Ask your athletes which station scares them the most and almost all of them will say the same thing: burpee broad jumps. They're right to be scared of it, and almost always wrong about why.
They think it's a burpee station. That the problem is being able to do forty burpees in a row with their heart rate through the roof. So they train it like a WOD: sets of burpees at max speed, trying to hang on. They show up to the race with more pain tolerance and exactly the same time.
Burpee broad jumps aren't a burpee station. They're 80 meters of travel where the burpee is the toll you pay to be allowed to jump. The distance gets covered by jumping, not by dropping to the floor. And that shift in focus — from how many burpees your athlete can do to how far they move per rep — is the difference between seven minutes and four and a half.
Why it's the most expensive station on the course
Station 5 arrives at the worst possible moment. Your athlete is coming off the sled pull with loaded forearms and lower back, has already run five kilometers, and still has half the race left. It's the exact point where most races get decided, and not by accident: it's the only station that combines the three things that cost the most.
- It constantly changes planes. From the floor to standing, forty times. Every transition spikes heart rate far more than a continuous effort of the same mechanical cost.
- It's the longest station in time for the amateur athlete. Between four and eight minutes depending on level. No other station has that range: on the sled, the gap between a good athlete and a bad one is ninety seconds; here, it's four minutes.
- It leaves the legs destroyed right before the run. Repeated horizontal jumping punishes the quads and calves in a way that's felt in the first 300 meters of the run that follows.
No HYROX station has as much spread in results as burpee broad jumps. That means two things: it's where your athlete is losing the most, and it's where your work as a coach shows the most.
The math your athlete never did
Before talking technique, run this calculation with them. It changes the entire conversation.
It's 80 meters. If your athlete covers 1.5 meters per rep, they need 53 burpees. If they cover 2 meters, they need 40. If they cover 2.5 meters, they need 32.
Twenty-one burpees of difference between the first case and the third. At five seconds per rep, that's almost two minutes of race time. And the difference between jumping 1.5 and 2.5 meters isn't strength: it's jump technique and deciding where to put your hands.
This is the number you need to measure in your athlete, and the one that needs to show up on their plan. Not "how many burpees can they do in three minutes." How many meters they cover per rep when they're tired.
The four mistakes you see in 90% of athletes
1. Jumping up instead of forward
The root mistake. The athlete comes from years of gym burpees, where the jump is vertical and the hands touch overhead. That pattern is automatic, and under fatigue it comes back on its own. The result is a jump that gains height and loses distance: same energy cost, half the progress.
The fix is about angle, not strength. The athlete needs to project their chest forward and take off at roughly a 45-degree angle, with the arms swinging from back to front to help drive it. If their head ends up higher in the air than at the starting point, they're jumping wrong.
2. Hands where the feet landed
After landing, most athletes place their hands right in front of their toes. That's giving away 30 to 40 centimeters per rep, which over 40 reps is 14 meters: seven whole burpees.
The cue is simple: the hands land as far forward as possible without losing chest position. The athlete should feel like they're "falling forward" as they go down, not squatting in place.
3. Landing and standing still
The athlete jumps, lands, stands for two seconds catching their breath, and only then drops down. That micro-rest, repeated forty times, is eighty seconds given away for free, and on top of that it doesn't even help recovery: heart rate doesn't drop in two seconds.
A steady, slightly slower pace with no pauses beats a fast pace with pauses. Always. In this station, continuity matters more than speed.
4. Dropping to the floor out of control
When fatigue sets in, the athlete drops to their knees and then extends their legs: two movements where there should be one. That raises the cost, punishes the knees, and breaks the rhythm. The descent needs to be a single, controlled movement, with weight shared between hands and feet.
Pacing: the decision made before the race
This is the coach's real job. Technique can be learned from a video; pacing can't, because it depends on data that only you have.
The right strategy for almost every amateur athlete is a steady, sustainable pace from the very first rep, not a fast start followed by decline. The typical curve for an athlete without a plan is brutal: the first 20 meters at a good pace, and the last 30 meters at double the time per meter. They finish slower than if they had gone even, and they hit the run that follows in much worse shape.
Define two concrete things with them before they compete:
- A target time for every 20 meters. Split the station into four mental segments. If their target is 5 minutes, that's 75 seconds per segment. They should know the number and repeat it.
- A breathing plan. Two breaths at the top, the moment they land and before lowering their hands. It's not rest: it's structure. The athlete who breathes whenever they remember to goes into debt at 30 meters and never climbs out.
