Frog Hops
Also works: Calves · Glutes · Hamstrings
Hands behind the head, you drop into a squat and hop forward a metre or so at a time, absorbing each landing and rebounding into the next. Filed as a stretch, it is really a low-amplitude bounding drill: distance forward rather than height up, five to ten contacts, and the hands stay locked so your arms cannot bail you out.
Own the movement
Set up first, then execute. Every cue below is something you can check on your next set.
Before the first rep
- Clear five to ten metres of flat, non-slip ground — grass or rubber flooring beats concrete for the ankles.
- Interlock your fingers behind your head and hold them there for the whole set.
- Squat down to roughly parallel with your torso upright and your eyes forward.
- Set your feet hip- to shoulder-width with the weight over your mid-foot.
- Decide your distance before the first hop so you are not stretching for a target mid-air.
Every rep
Breathing & tempo — One sharp exhale per take-off, a quick inhale in the air. No tempo on the landing beyond fast and quiet — long ground contact means you are squatting between hops rather than bounding.
Before you load it
- Do these fresh and on a forgiving surface. Repeated horizontal landings on concrete with no arm swing put every bit of the deceleration through the knees and ankles.
- Skip them entirely if you have current knee or Achilles pain. Reactive work amplifies whatever is already irritated rather than warming it up.
Sets, reps & load
Where to start, and what to change when it stops being hard.
Bodyweight, and it should stay that way — holding weights removes any chance of a clean landing. Start with short hops of roughly 30-40 cm and add distance only when every landing in the set is silent and balanced. Once distance stops improving, add a set rather than reps.
What goes wrong
The errors that show up most often, and the cue that fixes each one.
Pick a distance you can land cleanly and hold it for every rep. Mark the ground if you need to. Height is what converts this into repeated hard vertical landings on unassisted legs.
Cap sets at 5-10 hops and rest 60-120 seconds between them. If you want conditioning, use something you can perform safely when exhausted — bounding is not on that list.
Keep the fingers interlocked and drop the distance instead. The moment the arms swing you are doing a different, easier exercise and you have lost the reason to do this one.
Land whole-foot and let the knees and hips bend to absorb. Noise is force you failed to absorb — if you cannot land quietly, shorten the hop or end the set.
Move them to the front, straight after the warm-up. Reactive work done on cooked legs is the classic way to collect a patellar tendon problem.
Why bother
Taking the arm swing away is the whole design. Most jumping drills let the arms contribute a meaningful share of the take-off, which is useful for jumping high and useless for learning what your legs alone can do. Hands behind the head forces the hips, knees and ankles to produce and absorb everything, and it exposes exactly how much you were relying on a swing.
Jumping forward rather than upward also changes the landing. A horizontal hop lands you moving, so the force arrives across a longer contact and the quads and glutes work eccentrically to stop the drift rather than just cushioning a vertical drop. That is why the instruction is to jump several feet out and deliberately not high — height turns a bounding drill into a series of hard vertical landings.
Where it fits
Early in the session, after the warm-up, before anything heavy. Three to five sets of 5-10 hops with a full minute or two between sets. It is quality work, not conditioning: the moment the hops shorten or the landings get loud you are training fatigue, and fatigued jumping carries the joint stress without the adaptation.
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Asked and answered
Are frog hops bad for your knees?
Not on their own. Healthy knees handle repeated horizontal landings well and get stronger for it — the tendon adapts to exactly this kind of loading. What hurts people is volume and fatigue: thirty-hop sets, concrete, and doing them after the legs are already cooked. Keep it to 5-10 hops fresh, land quietly, and stop the moment a landing gets loud. If the front of the knee already hurts, leave these out until it does not.
How far should I jump?
As far as you can land silently and in balance, with the torso upright — for most people that is 30-60 cm at first. Distance is the progression, but only after every landing in the set is clean. A hop you barely survive is not a longer hop, it is a worse one.
Are frog hops good cardio?
No. They will make you breathe hard, which is not the same thing. Jumping drills are low-volume nervous-system work with long rests, and the version of them that raises your heart rate — long sets, short rests, degraded landings — is exactly the version that hurts people. Use a bike or a sled for conditioning.
Is this a stretch or a jumping exercise?
A jumping exercise, whatever the category label says. It is often listed as a mobility or warm-up drill because it takes the hips and ankles through a big range with no equipment, but the loading is reactive and it should be programmed like plyometrics: fresh, low reps, full rest.