HYROX Burpee Broad Jumps: How to Train the Hardest Station

Station 4 will break you.

By the time you hit the burpee broad jumps at HYROX, your legs have absorbed three stations of punishment: the SkiErg has fried your posterior chain, the sled push has burned your quads, and the sled pull has emptied whatever gas you had left in the tank. Then you're standing at the line of an 80-meter stretch of ground, and you're supposed to do explosive jumping movements when your legs feel like concrete.

This is why the burpee broad jump station separates the prepared athletes from the ones who are just hoping to survive.

Most athletes need 40-60 reps to cover the full 80-meter distance. If you're jumping 1.3 to 2 meters per burpee broad jump, you're hitting around 40-62 repetitions depending on your size, power, and consistency. The variation matters more than you think—a difference of one foot per jump adds up fast across the distance.

Here's the trap: your first 10 reps will feel easy. You're fresh enough to get greedy, trying to jump far each time. Then around rep 20, your quads start signaling their displeasure. By rep 35, you're asking yourself if walking backward would be faster than jumping.

Most athletes either (1) crash hard mid-station and lose 60+ seconds to broken movement, or (2) finish but leave 2-4 minutes on the table because they weren't prepared for sustained output under fatigue.

The difference between an untrained athlete and a trained one isn't how hard they can jump fresh. It's how consistent they can stay when they're gassed.

Chest must touch the ground. Every single rep. The HYROX judges are watching, and any rep where your chest doesn't make contact doesn't count. Train with this standard from day one—don't develop a habit that will punish you in the race.

Feet parallel on takeoff and landing. Your feet need to be together and aligned before you jump, and they need to land together too. Staggered landings are unstable and will slow you down.

The step-up method beats the jump-up method. Watch the elite HYROX athletes and you'll notice most of them don't jump their feet up after the push-up phase. Instead, they step one foot up, then the other. This conserves energy. A jump-up version requires explosive hip extension just to get your feet back to your hands, and you're doing this 50+ times. The step-up approach is measurably slower in isolation but faster overall because you save energy across the entire 80 meters.

Arm swing generates momentum. When you stand up from the burpee, use your arms. Swing them back as you load, then drive them forward and up as you jump. This creates momentum that carries your body through the air and reduces the pure leg power needed. Elite athletes use their whole body. Lazy athletes try to jump with their legs alone and burn out faster.

You think you need to do fast burpee broad jumps. You don't. You need to do consistent burpee broad jumps.

Athletes who maintain steady movement with fewer breaks almost always beat athletes who go hard for 15 reps, take a breather for 20 seconds, then crash. The consistent pace creates a rhythm that your body can maintain. The stop-and-go approach requires your nervous system to re-recruit muscle fibers each time you restart, and that's more draining than you expect.

A sustainable pace for most intermediate athletes is roughly one rep every 2-2.5 seconds—about 24-30 reps per minute. On an 80-meter stretch with 50 reps needed, you're looking at roughly 90-120 seconds of continuous movement.

The best pacing strategy: establish a steady rhythm in training and replicate it in the race. Not faster, not slower—consistent.

Exhale during the push-up phase—as you're doing the hardest part of the burpee. This creates intra-abdominal pressure that stabilizes your core and makes the push stronger. Inhale as you stand up and prepare to jump.

Practice your breathing pattern in training. It becomes automatic under race stress if you've trained it properly.

Bounding broad jumps (explosive legs). 3-4 sets of 8-10 consecutive broad jumps without the burpee. Teaches your legs to generate power from a stable position.

Explosive push-ups (upper body endurance). 3-4 sets of 8-12 reps, moving fast. Builds the upper body stamina needed to repeat the push-up 50+ times without your shoulders falling apart.

Squat jumps (rate of force development). 3-4 sets of 6-8 reps. Deep squat, explode upward. Trains your legs to generate force quickly, which translates directly to the jump portion.

Burpee intervals at fresh capacity. 2-3 sets of 10-15 burpee broad jumps with full recovery between sets. Teaches the movement pattern at quality standard before adding fatigue.

Most importantly: practice burpee broad jumps under fatigue. Do them after sled work, after running, after other station work. Your body needs to learn how to move explosively when it's already tired. Train the way you'll race.

Most athletes who struggle at station 4 aren't failing because of leg strength. They're failing because of:

1. 2
   Inconsistent movement quality. Chest isn't touching, feet are staggered, no arm swing. Sloppy reps waste energy.
2. 4
   No practice under fatigue. They've done burpee broad jumps fresh but never after sled work.
3. 6
   Poor pacing strategy. They sprint early and crash late instead of maintaining rhythm.
4. 8
   Inadequate upper body endurance. 50+ push-ups in a row with explosiveness beats up shoulders that aren't conditioned for it.
5. 10
   Breathing that breaks down under stress. No rhythm, no pattern, just chaos.

You need to know your personal metrics: How far can you jump consistently? How many reps do you need to cover 80 meters? What's your sustainable rep rate under fatigue?

If you're hitting 50 reps consistently in practice and each rep is 1.6 meters, you know you'll need about 50 reps in the race (80 meters ÷ 1.6 = 50). If your sustainable pace is 24 reps per minute, you're looking at roughly 125 seconds for the station. These numbers become your benchmark.

FORMD analyzes your performance across all 8 stations and tells you exactly where your finish time is hiding. Download FORMD to build a training plan that targets your weaknesses—not just burpee broad jumps, but the full race.

The athletes who break 90 minutes at HYROX aren't necessarily the strongest. They're the ones who've engineered their training to address their specific weaknesses. Station 4 is often the difference between 85 and 95 minutes for intermediate athletes.

Train the way you'll race. Stay consistent. The distance will come.