand up and take a breath between reps, especially when your heart rate spikes. The problem is that every pause adds up quickly over the distance. Instead of inhaling and exhaling at the top, it can be more efficient to try to control your breathing within the movement. As you come up from the floor, in that crouched position, take a quick inhale and then exhale as you drop down onto the floor. This keeps you moving and breathing properly without breaking movement flow.
4. Knee up technique → A way to save efficiency
Using a slight knee-drive transition can make burpee broad jumps feel more sustainable once fatigue kicks in, or if you’re just starting out with burpee broad jumps. Instead of explosively jumping both feet underneath you every rep, briefly kneeling one knee down onto the floor before standing up can help smooth the transition into your jump position.
Used correctly, this can help control heart rate spikes and conserve energy across longer sets. Just stay precise with your foot placement. If your feet land unevenly or too far forward, you risk a no-rep in competition.
5. Standing upright → Killing momentum
Every time you stand up right after the drop, you’re resetting the whole movement. You don’t need to be upright after every rep… You need to keep moving forward. Stay low, keep your body compact, and pop up just enough to go straight into the next jump. That’s how you’ll keep the flow, save the most energy across the full distance, and actually get through the reps faster.
6. Hands too far forward → Wasting energy
If your hands are landing too far in front of you, you’re increasing the distance you need to travel each rep and slowing your transitions. Keep your hands close to your feet so you can drop and move into the next rep without overreaching or facing a penalty.
7. Lowering slowly to the ground → Lose time
Dropping too slowly into the burpee is also a time waster. You also add unnecessary resistance to your arms, turning it more into an upper-body strength exercise. You still want to control the descent, but not drag it out. You may experience some impact when you hit the floor, but it shouldn’t be painful. If it is, then you’re not controlling the movement enough. The faster you get to the floor, the faster you can get back up and move forward. So think fast and controlled, not slow and cautious.
Outfit tip: Make sure you’re wearing a high-impact sports bra with padding to provide the comfort and support needed in burpee broad jumps and across the other stations.
8. Losing rhythm → Breaks efficiency
If your pace drops halfway through, it’s probably because you started too aggressively and approached each rep with max effort. Instead, aim for a sustainable rhythm that you can hold from start to finish. Each rep should look the same.
A useful cue is to think “land and go.” The moment your feet hit the ground, you should already be moving into the next rep.
How to Make Burpee Broad Jumps Easier (Beginner to Advanced)
Beginner: step-back burpees, smaller jumps
If the movement feels overwhelming, the first step is to reduce the intensity without losing the structure completely. Reduce the difficulty, but keep the movement pattern intact. Over time, you can progress from modified burpee broad jumps to full reps.
How:
Step one foot back at a time instead of jumping back
Drop the chest to the floor with control
Step forward again, then perform a small, controlled hop forward instead of a full broad jump
Focus:
Following form cues and learning the sequence
Keeping your breathing steady
Staying consistent rep to rep
👉 Build your rhythm first. Covering a set comes once you’ve nailed the flow.
Intermediate: control the pace, reduce pauses
You’ve learnt the form and the momentum of moving forward, now it’s about linking the reps together to create a smooth and controlled movement.
How:
Jump both feet back and forward instead of stepping
Keep jumps moderate, not max distance
Minimise time spent standing upright
Focus:
Smooth transitions
Even pacing
Reducing “dead time” between reps
👉 It should feel like a steady engine, not stop-start sprints.
Advanced: longer jumps + continuous movement
For advanced athletes who have nailed the burpee broad jump technique, the next step is improving efficiency so you can maintain speed and rhythm under fatigue.
How:
Increase jump distance while staying low
Keep transitions tight (no standing resets)
Maintain continuous forward movement across reps
Focus:
Covering ground efficiently
Holding rhythm under fatigue
Staying relaxed in the upper body
Breathing Strategy
Your breathing strategy makes a key difference when it comes to holding pace. Poor breathing = poor reps. Burpee broad jumps spike your heart rate fast, so your breathing needs to be intentional. You shouldn’t be holding your breath or stopping to breathe.
Pattern breathing rhythm you can follow:
Inhale as you come up from the floor
Exhale as you drop back down
Keep breaths short and sharp, not deep and slow
If you start gasping:
Slightly reduce jump distance
Maintain movement, don’t stop completely
Top Exercises To Improve Your Burpee Broad Jumps
If you want to improve your burpee broad jumps efficiently, you’ll need to do more than just practice them. Incorporating these exercises into your training will help to improve strength and power in the muscles used in burpee broad jumps, translating to a faster and more powerful movement, so you can reach the 80m as quickly as possible.
