008: Jump Mechanics: Fastest Way to Improve Your Vertical Jump

What's up guys? Welcome to episode eight of the PJF podcast. Got a great conversation today all about jump mechanics. So you guys always ask me what's the fastest way to improve vertical jump? This is it. Jump mechanics. So I went through standing vertical jump, a two foot approach jump, and a one foot approach jump. And I broke down the two most common errors in mechanics for each of those categories. Don't want to miss this. You definitely want to tune in. Listen to it all. We get into some deep science, but we always try to bring it back to the practical of like, hey, this is what matters. This is what affects your weekend. So don't get discouraged if some of the words go over your head. So tune in. Enjoy it. Let us know your questions and comments. We're reading everything on YouTube, on Instagram, and be sure to leave us a good review or a bad review if you don't like it on iTunes so that we can get your feedback and continue to provide good quality stuff. Let's go. You're listening to the PJF podcast, a show dedicated to decoding elite sports performance and fitness. I'm Paul Fabrett, and I'm an MBA strength and conditioning and performance trainer. If you want to become superhuman, take your fitness and take your sports performance to the next level. This is the podcast for you. Let's do it. I think right now would be the most even the MBA has been in a long time. Long time. We have no idea who's going to be good next year. We don't know who's going to win it. In the West, I would honestly, we could say Golden State, if you told me Portland, I wouldn't be surprised. No, Portland. Now it's on White side. They're one piece away anyway. Yeah. Portland's arguably the most complete team in the West. If you just look at what they did in the last few days and what they have come back, they lost a lot. Everything was a little bit of one notch up. Utah got significantly better. You got a lot better. You got Conley and Mitchell in the back court. That's tough. That's super tough. With their defense and Rudy, I don't know. There's a lot of good teams coming up in the West. See, Philly was probably still one of my favorite super teams to get in Hwarfers. Yeah, they got better. They got in their shot away. They're a lingering shot away from at least getting an over time, right? Game seven against the defending. I can't believe what's the name got Max Tobias. Oh, it's bias. Max. 26. That's all I think about when I think about Tobias is going to be 27 in a month. He's young. And I'm not like, he's good. He's good. I'm just it's like, if you told me that two years ago, like Tobias hairs will be getting max money. I'd be like, no chance. He's like a great role player, but he's made people getting paid out here. Shooters big long tall shooters. They get paid. Well, even I mean, DeAngelo got traded for draft pick two years ago. Now you got a max. Yeah. That money's getting thrown around. It's always funny. Like this time of year, everybody's starting to get paid and your LA fitness court fills up because people like could I squeeze out maybe one contract? Yeah, I get a one contract. That's what's funny too. I haven't looked at it, but I bet if you look at JJ Redix career earnings for like the first half of his career and then look at the back half, but he's probably like quadrupled is for a big time. Big time. He's making money. Yeah. JJ that see that's a big loss. That's a huge loss. He's so good. Yeah. He's one of those guys. Like if you leave him open, you're done. So you always got to know where he is on the floor. I'm worried that Philly now doesn't have enough shooters. Yeah. So I they took a step up without horror, but they definitely take took a step back with no JJ. Yeah. I'm sure he wanted to stay too. I mean, he's older. He wants to win, but then he probably was sitting there and they were like, yeah, we give you 10 for two years. And then he got 26. Where'd he go? New Orleans. Okay. See that's solid. Yeah. That's that's a good move. New Orleans is going to be solid. Is he the best six four shooting guard ever? No, right now. Oh, right now. He there's a good argument. I mean, in terms, as far as a traditional shooting guard, by far, buddy healed six four though. Exactly. But he is better. But he healed is better. Right now. All around for buddy healed can. Yeah, but he he's starting to to be able to come off picking roles. He can ISO a little bit. He's finishing well. He's good all around. Yeah, that's a good comparison. He was yeah, he was redic and with with a higher ceiling. Yeah, yeah, for sure. But there's not many six four shooting guards killing the game anymore. No, because now your six four guys are your point guards. They're your Russell Westbrooks. Yeah, brick Lopez sons of entire summer in the gym. He's seven foot two, you know, in training. Right. In 30 putters. Right. Now we got point guards that are six nine. So six fours, six four shooter is kind of a weird place to be. Yeah, you got to really master a role like JJ. Yeah, 10 years ago. That was, you know what I mean, that's what that's a normal thing. Oh, yeah, six fours. You got all your like Jeff Hornisex and like the 90s, like that's all like six three six four shooting guards. Yeah, where you didn't necessarily have to have a handle. It's just like, could you shoot? Can you come off screens? Cool. Now that's very rare. I think I feel like JJ's probably the only guy six four under that's not like shifty. Yeah, still playing a traditional shooting guard coming off downpicks. Yeah, you know, Curry plays shooting guard from the point guard position where he'll dump the ball and then start running off picks. Yeah, but he's such a threat. So many other ways. Yeah, I'm saying you're not a threat at all as a shifty player. No, yeah, you just like out of ice. Yeah, you know that you're going to be getting the ball coming off the pick. Which is might be