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Drop landing

Also called drop jump, drop vertical jump

Stepping off a platform and landing, as in drop landings and drop jumps. What studies measured it loading, from the thigh muscles to the knee and ankle ligaments, and what landing tests have and have not predicted.

Region
Knee
Muscles
quadriceps, gluteus maximus, gluteus medius, hamstrings, soleus, gastrocnemius
Updated
October 23, 2026
Reviewed
October 23, 2026 · how entries are checked

Movement

What the studies had people do

Studies of drop landings have used a range of platform heights1,2,5,6:

  • In one study, 9 healthy active men stepped off platforms of 0.32, 0.62 and 1.03 metres1.
  • In another, 18 male recreational athletes did drop landings from 0.3 and 0.6 metres5.
  • In a third, 16 experienced men did drop jumps from 0.15 to 0.75 metres6.
  • In a fourth, 8 female athletes fell 59 centimetres2.

Soft and stiff landings

In the study of 8 female athletes, soft landings reached an average of 117 degrees of knee bend, against 77 degrees for stiff landings2. The stiff landings produced larger ground reaction forces, meaning the push of the ground back up on the body2.

In 15 recreationally active women, a two-leg forward jump landing generally brought more hip and knee bend than single-leg or sideways landings7. It also generally brought lower hip and knee forces7. Each woman’s hip movement, hip forces and the turning force pushing her knee inward on two legs weakly reflected those on one leg7.

What it loads

Which joints absorb the landing

The knee did the largest share of the work in one study of 9 active men1. The knee extensors, the muscles that straighten the knee, did the most eccentric work of the three joints at each height1:

JointEccentric work across the three heights, in joules per kilogram of body weight
Knee1.21 to 2.261
Hip0.94 to 2.151
Ankle0.52 to 0.871

In the same men, the ankle plantar flexors, which point the foot down, did more of the absorbing in stiff landings1. The hip extensors, which move the thigh backward, did more in soft landings1. As the height rose, the work moved from the ankle toward the hip1.

In 18 male recreational athletes, the hip and knee did significantly more work in the frontal plane than the ankle5. The frontal plane is the side-to-side plane that divides the body into front and back. Eccentric work at the hip rose substantially from the lower to the higher platform5.

How height and stiffness raise the forces

Peak ground reaction forces, joint moments and joint powers generally rose with landing height in the 9 active men1. A joint moment is the turning effect of a force around a joint. The same measures generally rose with a stiffer landing style1.

In 16 experienced men doing drop jumps, the force on the inner (medial) side of the knee rose with drop height6.

The muscles

The quadriceps, four muscles on the front of the thigh, straighten the knee8. The hamstrings, at the back of the thigh, extend the hip and bend the knee8,9.

A meta-analysis pools the results of several studies into one answer. One pooled 8 studies of jump landings in 145 people who exercised regularly10. Gluteal, quadriceps, hamstring and gastrocnemius muscle activity did not differ significantly between men and women, except in the vastus lateralis, the outer quadriceps muscle10.

A narrative review describes how these muscles pull on the ACL in general, not in landing alone11:

  • The quadriceps and the gastrocnemius, the large calf muscle, raise ACL load by pulling the tibia (shinbone) forward, especially with the knee straight11.
  • The hamstrings and the soleus, a flat calf muscle beneath the gastrocnemius, appear to unload it by pulling the tibia back11. For the hamstrings, this holds only once the knee is bent more than about 20 to 30 degrees11.
  • The gluteus medius, a buttock muscle beneath the gluteus maximus, consistently opposed the knee-inward (valgus) moment, unloading the ACL more than any other muscle11.

The tendons

The patellar tendon runs from the kneecap down to the shinbone. In 20 healthy adults, drop vertical jumps fell in the middle tier of patellar tendon loading12. The single-leg forward hop and single-leg countermovement jump, a jump that starts with a quick dip, fell in the highest tier12:

Patellar tendon loading indexTwo-leg drop vertical jump0.563 Single-leg drop vertical jump0.599 Two-leg countermovement jump0.610 Single-leg forward hop0.666 Single-leg countermovement jump0.711
Patellar tendon loading index. Bars start at zero; the table below gives each value with its source.
TaskPatellar tendon loading index
Two-leg drop vertical jump0.56312
Single-leg drop vertical jump0.59912
Two-leg countermovement jump0.61012
Single-leg forward hop0.66612
Single-leg countermovement jump0.71112

In 101 healthy young adults doing a drop vertical jump, four measures went with higher peak force in the Achilles tendon on landing13. This tendon attaches to the heel bone8. They were a larger vertical ground reaction force, knee bend, less hip bend and a centre of pressure further forward13. The centre of pressure is the point under the foot where the body’s weight is centred.

