My top 3 lower body exercises for building explosive power: 1. Contrast Knee Jumps Knee jumps produce some of the highest power outputs you can get from a non-Olympic-lift movement, with a fraction of the technical complexity. Exploding from a kneeling position onto your feet and up into a jump forces a fast, hard hip drive from a dead start — meaning maximum force in minimum time. Pairing the knee jumps with a follow-up max-effort vertical jump a few seconds later makes that second jump sharper and trains how fast you can produce force across the board. I prefer this to a back squat or standard vertical jump because the hip-forward starting position is closer to the angles I’m actually using on the wall. 2. Box Squats Box squats let you load serious weight onto the bar in the exact range of motion used for explosive sports. Full-range squats matter too— especially for injury prevention and overall leg development— but for pure power, box squats are king. The pause on the box also ...