the last of a dying breed. Yeah, he really is. Who else? What else happened? Danny Greens waiting on quiet. Why is the big one, man? Why is literally dictating the entire NBA? Because if he goes to the Lakers, then they're the greatest team of all time on paper like yours. Yeah, but like, why do you leave when you win a championship? Why is that even a thought? Katie. So like, sign another, do another year. Sign a one year back with Toronto and see if you could do it again. And then if not, then hey, go team up. See if I was right now, like they're the team to beat. Yeah, I would sign one year with either Lakers of the Clippers if I was going to sign a one year to see what it's like. And then you can sit there and you know what I mean? Like you can't, I guess you're right. You can't go, you can't flip back. You can't go back to Toronto. You can't go back after that. No, but it's awful. At least you leave yourself open. They gave him a co-actus. That's true. How can you? A, a, a plant, bro. You don't leave after you get a plant. No, a co-actus. You don't just go to LA. But the other side, I do understand he's from LA. I do understand that guys don't like living in Toronto. That's, that's cold. It's a different country. It's not the same. And then to be able to come back home in LA, one of the best cities in the world. Yeah. You think you go to the Clippers? It seems very cool. No, no, it is very, I wouldn't be surprised if he did. It would be very dumb because he, he, him on the Clippers isn't enough to put him over the hump. Yeah. It makes him super competitive. And I think they're good. But it's not enough to, to put them over the hump in the West. No chance. Yeah. West is too tough. How come? I mean, the Clippers, I mean, they got two games out of the full strength gold state team in the playoffs. Because what super stars do they have? I don't. It doesn't make sense how they got to. Gold state was off in that too. And that state was off in that series. That's what I, I think I see similarities in the Clippers and this last year's Toronto team in terms of their, their makeup and where Kawaii kind of fits in. No, like perennial guys. But who's his co star? The way he was going to come and give ball tickets. He needs a co star to win a championship. This year again was an anomaly because you had the gold state who was relying on KD and then KD goes down. So it was a little bit of an anomaly. Next year, you're not going to be able to just go at these super teams just you versus. Yeah. You're not going to be able to go against LeBron and AD just by yourself. You need a co star. See, I think that's a non-negotiable. I think you're making a very valid argument as to why the Lakers are arguably his only choice. I mean, you go, you could go back to Toronto where you got a Lowry who's almost 30. You got Siakum was still coming. Lowry is still a star. We saw that throughout the playoffs. He's still a star. Yeah, he can ball. But I'm just saying, I mean, young guys come and they got good game series sixers Raptors with Kawaii coming back. You got, you got Raptors still. I don't know because I'll take I'll take a and beat and Simmons and Tobias one year developed there. They're the guys that you know, they're turning the clock in there like, okay, they're going to be better next year. Yeah. You know, I mean, there's nobody on that roster where you're worrying about any other big moves that went down. You know what I like a lot in free agency, which is Portland extending Damien Lillard for no other reason than just to keep him the highest paid player. Yeah. That's cool. I mean, it's well deserved. Oh, yeah. He's been loyal to Portland. Portland's been loyal to them. They got that's relationship goals. If you're a player or an organization looking like this is how we should treat each other. Exactly. Relationship goals right there. That definitely takes like a unique character aspect from both both sides. Oh, yeah. For sure. I feel like Dame is also just a loyal person in general. Yeah, exactly. He also has a song called Loyal to the soil. Yeah. James that guy. Yeah. Ken put to the Celtics. What do you think about that one? That's that just replaces Kyrie. Like I feel like they're the same. See, they're very similar. Super similar. I almost give it in terms of like when I in terms of what Boston looks like, I actually like Kenba replacing Kyrie in that structure. But then when you consider losing Terry Rosier in the process. Yeah. Losing Al Forfer to the process then it just completely changes the look. Absolutely. Got worse. Yeah. Definitely. But yeah, I mean, as far as Kenba for Kyrie, those are the two that I've always compared and I cannot pick one over the other. Yeah. I think Kyrie's more skilled. Kenba moves better though. Kenba's like agility is the best I've seen on the basketball court probably. Like his agility is incredible. Maybe him in like Alan Iverson. Yeah. The way they change direction. next level. It's like the berry sanders of the hardwood. But as far as like as a point guard, like how often they're looking to score versus how often they're looking to set up, I feel like they're very similar. Yeah, definitely. All right, let's get into the topic for the day. So today we're talking about jump mechanics. So we get so many coaches, mostly players ask us, "Hey, man, what's the quickest way? What's the fastest way to improve vertical?" My real answer is don't worry about the duration, like just do what's right and see where it takes you. But the answer to the fastest way to make vertical jump improvements is changing your mechanics. A lot of people have the power necessary to dunk or to truly reach their genetic potential, but they don't have the positions. So you get a lot of people who they have the raw power to be able to dunk, but they just don't know how to actually utilize it. They don't understand their mechanics. So you get a lot of these guys who jump the same or