Vertical Jump Power Calculator
Turn a jump test into a power number you can retest, so you can tell whether your explosive work is paying off.
Fill in the form and your result lands here.
Learn the details
Vertical jump height estimates lower-body power via the Lewis and Sayers formulas. Sayers: peak power (W) = 60.7 × jump_height_cm + 45.3 × body_mass_kg − 2055.
This tool does not measure your jump. You measure the jump, and the tool turns that height plus your bodyweight into power estimates. Here is what those estimates are made of, and how much weight to put on the band it hands back.
What the calculator computes
It runs two published equations. Lewis estimates average power across the whole jump: the square root of 4.9, times your mass in kilograms, times the square root of jump height in meters, times 9.81. Sayers estimates peak power, the single hardest instant: 60.7 times jump height in centimeters, plus 45.3 times mass in kilograms, minus 2055. The tool then averages those two and divides by your mass to get watts per kilo, and it is that blended figure the classification uses. Worth knowing: average power and peak power are different quantities, so the blend is a house index rather than a published norm, and the Poor through Elite thresholds are ours. Treat the band as a rough label and the watts as your own scoreboard.
A worked example
Take a man at 185 pounds with a 28 inch jump. That is 83.9 kilograms and 71.1 centimeters. Lewis returns 1,537 watts, Sayers returns 6,063 watts, the average is 3,800 watts, and dividing by 83.9 kilograms gives 45.3 watts per kilo, which lands in the Average band for men. Keep the bodyweight and drop the jump to 24 inches and you get 1,423 watts, 5,447 watts, and 40.9 watts per kilo, still Average. A woman at 140 pounds with an 18 inch jump gets 932 watts, 3,597 watts, and 35.7 watts per kilo, also Average on the female scale. The bands are wide, so the honest signal is the direction your watts move across retests, not which word appears under them today.
Why norms vary so much
Jump numbers swing hugely by sport, by training age, and above all by how the test was run. Chalking a wall and measuring the difference from your standing reach is the cheapest method and the least repeatable, since a shrug or a stretched arm at reach height quietly adds inches. A Vertec with vanes, a contact mat, and a force plate each give different figures again, and a force plate is the only one actually measuring force rather than inferring it. Jump style matters too: a countermovement jump, a still squat jump, and a running approach are three different tests. Compare your number only to your own number, measured the same way, on the same surface, in the same shoes.
Testing without wrecking yourself
A maximal jump is a big force event, and the landing is bigger than the takeoff. That is the part beginners underrate. Warm up properly, take about three attempts, keep the best, and stop as soon as height starts dropping, because tired attempts add fatigue without adding information. Land quietly with knees and hips bending rather than locking out, and treat that soft landing as part of the skill. Retest every four to eight weeks, not weekly, and build a base of strength and low-volume jump practice before you go chasing a peak. If something hurts during or after a jump session, that is a conversation for a doctor or a physio, not a calculator.
Turning it into training
A jump test is genuinely useful in two ways. Over months it tracks whether your explosive work is paying off, and on any given day a jump well below your normal is a fair hint that you are still fatigued. Power sits on top of strength, so keep an eye on what you can lift with your one rep max alongside this, and if the day-to-day fatigue read is what you are after, the workout readiness check asks the questions a jump only hints at.
Sources: Sayers et al. 1999, jump power equations
Test after a warm-up but before heavy training, take 3 attempts, and keep the best. Retest every 4-8 weeks; plyometrics, squats, and Olympic lift variations drive it up.