The knee ligaments

The ACL has long been considered the main passive restraint that stops the tibia sliding forward on the femur (thigh bone)14. Imaging studies have measured its strain during jump landings3,15:

  • In 8 people imaged during a jump landing, ACL strain peaked on average 55 milliseconds before the foot touched down3. The peak came when the knee was least bent3. At its peak the ligament was stretched about 12% beyond its length on the scan3.
  • In 17 healthy participants imaged during a single-leg jump, ACL strain rose as the knee straightened15.
  • In the same 17 participants the knee barely angled inward or outward, and no significant link was found between ACL strain and that angle15.

A robot moved 18 knees from donated bodies through a recorded drop-jump landing16. The ACL reached a far higher peak strain than the medial collateral ligament (MCL) on the inner side of the knee16. The figures were 6.1% for the ACL against 0.4% for the MCL16.

The ankle

A 2009 review attributes most ankle sprains to the position of the foot at landing17. It describes the ground’s push passing to the inner side of the subtalar joint, the joint just below the ankle17. That produces a sudden inversion moment, turning the sole inward, in about 50 milliseconds17. In a lateral ankle sprain, the first ligament damaged is one of the lateral ankle ligaments, the anterior talofibular ligament18,19.

The ankle syndesmosis is a fibrous joint, where four ligaments join the lower ends of the tibia and fibula20. The fibula is the thin outer bone of the lower leg. In 14 healthy participants filmed during single-leg landings, this joint mainly everted, tilting outward, and rotated outward after the foot hit the ground21.

How the body adapts

What changes the way people land

Two reviews looked at what shifts the knee during landing22,23:

  • A meta-analysis of 58 articles found healthy women moved with more knee abduction, the knee angling inward, than men22. The gap showed in most weight-bearing tasks, including jump landings22.
  • A meta-analysis of 29 studies found fatigue significantly raised peak knee valgus in two-leg vertical drop jumps in men23. It had no significant effect in the other landing tasks studied23.

A meta-analysis of 21 studies compared people with chronic ankle instability, an ankle that keeps giving way, with people without it24. From a single-leg jump, they landed with the foot more pointed and less knee and hip bend24. They also had less activity just before landing in the peroneus longus24. This is one of two muscles on the outer side of the leg8.

What training changed in landing

Training and feedback studies found different results25,26:

  • A systematic review of 14 studies pooled 10 of them25. Training with added feedback changed peak knee and hip bend compared with training without it, with little effect on side-to-side knee movement25.
  • A meta-analysis of 16 randomised controlled trials, which assign people to groups by chance, covered 976 female team-sport athletes26. It found very low certainty evidence that programmes aimed at reducing injury raised knee bend in tasks related to ACL injury by about 3 degrees26. Very low to low certainty evidence suggested no effect on hip and knee moments, knee adduction (the knee angling outward) or ground reaction forces26.

Injury rates in training studies

A prospective study, following people forward in time, tracked 1263 high school soccer, volleyball and basketball players27. Some of the female athletes did a neuromuscular training programme before the season27.

Trained female athletes had 0.12 serious knee injuries per 1000 exposures27. The rate was 0.43 for untrained female athletes and 0.09 for the male athletes27. There were 14 serious knee injuries in all27.

A meta-analysis pooled 18 studies with 27,231 female participants28. It found neuromuscular training programmes lowered ACL injury risk from about 1 in 54 to 1 in 11128. Neuromuscular training is exercise aimed at how nerves and muscles control movement.

The drop jump as a test

Landing was one of the most common actions in noncontact ACL injuries seen on video, at 30.1%29. Studies have followed athletes after a landing test to see who was later injured4. The ACL tear page covers the injury.

  • In a prospective study of 205 female soccer, basketball and volleyball players, 9 later ruptured an ACL30. They had landed with the knee angled inward 8 degrees more, and 2.5 times the knee abduction moment30.
  • In 171 young female basketball and floorball players, less hip bend and more knee bending moment on landing went with higher later ACL injury risk31. Fifteen noncontact ACL injuries occurred31.