a couple inches higher from a standstill and from a running. So if you can't jump at least four inches more from your approach, when we look at like a 15 foot approach, you're struggling with your mechanics. Yeah. It might be something else, but the chances are very, very good that it's just your mechanics. Four inches of the brawm, do you like to use? Yeah. So like, if you add a 20 straight up and then I give you 15 feet like the combine standards and you got a 23, you got some issues. If you have like a 25, okay, that's respectable. That's pretty, pretty normal. The great ones are the ones with the biggest difference. So like Chris Staples. I don't remember what his standing was, but he had the biggest difference I've ever witnessed. I think it was 12 or 13 inches. And this is from a 15 foot approach. Remember, this isn't from a max approach from from even further distance. Your separation is going to be even higher. From a 15 foot approach, there's some guys that'll creep up. It'll be like 10. Yeah. They'll be 10 inches higher, but he was like, I think he was over 12 inches. That's not really. Yeah. In saying, I think at 45, 45 or 46 inch approach per stupid. So that's a testament. That's all you need to know right there in terms of how important mechanics can be. Right. Right. And we so we've done some good studies with him in the lab. We got a lot of good motion tracking force plate data. I might actually drop some of that stuff because we've actually learned a lot from him. He's a beast, man. But yeah, so you know, test yourself. Find out where you're at because most people do have some sort of mechanical issue. There's some guys where it's like, I think Harrison Barnes where he was like a 38 standing, 38 running. That should not be a thing. Nick Young. Did you know Nick Young has either the highest or the second highest vertical of all time. Yeah. Nick Young. I mean, he was. Nick Young. Yeah, you don't think of him as like a slasher Dunker. He's got those old USC highlights though where he's like he was athletic. But you think of him as like a shooter. Oh, yeah. Or most people, listen, just think of him as the guy who shot it and turned around too early and celebrated. Yeah. Right. Right. Wrongly. Yeah. That was a glimpse. Gilbert Riness for that ironic. Yeah. I heard this. Gilbert Riness is rookie. Yeah. He said he messed up his whole life. Yeah. He said Gilbert messed up my life. Yeah. Gilbert said he caught him two years too late before he got. He said, if you had caught me before, when I was earning that contract, he's just like you would have been. Oh, he's got his whole time. He's just like, unfortunately, you caught me after I got all the money. So, wow. You know, but what are you going to say? Who has the highest vertical of all time? Combine. Standing. Just all time. Running. Period. Pat Connitton. No. No. No. Maybe standing. He's not running. He's up there. DJ Stevens. Oh, yeah. 46.5. I want to say, I think Pat Connitton was a 44 or a 44.5. Some would argue that he packed his shoulder to take three inches off the stand. That's what some would argue. That's a bad move. But he does have bounce. Pat is he's in he's an all-around athlete. Yeah. DJ Stevens. Yeah. 46 inches. It wasn't 46.5. Just flat 46. 46. And there's like Kenny Gregory who was like 45. Diallo or newer, whatever's like a 44.5. Yeah. There's a lot of there's a lot of guys in that range. Yeah. I mean, there's and then you always have your miss of like, yeah, we'll jump like 60 inches. Dude, no, he didn't. That's the biggest myth that kills me. Okay. Will was an athlete. All right. He was. But I did the calculations one day. What do they say? He has some people said he has like a 46 inch vertical. Will. Yeah. Yeah. And I did the calculations him at seven one. I forgot what it was, but his head would be like 15 inches over the rim. Yeah. And I'm sitting there. I spent hours one day searching for photos. I never found one photo where his head was even at the rim or above. Yeah. You know who's telling the stories? Who? The old. Yes. Yes. Man. And then the Jordan 48. That's somewhat believable. I'm fine with that rumor. But it is a rumor like nobody knows. Yeah. There we didn't have official combine testing, right? And so he was probably tested with a full approach. So he probably ran from the three point line, which if you get guys a full approach, things change. Zach Levine combine 41 Lakers work out when you get a full approach. 46. Yeah. So you had a five inch difference from your 15 foot approach in your in your max, especially if you're one foot jumper because one foot jumpers do much better with more momentum. Yeah. So there's some guys where you see them in the combine get a 45. If they had that full approach, they might be a 49. Yeah. What do you think the practicality of limiting it to 15 feet is? I don't like I would rather see a standing of 15 and a full approach. Yeah. Just whatever. But if I was picking two because I understand they don't have a ton of time. If I was picking two, it would be a standstill and a full approach. Because I want to know what you do with momentum. Yeah. That's a huge thing as an athlete. And we're already getting your raw power from the standing vertical. So what are we really getting from that 15 foot? Exactly. It's kind of like if you're if you're a guard approaching, you're probably approaching from the three point line, right? If we're driving, we're setting up at the three point line. So we have a max approach. If you're a big, you're probably approaching from straight up or from a one step, two step, right? Like 15 foot approach is the least practical. Yeah. Do I now I use it because it's so standardized? Exactly. We have hundreds of NBA players that have been through it. Yeah, exactly. You have to use it just for data and out. Yeah. Because if I'm sitting there breaking down, I want to show you your comparables of like your athleticism is similar to this