Box jumps → Build explosive power
Box jumps train your ability to produce force quickly through your hips, which directly improves how far you can travel with each rep.
How to use it in training: Focus on controlled take-offs and soft landings. Think quality over height and make sure you rest fully between sets so each jump stays powerful.
Bounding broad jumps → Improve forward distance
This closely mimics the jumping pattern used in burpee broad jumps without the floor phase. It teaches you to project forward efficiently.
How to use the training: Keep your jumps low and long rather than high. Focus on covering distance smoothly, not forcing max effort each rep.
Explosive push-ups → Strengthen the floor phase
Explosive push-ups improve your ability to push off the ground and into the standing position. The faster you can get off the ground, the faster you can move forward.
How to use it: Push up from the ground with force. Even if your hands don’t leave the floor, the goal is speed out of the bottom position.
Squat jumps → Reinforce jump mechanics
Squat jumps improve jump mechanics and build lower-body power to help you control your landing, which becomes more important as fatigue builds.
How to use it in training: Stay balanced through your feet and absorb the landing quietly before resetting.
Lateral hops → Improve stability and control
Lateral hops help you develop better control on landing the burpee broad jump, which translates to faster transitions into your next rep.
How to use it in training: Keep movements quick and light on your feet, focusing on balance and reactivity.
How to Train Burpee Broad Jumps for Hyrox
You want to replicate race conditions when training for Hyrox. Burpee broad jumps are the 4th station in Hyrox, meaning you’re coming in with a high heart rate and accumulating fatigue. You should replicate this in your training.
Start by adding burpee broad jumps into circuits rather than doing them in isolation so you can practice maintaining rhythm and movement when your breathing is already elevated after completing multiple other movements.
You can also pair them with running to simulate race conditions and practise transitioning without losing momentum.
Combine them with other Hyrox-style movements like the Wall Ball, Farmer’s Carry, Sled Pull, or Sled Push to build familiarity with how your body feels moving between stations.
Example workout - Hyrox style circuits:
Repeat this workout for 3-4 rounds at a steady pace.
25 metre sled push
800m run
20 burpee broad jumps
30 wall balls
As you progress, increase the number of rounds or reduce rest between efforts. Focus on keeping your movement efficient, even when you start to get tired.
Burpee Broad Jump FAQs
What is a burpee broad jump?
A burpee broad jump is a full-body movement that combines a chest-to-floor burpee with a forward jump, meaning each rep moves you over a distance instead of staying in one place.
How far is a Hyrox burpee broad jump?
In Hyrox, the burpee broad jump station covers a total distance of 80 meters, and it’s the same distance in each division.
Key info:
You must stay in your lane to complete this station.
Most athletes take around 40-60 reps to cover the 80 meters, depending on the jump length and how well they maintain a rhythm.
Each rep will be judged by a set of strict rules, and if not followed, your rep won’t count.
No-Rep Rules:
Failing to touch your chest to the floor.
Moving hands forward after they are placed down (crawling).
Staggered foot takeoff or landing.
Taking intermediate steps between reps.
What are the Hyrox burpee broad jump rules?
You must cover 80m in your lane, completing continuous burpee broad jumps. Each rep requires your chest and thighs to touch the floor, your hands to stay fixed once placed, and both feet to jump and land together. You can’t crawl your hands forward, take extra steps, or reset between reps, otherwise it may result in a no-rep.
Are burpee broad jumps hard?
Burpee broad jumps are a challenging movement. They’re demanding and intense, as they require strength, coordination, and cardio, which makes them difficult to keep up repetitively, especially when performed under fatigue.
How can I improve my burpee broad jumps?
The best way to improve your burpee broad jumps is to train both strength and efficiency, not just repeat the movement.
Building full-body strength through resistance training will help you handle the demands of each rep, especially as fatigue builds. At the same time, improving your jump efficiency through plyometric exercises like box jumps and squat jumps will help you cover more distance with less effort.
You also need to practise burpee broad jumps within conditioning workouts, not just in isolation. This is what teaches you to hold your rhythm, manage your breathing, and keep moving when your heart rate is already high, which is exactly how the movement shows up in Hyrox.