Studies that found little or none

  • In the same 171 players, those landing measures were poor at sorting who would and would not be injured31. The area under the curve was 0.631. This is a single score of how well a test sorts people into those who will and will not get a condition.
  • A scoping review of 11 prospective studies found the evidence for each landing predictor was limited or conflicting4. The 3 studies in it that used 2D video or observation, not 3D lab motion capture, found no predictors4.
  • One study filmed 364 young basketball and floorball players doing drop jumps on one leg and on two32. In the female players, an inward knee angle did not raise the risk of later knee or ankle injury, though injuries were few32. Among the 187 male players, it was not linked to ankle injury32.

For patellofemoral pain, pain around or behind the kneecap, a meta-analysis found peak knee valgus in landing did not predict it33. A review of prospective studies noted that a single study found the knee valgus moment at first contact predictive33.

Progressive overload

A 2026 position stand describes progressive overload as the need to increase the stimulus placed on the muscle throughout a training programme34. The studies below trained drop jumps, with a jump straight up after the landing35,36,37,38.

How programmes were built

A systematic review gathered 22 randomised controlled trials of drop or depth jump training in athletes and recreationally active people aged 16 to 4035. Programmes lasted 4 to 12 weeks, with 1 to 4 sessions a week35. In 21 trials the drop height was set at 20 to 60 cm, and sessions held 10 to 140 jumps35. No trial said how it chose the training volume35. Workload commonly rose linearly over time, with no programme justifying the timing or size of the rises35.

The review’s authors concluded that drop height should not be seen as what sets training intensity35.

Raising the box

In a randomised controlled trial of 24 healthy young men, the training group did 5 sets of 20 drop jumps36. They trained 3 days a week for 8 weeks, on a 15 cm box and then a 30 cm box36. Reactive strength index rose and ground contact time shortened, while neither changed in the control group36. The authors suggest a higher box might have given a further effect36.

A height for each player

An 8-week randomised trial studied 30 male volleyball players aged 14 to 1637. One group dropped from whichever of 30, 40 or 50 cm gave each player the highest rebound, retested weekly to allow progression37. The other kept a 30 cm height and progressed by changing sets, repetitions and rest instead37. The target rating of perceived exertion, a score for how hard effort feels, rose every two weeks, from 3 to 9 out of 1037. Each player’s own height improved drop jump height, reactive strength index and sprint speed, but the standard height did not37.

Mixed and higher heights

In a 4-week study of 33 people, drops from 30, 50 and 75 cm were set against the same number from 30 cm only39. Both raised rebound height divided by ground contact time by 14%39. The mixed heights raised rebound height but lengthened contact39. The 30 cm jumps shortened contact, with a trend for higher rebounds39.

One study randomly allocated 55 female volleyball players to five groups for 8 weeks of drop jump and weight training38. Groups dropping from their optimal height, or 25% above it, improved vertical jump by 3.6 to 17.4%38. This was compared with a group 25% below optimal, a weight-training group and controls38. Reactive strength index rose against controls in the group 25% above optimal alone, by 19.6 to 33.9%38.

Connections

The structures it loads

The studies above measured work at the knee, hip and ankle in drop landings1. They measured strain in the anterior cruciate ligament and medial collateral ligament16. A review links sprains of the lateral ankle ligaments to foot position at landing17,18,19. The ankle syndesmosis, patellar tendon and Achilles tendon were measured in landing too12,13,21.

The muscles it works

A meta-analysis of jump landings measured the quadriceps, hamstrings, gluteal muscles and gastrocnemius10. Gluteal muscles include the gluteus maximus and gluteus medius8. A review names the soleus and gastrocnemius among muscles that pull on the ACL11.

Visual ratings of the single-leg squat have also been compared with later ACL injury40. The ankle sprain page covers the injury a review links to foot position at landing17.

Drop landing loads

Drop landing has studies of landing in

Drop landing is progressed by

Sources

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  40. Petushek E, Nilstad A, Bahr R, Krosshaug T (2021). Drop Jump? Single-Leg Squat? Not if You Aim to Predict Anterior Cruciate Ligament Injury From Real-Time Clinical Assessment: A Prospective Cohort Study Involving 880 Elite Female Athletes.. Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy. doi:10.2519/jospt.2021.10170 PMID 34192883

Every source the library cites

Changes

  • Added a Progressive overload section.
  • A supporting claim was narrowed to match its source; the page text is unchanged.