person. And we just don't have enough data on the full approach. But yeah, if I'm the combine, I don't know why when Switch It Plus it makes a ratings look better because your verticals go up. Yeah, you're going to start flirting with 50 inches every now and then. That's good. That's good. Those things always go viral. Exactly. You think about that too, too, coming down and transition. You know, when the Bronx gets a full head esteem from half core or even, you're honest where you had the highlight where it was, you know, a few inches away from the free throw line this year. Yeah, full head esteem. Well, and that's the other thing. You're never going to get that level of adrenaline in the combine. So you're automatically going to get two, three inches from the adrenaline in a game. So yeah. Anyways, I don't know how we got off on that. But back to mechanics. Back to mechanics. So let me break it down by let's do this. We'll go standing vertical jump. I'm going to give you the couple that I think go wrong the most. And then I'm going to give you approach off to and then I'll give you the approach off one. Now, in the vert code and the vert code elite, we have the mechanic section. We dive pretty deep into all of these different things. I'm just going to give you the two or three for each one that I see the most often and we do these camps 500 players. Like the airs that you see the airs. The airs and we're lucky to have seen hundreds and hundreds of players. And like we go through these camps and we assess 500 kids at a time. Five five hundred elite kid youth basketball players at a time. We do these camps every year. And so we do a lot of recording. We have data on all this stuff. So we can really break it down and say confidently what kids are missing. Right. If you're just a trainer and you just train people one on one or even one on 10. Your database isn't big enough. But we have this and then we have obviously the thousands on the online programs we get the feedback from them too. So we might have the most data on approach jump than anybody ever in history. That's fair. And so these are the things that I see going wrong for a standing vertical jump torso angle. So part of it comes from the myth that we've always got to keep our chest up. Right. We're just always taught that right where we're taught in squats. Keep your chest up. Unfortunately sometimes in deadlifts people say keep your chest up. We don't want to do that on our deadlifts. But yeah, I mean sometimes the instinct gets coached out of the athlete where they would naturally go one way, but they remember a coach saying, Hey, you got to keep your chest up. And so they started doing that and it makes you much more knee dominant, much more quad dominant. Now there is a certain subset of the population who is going to do better with that. They're usually the athletes who are also your great front squatters. So they'll get in the rack and kill a front squat, but they're not strong dead lifters. Right. They're not strong through the hips. They're just powerful through the quads. It's not necessarily where we want to be, especially from an injury prevention standpoint. But so that you got to keep in mind there are some that jump with upright torso. And And then at the other end of the spectrum, there are hip hinges where you're basically bringing your torso almost completely parallel with the floor. So now don't think of a front squat, think of an RDL, right? You start with that minimal knee bend and it's all hip flexion. And then at the bottom, you start to bend your knees. If you took a snapshot of both guys going up, you got the hip dominant and the knee dominant jumper. They look very different going down, but when they transition to go up, if you took a snapshot, they look very similar. So they organize eventually into the same position. It's almost like if you looked at KD shot and you looked at Steph's shot, they bring it up on a different path, but they end up at the same release point or the angle of their hand is very similar at release. And what matters most is that point of release, right? We don't really, I mean, what happens below the chest? Sure it matters, but you can get to that same point by very different strategies. And so that's one reason why we're not going to coach the instinct out of athletes on a standing vertical jump because a lot of times you're going to self-organize and you're just going to do it the right way. I just think it's the opposite of when people listen to coaches and they should be more of a hip dominant and they go, oh, well, that's a bad way to jump. I got to keep my chest up. Coaches the instinct. So I think with standing vertical jump, when it comes to torso angle, coaches do more harm than they do good. That's interesting. So for us, I'm going to kind of let them go on the torso angle and then I'm going to play with it. So we got to figure out how you jump the best because sometimes you might be jumping with an upright torso and I go, hey, try it like this and you do it and all of a sudden you get higher. Well, great. We just fix it. Now let's run with that. But yeah, I'm not going to spend too much time hammering in a certain torso angle. I'm going to let you figure it out. Now here's another issue that coaches make with the higher level coach who have access to technology. So they'll put them on a force plate. Right. And I made this mistake the very first year that I started messing with force plates. Put them on a force plate. You have them drop the hip dominant jumper who likes to really hip hinge and bring their torso down. Their eccentric force is super light. It looks like they produce nothing on the way down. And as a trainer, you go, oh my gosh, they relax. So well, right? Whereas the guy who keeps his chest up and drops, they have a higher, they're putting more pressure on the plate. They have a higher eccentric force. And so typically, like if you relax really