You don’t need cutting-edge, high-tech athletic facilities to build full-body power. In fact, a barbell, a box and a rapidly descending rep scheme can take you a long way.

This workout comes courtesy of CrossFit Linchpin, the training platform founded by veteran CrossFit coach Pat Sherwood, who is known for creating deceptively simple, intelligently programmed workouts that build broad, sustainable fitness – without unnecessary bells and whistles.

The brutally simple couplet pairs power cleans with box jumps, challenging you to complete 110 total reps against the clock. A good target? Getting the whole thing wrapped up in under 10 minutes.

Both movements demand speed, coordination and explosive hip extension. But with the reps beginning in double figures, this isn’t simply a test of raw power. You’ll need to maintain that explosiveness as fatigue begins to bite, while keeping your technique tight enough to avoid turning the final rounds into a slog.

The Workout

Complete 10 reps of each movement, followed by nine reps of each, then eight, continuing down to a final round of one rep apiece.

Power Cleans @ 60kg

Box Jumps @ 24 inches

That adds up to 55 power cleans and 55 box jumps: 110 reps in total.

Your goal is to finish in less than 10 minutes, although keeping your form sharp should take priority over chasing the clock.

Why It Works

Power cleans train you to generate force from the floor, explosively extending through your ankles, knees and hips before pulling yourself beneath the bar. The movement recruits your glutes, hamstrings, quads, back and shoulders, while your grip and core work overtime to keep the bar under control.

Box jumps train a similar pattern without the external load. They demand rapid force production through your lower body, developing the type of speed and explosiveness that carries over into sprinting, jumping and athletic movement.

Pairing the two means you’re repeatedly attacking the same fundamental quality – powerful hip extension – through both a loaded and unloaded movement. As the workout progresses, however, the limiting factor may become your ability to recover between efforts, rather than your strength alone.

How to Do the Moves

Power Clean

• Stand with your feet hip-width apart and the barbell on the floor over your midfoot. Grasp the bar with your palms facing your body.
• Hinge at the hips, pushing them back while keeping your chest up, back straight and neck neutral.
• Drive through your feet to lift the bar from the floor, keeping it close to your body so it travels close to your shins.
• Once the bar reaches your mid-thigh, explosively extend your hips, knees and ankles to drive the bar upwards.
• As the bar rises, pull your elbows high and then quickly rotate them underneath the bar, dropping into a quarter squat to catch it across the front of your shoulders. Stand up to finish the rep.
• Return the bar to the floor under control, hinging at the hips before beginning the next rep.

Box Jump

• Set yourself a comfortable distance from the box with feet shoulder-width apart.
• Dip into a quarter squat, swing your arms and explode upwards to jump onto the box. Land as softly as possible.
• Step back down off the box under control.

If there’s one thing Kori Sampson knows, it’s how to optimise your body composition for performance. To tap into his knowledge as an elite athlete and coach, we asked him to create a 4-week plan to help you move faster, recover quicker and keep pushing when the fatigue sets in – all while improving your muscle-to-fat ratio.

Ready to build muscle, burn fat and come out the other side looking, feeling and performing better? Click here to get 14 days of free access to the plan via the Men’s Health app.

With almost 18 years in the health and fitness space as a personal trainer, nutritionist, breath coach and writer, Andrew has spent nearly half of his life exploring how to help people improve their bodies and minds.    

As our fitness editor he prides himself on keeping Men’s Health at the forefront of reliable, relatable and credible fitness information, whether that’s through writing and testing thousands of workouts each year, taking deep dives into the science behind muscle building and fat loss or exploring the psychology of performance and recovery.   

Whilst constantly updating his knowledge base with seminars and courses, Andrew is a lover of the practical as much as the theory and regularly puts his training to the test tackling everything from Crossfit and strongman competitions, to ultra marathons, to multiple 24 hour workout stints and (extremely unofficial) world record attempts.   

 You can find Andrew on Instagram at @theandrew.tracey, or simply hold up a sign for ‘free pizza’ and wait for him to appear.