And one rule that applies to the whole station: if your athlete can talk at meter 40, they're pacing well. If they can't, they're giving away the three kilometers they still have left.
How to program it during the week
The most common programming mistake is piling on burpee volume. It's the worst cost-benefit ratio in hybrid training: it punishes a lot, generates fatigue that contaminates the rest of the week, and transfers poorly. What needs to be trained is the jump itself and the ability to hold the pattern under fatigue.
- Horizontal power, fresh, once a week. Sets of 3 to 5 long jumps with full recovery, at the start of the session. Simple broad jump, broad jump with countermovement, consecutive jumps. It's the lever that adds the most meters per rep, and almost nobody uses it.
- Short, frequent specific work. 20 or 30-meter segments of burpee broad jump, three to four sets, focused on distance per rep and even pacing. Count the reps in each segment: if they go up from set to set, the athlete's technique is breaking down.
- Always with a transition to running. The format that transfers best is 20 meters of burpee broad jump + 200 meters of running, four to six rounds. What that trains is exactly what wins the race: the ability to run fast again right after the floor.
- The strength that holds all of this up. Squat, deadlift, and serious anti-rotation core work. The athlete who can't keep their torso rigid in the plank phase loses efficiency on every rep.
Two weekly exposures are plenty, and one of them can be just the jump work. More than that generates fatigue you'll end up paying for in your running sessions.
The test that gives you the diagnosis
Ten minutes, a tape measure, and any week of the block. Mark 20 meters on the floor.
- Segment A, fresh: 20 meters of burpee broad jump at the pace your athlete believes is their race pace. Record time and number of reps.
- 2-minute rest.
- 800 meters of running at target race pace, straight into…
- Segment B, under fatigue: another 20 meters, no pause. Record time and reps.
Two numbers come out of that, and both matter:
- Meters per rep when fresh (20 divided by segment A's reps). Less than 1.7 meters: it's a jump-technique problem, work on horizontal power. More than 2.2: technique is fine, the margin is in pacing.
- The drop between A and B. Less than 15% more reps in segment B is excellent. Between 15 and 30% is normal. More than 30% means the technique falls apart under fatigue, and there the work is specific with a transition, not more burpees.
Repeat it every four to six weeks. It's one of the few HYROX tests that improves fast and visibly, which makes it a motivation tool as much as a diagnostic one.
What to tell them on race day
- The first 20 meters, slower than they want. They're coming off the sled pull with their heart rate spiked. If they attack, they'll break down at meter 45.
- One single technical cue, not five. Pick whichever one fails them most and repeat it: "hands forward" or "chest out front." Under fatigue, the athlete can hold onto one idea, not a list.
- Breathe at the top, always at the same moment. On landing, before going down. Two breaths, and keep going.
- Don't speed up the last 10 meters. Finishing the station thirty seconds earlier is worthless if they come out walking the first 200 meters of the run.
Why this station sells you as a coach
Burpee broad jumps are the best terrain to demonstrate value, for a very concrete reason: it's the station where the athlete is most convinced the solution is to suffer more. Their gut tells them they need to hold on; you show them they need to jump farther and breathe better. The improvement shows up fast, and it's entirely attributable to your work.
- The result shows up in weeks. An athlete who goes from 1.6 to 2.1 meters per rep saves twelve burpees. That's a minute of race time without having improved their fitness at all.
- It's measurable with no equipment. A tape measure and a stopwatch. Meters per rep, time per segment, drop under fatigue.
- It's an honest argument. "You don't need to do more burpees, you need to cover 40 more centimeters on each one" is exactly the kind of line that separates a coach with judgment from a plan downloaded off the internet.
What it takes to sustain this is logging. In ATHRIX you can load the test as a workout with its own blocks, keep each segment's reps and times on record, and watch those two numbers evolve across the block. When you show the athlete the chart of how they went from 48 down to 36 reps for the same 80 meters, you no longer have to be the one making the case for renewing the plan.
Conclusion
Burpee broad jumps aren't won with capacity to suffer: they're won with centimeters. Every rep your athlete stretches out is a rep they don't have to do, and every rep they don't do is time and legs left over for the three kilometers that come after.
Measure their meters per rep, fix the jump angle and hand placement, add fresh horizontal power and specific work with a running transition. Retest in six weeks. It's the station where the least effort from you produces the most seconds, and where your athlete will understand fastest exactly what they're paying you for.