well on the way down, that's a good thing. But it's not actually their ability to relax. It's the fact that they're throwing their torso down and your torso is heavy. Exactly. So think about like how would you become lighter on a scale? Like you would kind of lean forward, lift up with your feet a little bit. That's what you're doing when you're going hip dominant. The torso first. Just weight distribution. Yeah, it's weight distribution. So it looks like they produce nothing on the eccentric and they relax super well and coaches freak out. They're like, this is the best athlete. No, you're just being tricked because that's just their strategy. And then if you correlate that hip hinge with the relaxation phase, you're just. Well, the problem is people put too much weight on it because now they go, oh, well, he relax as well. So we don't got a focus on that. I don't know, you do. That's how he jumps. So sometimes you can finesse a test just by changing your mechanics, right? Or some people it's like, well, he does good with the hip hinge. So that means he's really strong in the post chain, but his anterior chain is not strong. So we got to get his quad stronger. Again, this is a test. You can finesse it. So don't all of a sudden correlate muscle strength with how they're jumping. All right. Anyways, so just know that you could jump high from a complete hip hinge. You could jump high from a more of a vertical torso or what most people will do is a little bit of both. So they get closer to like a 45 degree torso angle. So their torso is not parallel to the floor. It's not an RDO. And they're not a front squat where their chest is up. They're somewhere in the middle. Think of like a maybe a trap bar deadly. Exactly. That's where most people will do their best, but like play around with it figured out. Now, we have to work on all styles in some way. So especially if you're a hip hinge, you have to figure out how to also train that upright because in a game, there's a lot of times where you only have time to get up from the position you're in. And so there's a lot of times where you're under the hoop. Think about I'm pushing somebody out with my forearm. Ball goes up. I got to get up as is. I don't have the time to then hip hinge and load up. And then also like with approach jumps, a vertical torso is typically better. You don't want a huge torso collapse on our approach jumps. So either way, if you are that hip hinge dominant jumper, we also have to go the other way. We got to work on both. So continue to strengthen your superpower, but also set up some drills where timing is a factor where you can't load up and you can't get to your perfect strategy. Sometimes it's just like, hey, relax, stand up straight and then just throw a tennis ball up and then just make them react and get up. And the little things with time constraints, things like depth jumps are great. You can't go into a huge torso collapse and still get off the ground quick. There's a lot of different ways to do it, but just know because a lot of trainers think like, oh, if that's how they jump, I'm just going to go all in on that. But just know they're going to see different torso angles and games. So the other side of it, let's say you are good with your chest up. I still want you to be a good hip hinge jumper for one reason and that's for boxing out. Because when you're boxing out, you got to push your butt back into somebody and when you push your butt back, you're now in that torso angle. So now we're in that hip hinge and then ball goes up off the rim. I got to get up from that position. So you have to put yourself in a situation where you got to master both from the strength side. You're going to, I mean, balancing your squats, balancing your deadlifts. That's probably going to take care of it. On the plios side, just putting yourself in different situations like you could do a non-counter movement box jump where you're sitting on the box and then instead of torso completely upright, start in a little bit of a hip hinge. So I'm starting more of that coiled up and then I get up from there or I'm just doing box jumps and I'm starting from my box out position. There's just, there's a lot of different ways that you can go about doing it. Like a kettlebell swing is going to be good for that hip dominant position to build that power. Right. So there's a lot of different things that you got to keep in mind there. But the next one is drop speed. So the eccentric. So there's a lot of miss around this and this gets super complex. So I remember a couple of years ago when you were making the breakthrough with the eccentric dropping, where you're like, I saw where you're balancing out with the, you know, the history was telling you and then what you were discovering on your own. Yeah. So go ahead. A little bit of a breakthrough, but context is everything for this one. So speed. So a lot of us say when you drop the faster you drop into the eccentric, the faster we get up, the higher we get up. Right. And the idea is that the muscle spindle. So like what's causing that stretch reflex? It is, it's responsive to load, but it's responsive to speed. And so if we go fast down, it's theoretically a harder stretch reflex. Now stretch reflex and stretch shortening cycle are not actually the same thing. Stretch reflex is a component of the stretch shortening cycle. And it does still probably have some influence. But anyways, when we go down fast, we should, we should trigger that my, that myotatic reflex. But what we found is that is true in highly trained athletes who have really good strength. So for those athletes, typically when you drop fast, you're going to get up a little bit higher. And that's what most coaches like you go to like a combine training facility where they're trying to get every inch out of the vertical. The key that they're always going to use drop fast, attack the floor. And I like that. Now why I say context