Nobody plans their practice surface. Jumps happen where the athlete happens to be — the driveway while waiting for a ride, the backyard, the kitchen. And each of those jumps feels identical to a gym jump from the inside. From your shins' perspective, they are very much not.
Where you jump is a real training decision, and it deserves two minutes of actual thought.
The ranking
Sprung floor — the gold standard. The gym's spring floor is engineered for exactly this: it gives on landing, absorbing a meaningful share of the impact your joints would otherwise take, and it returns a little energy on takeoff. High-volume jump practice — the kind that builds skills — belongs here. This is why "more jumps" and "at the gym" should be the same sentence.
Mats — the honorable second. A proper mat over a firm floor takes the edge off every landing. This is the home-practice answer if you're doing meaningful jump volume outside the gym.
Grass — deceptive. It looks soft and forgiving, and it's certainly kinder than pavement, but it's uneven, grabby underfoot, and firmer than it looks. Fine for a couple of celebratory jumps; not a practice surface.
Concrete and pavement — keep your jump practice off them. Every landing arrives undamped, and repeated landings on unforgiving ground is one of the classic routes to angry shins and cranky knees. A jump or two won't end the world; a practice habit here works against you rep by rep.
Trampolines — a special caution of their own. The bounce changes the timing of everything — your set, your snap, your landing — so the "practice" doesn't transfer cleanly, and the rebound adds its own risks. Trampolines are their own activity; they're not jump training.
Training the surface can't do for you
Here's the empowering flip side: the surface protects your landings, but soft landings are still a SKILL, and you carry that skill to every floor you'll ever perform on. Knees that bend to absorb, feet together, chest up, stuck — that technique is your first shock absorber; the floor is the second. Build the skill on the forgiving surface, and save your jump volume for it too. When you're stuck at home with only hard floors, that's the day for floor conditioning instead: straddle lifts, seated snaps, L-sit holds, stretch work — everything that makes jumps better without a single landing.
One more practical note: the gym floor is also where your filming should happen. Film one jump a week there — whole body in frame, approach and landing included — and CoachVision will read the clip and measure your scores, landing included; it's also why the app's own filming guidance starts with "film at the gym on a sprung floor or mats."
The drill — Chest-Up Squat Jumps
For the days you do have a good surface, this is jump power practiced with the posture and landing built in. Squat jump with one rule: chest proud the whole way — down, up and on the landing. Land soft, feet together, standing tall, every rep a rehearsal of the landing skill that protects you everywhere else.
Do 3 sets of 6 on the sprung floor or a mat.
Your jump career is thousands of landings long. Spend as many of them as possible on floors built to catch you — and make every one of them soft enough that the floor barely notices.