No plates, no machine, no excuses: 80m of burpee broad jumps at station 4, identical in every division. On paper it is the simplest station on the course. In practice it produces more mid-race blow-ups than both sleds combined — because everyone trains the burpee and nobody trains the maths.

The standard, exactly

Three judged parts per rep:

• Chest to the floor on the burpee — a hovering chest is a no-rep.
• Both feet leave the ground together on the jump — a stagger-step or stride forward is a no-rep.
• Take off from where you landed — creeping forward between reps is a fault. The metres only count when you jump them.

Judges call all three constantly, because fatigue pushes athletes into every one of them without noticing. And a burpee is the single most expensive rep on the course to repeat — the wider judging economics are in the no-reps & penalties guide.

Standards from public 2025/26 season rules — verify with the official rulebook.

The maths nobody does: jump length is the station

The 80m is fixed. Your rep count is not:

Twenty burpees is a minute or more of work plus the heart-rate bill that follows you onto the run. The single highest-return training target for this station is not a faster burpee — it is a longer, repeatable jump.

The key word is repeatable. A max broad jump you can do 5 times helps nothing; the money is in the longest jump you can reproduce 50 times without the length decaying. Train it directly: sets of 10–15 reps at a marked distance, holding the mark to the last rep.

Why it blows people up

Station 4 is the peak metabolic moment of the first half. You arrive off both sleds — the strength block of the race — via run 4, and the station itself is the only one that takes your whole body from floor to airborne on every rep. Heart rate here reaches places the sleds never touch.

The classic failure: surging the first 20m at a rhythm that feels easy, then spending the back 40m standing with hands on knees while your heart rate refuses to come down. Burpee broad jumps punish surges harder than any station on the course. Full pacing doctrine — including why this station is where negative-split discipline pays out — is in the first-race pacing guide.

The rhythm that survives 80m

• One continuous flow per rep. Land, hands down, chest down, up, jump — no full stand-up, no pause at the top. Rising fully upright and resetting adds a second per rep; over 50 reps that is nearly a minute.
• Breathe on a fixed pattern. Most athletes settle on one breath down, one breath on the jump. When the pattern breaks, your pace is too hot — back off before the station forces you to.
• Count reps per 10m line. The lane markings are your dashboard: if you covered the first 10m in 6 reps and the third in 8, your jump is shrinking and your rep bill is growing. Defend the number.
• Pick a sustainable pace and refuse the surge — even when the athlete in the next lane goes. You will pass them at the row.

Training it

• Repeatable-distance sets: 10–15 reps to a marked jump length, multiple sets, holding the length on the last rep. This is the station's core session.
• Compromised sets: Burpee broad jumps straight after a hard 1km or sled work — the race serves this station on a spiked heart rate, so training it fresh tells you very little.
• Standards under fatigue: Film your last set and audit the chest touch and the two-footed take-off. The faults you see there are the no-reps a judge will call.
• Doubles pairs: Short segments with frequent swaps — 10–20m each — beat long solo blocks, because output decays fast here. Splits and swap strategy live in the doubles guide.

Race-day execution

Walk the lane before your start if you can and note the 10m markings — they are your only pacing instrument once the station begins. Off run 4, take the first three reps deliberately at your trained rhythm rather than the adrenaline rhythm; the pace you set in the first 10m is the pace your body defends for the remaining 70. If a no-rep is called, reset completely — chest all the way down, feet together, jump from the mark — because the second no-rep in a row is almost always caused by rushing the correction of the first. And when you stand up at 80m, resist the urge to sprint out: the next kilometre delivers you to the row, the one station on the course designed to give something back. Arrive there breathing, not gasping, and the whole back half of your race opens up.

Loads (none), faults, and pacing share for this station are on the burpee broad jumps station page.

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