is key is because I always went with that thought process and then no fall at Cal State Fullerton. We started messing around. We started doing some different studies. I don't think they published this one, but he was doing untrained. He took a bunch of untrained athletes. And I think he was queuing the speed of the drop. So some of them dropped fast and some of them just relaxed and just did their normal, like gravity take you down. There was no correlation. So speed dropping did not improve the vertical jump. And so I did some more digging and I found out more, there's a lot of studies with beginner athletes. The faster they went down, the lower they jumped. That actually decreased their vertical. So it kind of goes to show you the lower level athletes actually jump higher with less speed on the way down because they don't have the strength to get out of it. Yeah, they got to recruit all the strength on the way up. Yeah. So if I'm taking more speed down, I better have that strength to be able to pop out of that hole. And so you got to figure out what type of athlete you're working with because if your queue is always drop fast, you might actually be decreasing their vertical. Now we want to get you to that point where that does work for you because I mean, obviously we got to build strength. We got to build some general stuff. But like in the vertco, we add speed drops. And so for the, especially if you're lower level athlete, like you got to be doing these, it's basically start up high. And then we're thinking about attacking the floor. So I'm pulling myself down with my hip flexors with my hamstrings. I'm pulling myself to the floor. I'm not letting gravity take me down. And then I reverse out of it as fast as possible. And then I just stop myself. I don't necessarily have to jump as high as I can. I'm strictly working on transitioning out of the bottom. And so we want to start to build that in because we got to work you towards that point to where we have that stretch reflex really trained. in the meantime, let's go! Just remember that if we're trying to get inches out of that athlete who's not trained, let's not cue fast on the way down. Let's let you self organize. The thing is a lot of people figure it out themselves, they'll just relax on the way down, they'll let gravity pull them down. For our higher level athletes, typically we're going to cue speed on the way down. Then there's some athletes where I'm going to mess with it and I'm going to say, "Okay, go fast, see what they get." "Alright, do what's natural, see what they get." "Alright, go a little bit slower, like relax as much as you can, let gravity take you down, see what they get." Sometimes even the higher level athletes, when they don't have that cue of speed, they actually get an inch higher. Everybody's going to be a little bit different here. The best piece of advice is figure out which one you are. In either way, we need to be doing those drills for faster transitions because that's what we want to work towards. But if you're going to get tested, we want what's best for right now. It might not be the same between me and you. I might be doing better with speed, you might be doing better with just normal gravity taking you down. Exactly. So know who you are and know your goal. Yes. Then the other thing with the drop speed, the better we get with our strength training, with our eccentric rate of force development, the more we're going to be going up in this area. The plios that we do is huge. The faster eccentric stuff, like the drop catches that we do, we do these bounce rep squats where you're kind of getting up and then relaxing and catching yourself at the bottom. That kind of stuff where you're building up that eccentric rate of force development. I don't think, again, I keep going back to this. I don't think that your long slow heavy eccentric is going to do that much as far as getting you out of the hole faster. Now it's good for some general strength. Again, that long slow eccentric, that's not eccentric overload. Ecentric overload is lowering a weight that you wouldn't be able to lift concentricly, because you're whatever percentage stronger, eccentricly. So a true eccentric overload would be something where it's like a one leg squat on the way down. And there's no way I can get back up on that one leg. So I have to stand with two or like the old squat. I don't really use this because it's a little more dangerous, but like I'm lowering with a barbell, I got two friends on the side and they help raise it up, which has a little too dangerous. But yeah, lowering slowly on the way down, if you could still lift it, that's not eccentric overload. That's just overloading the time under tension on the eccentric, which is valuable. I mean, if it's about hypertrophy, it's about time under tension. That's all that matters. There's a few other factors, but at the end of the day, time under tension. So you're getting more time under tension on that. So yeah, I mean, I'm fine in our first couple phases doing some eccentric work, but don't think that it's like some sort of magical eccentric overload. It's definitely not. So that's not going to lead to huge results on that speed. That's not even one information right there because I know there's a lot of just casual, even trainers that sit there and don't necessarily know the difference between that. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a huge misconception. And again, I'm not saying that it's bad. I'm saying that there's a purpose for it. Yeah. Yeah. So in this podcast, like a lot, you got to understand context. So like the last video that I put out, I don't know if you saw I put the post on Instagram about running on flat ground. Oh, yeah. And I'm talking about for this phase, for this quality that we're trying to build with top and speed, we don't want hill sprints. We don't want resisted sprints. And then trainers came in on the comments and started describing the benefits of hill sprints. Yeah. I'm like, I know that hill sprints are beneficial. I'm saying it's not a substitution and it's not a good way to build that top and speed like regular flat sprinting wood. It builds speed in other ways. And so we want that in other phases. And that's why when you hear this stuff, you got to take it all in and understand that different things lead to different results. Exactly. So it's not necessarily, I'm not saying eccentric, slow eccentric are bad. I'm saying it's not going to improve this, but it could improve hyperchord. That's ironic. I actually had a client reach out to me. He's on the online program right now and he got to that portion of the phase where he was just like, he reached out to me because he's like, because the reps and the sets were the same for the first time. So he's like, Coach, I got six reps of top and sprints, but it's telling me to work up the first three, do it like 75% of my max get off. Am I doing 18 total sprints? Or am I doing six total sprints in it? Exactly. And he was kind of confused just because the reps, I'm like, in this case, your reps and your sets are the same. I was like, and how long is your respiriate? And he's like, it's two and a half minutes, but I don't even feel tired. And I'm like, exactly. And I use the computer analogy. I'm like, consider yourself as a computer. And everything that you do on the program is a certain set of code. You know what I mean? That has an overall purpose, which is towards your goal. But you can't look at everything isolated and understand that the programming may be above your current understanding. Yeah. Which is the thing. That's the quote right there. The programming might be above your current understanding because we get so many people that are really trying to understand. And I like that. That's cool. But just know that you're not going to fully. You're not, and I'm going to do my best to describe everything, but you're not going to fully understand everything. And as an athlete, it's arguably, if you're the athlete, that's kind of a better place to be in anyway. Is you want to take as much away from a conscious aspect and be as subconscious as possible with what you do. Yeah. Anyways, let's move on to approach. So approach jump off to the number one issue is penultimate. The most important aspect of the double leg jump. And I'll give you two little subcategories here. So for the penultimate, length and lift, those are the two that we see over and over and over again going wrong. Length means you're not getting long enough. So you're penultimate second to last step. So if I'm stepping in right left jump, when I'm pushing from left to right, that's second to last try. That is my penultimate. And I want to make that a long stride. So my third to last step is more of a short stride. My second to last step should be elongated. It does a lot of things. It sets the trajectory for the takeoff. It sets our hips up in a good low position. So with that long penultimate, we're stepping in at a lower position. And so it's so essential that you have length. So I had one guy tell me, man, we should have a compilation of just all the stuff that trainers have said to me that I disagree with. So one trainer told me penultimate length doesn't matter. And he said it doesn't matter because if length mattered, then you could just bound into it. So he's saying like, well, if that was true, then you would jump into the penultimate. That's like me saying, yeah, he'll sprints are bad because if you run up a cliff, you fall off. Like if you take anything to the complete extreme, yeah, it's no longer going to be good. It doesn't necessarily mean that length is bad. And this is just you see the evidence everywhere. Every good, I'll say 99% of great two foot jumpers have any elongated penultimate. Now the goal is never more length. It's not like, hey, I got to get as long as possible. It's just I want this to be pretty long. And that doesn't just come from your anthropometrics. It doesn't come from your your leg length. That's another myth because even the small guys have great penultimate steps. It comes down to how hard you're pushing into that step. So just like with sprint speed, it's not just about length, it's about how much force you apply. So if I'm in sprinting, if I'm getting out of the gate and I apply a lot of force, my stride length increases. It doesn't increase by me reaching further. I applied more force and so I went further, more displacement. That's the same thing with the penultimate. If I'm pushing, if I'm stepping into my penultimate, I'm not going anywhere. If I'm pushing, then I'm going to create that distance. I'm going to create that length. So length is a very, very, very big one. And then the, yeah, and then the other one is lift. And this one is one of the most common. Now some super elastic jumpers do good with a lift because it's almost like you were running to jump on like a mini trampoline jump off where they actually kind of have this initial jump and then they bounce. It's very rare if you're listening to this. It's probably not you. If you want to see somebody who's actually good with that, go see, have you ever seen Dexton on Instagram? Dexton for something like that. I don't know. He's a little guy. Like little guy, but he just has like crazy dunk videos. Like super little. He's a lot for him. So he's a guy that lifts a little bit into his penultimate and he does a lot of different things that defy gravity because he lifts and then he also doesn't use a turn stance. He goes just toaster straightforward. Like he breaks all of our rules and he does really good. So like there's always exceptions. But still the 99% there's still going to be the ones that don't lift. So what I mean by lift is like, again, if I'm jumping right left and my penultimate is that left to right push, if I'm going off that left and I lift upwards, you don't want to lift up to go down. If you're watching somebody's head, their head as they get into the penultimate should be aiming downwards. Sometimes it'll be straight horizontal, but most of the time it's actually going to go down or the better thing to track would actually be their hip. If you looked at their hip and you drew a line through their penultimate, that hip should be either going horizontal or slight downward. But a lot of times you're going to see if you draw a line with that hip, it actually lifts up. That hip lifts, now we're getting to that ground contact and now we have to lower. We have to drop all the way back in the eccentric, hit the amortization, go back into the concentric, valuable ground contact time. So if I have point whatever 3.4. seconds to produce force, I don't want to spend all of that ground contact time absorbing force, right? You would have to spend at least half of that time absorbing. Now you only have.1.2 seconds to produce force. I want more time for force production. That's why we want that hip to be in position for explosion. We're stepping in, on that right left example, when my left foot hits, I should be at my lowest position. There should be no more lowering. I step in actually with a little bit of pretension. From there, everything is up because then all of our ground contact goes towards force production. Now, if you wanted to take that to the crazy, you'd say, "Well, if longer force ground contact time is better, then why don't I just purposely go slow?" So if you increase your ground contact time past a certain point, you lose that momentum, that energy that you can build up in the run-up. So now it's just you versus the world. Yeah, it's just peer-uverse gravity, right? And those are the guys that jump the same from the standstill and the same from running. They don't use that energy. So you've got to find the perfect ground contact time. The shortest ground contact time isn't always the best. If I go the shortest, I'm going to build up speed, and then I'm just going to tip toe off the ground. No real force into the ground. I'm just tiptoeing. If I were to spend long ground contact and go max force, then I would run and I would load up super low and it would kill my momentum. But you want to be somewhere in the middle. And there's always going to be a spectrum. You're going to get your speed jumpers who do really well with like really short ground contact times. They build up big speed and they just get off the ground super quick. They rely on that momentum. And then you're going to have guys who do get to a really deep angle, but they still use that run up and they get up. So there's always going to be, it's always going to be that spectrum. But what is going to kill it is going to be that lift. So we use one drill in the vert code and I've talked about this before. It's such a simple drill that I don't know why everybody doesn't do it. So all it is is a band-resistant penultimate step. And so all you do is you hook yourself up to a band and you say, okay, go into your pen ultimate. Well, the band does two things. If you have band tension and you try to cover distance or you don't try to cover distance and you do what you're used to of stepping in instead of pushing into the pen ultimate, you know, well, you don't go anywhere. If I'm stepping with band tension, I stay the same. And it gives you that feedback that you need. And you go, hey, man, I told you to get far. You didn't get far. What happened? And then they self-organize and they go, oh, I got to get to that point. Boom. All of a sudden they push in to the pen ultimate step. And then the other thing that the band does is if you have band tension around your hip and you lift into the pen ultimate step, have you ever lifted high with a band? You get pulled back. Exactly. That's the best tool. Yes. You need to be, you need to fall down on your back and realize, hey, that is not where we want to be. You got to push low, a low center of gravity. Now that band is not going to pull you back. You're beating the band. The band is not beating you. Now does that mean that you can do that and all of a sudden it's fixed? No. This is just the primer. This is just a feedback tool for you to learn. And then you get out of the band and then you go work on your dunks or you go work on your mechanics. And now all of a sudden stuff is cleaned up. I've seen this stuff be improved in one session just by hooking somebody up to a band. Just being like, hey, get from here to here. So easy. And then like we always talk about it, you skip that conscious stage, which is huge for basketball players. The more conscious we make, the more words I use, the more conscious it becomes. The more conscious it becomes, the slower they get. The more you think the slower your feet get. That's the classic quote. And it's so true. We've all been in that situation where you're overthinking and all of a sudden your performance suffers big time. Whereas when you're just like natural and intuitive and as a conscious level, bro, you perform at a whole other level. So that's the balance that you're walking when you're teaching mechanics. Because again, we don't want to coach the instinct out of you. So my rule is like, I'm going to try to use less than five words. Like if I'm teaching this to you in person, I'm going to try to just show it and then say, okay, do this. And let's see if you can do it. If you don't, then I'm going to use a cup words. I'm going to go, okay, watch how I do this. Watch where my foot is. Can you mimic that? Right? If they can't do that, okay. Now I'll use four words, five words. We'll go more and more and some people need it broken down to the exact detail to get it. But I know if I use five words, it's going to be conscious. If I use ten words, that's even more conscious. If I use fifteen words, that's even more conscious. And the more conscious it becomes, the longer it takes to build back to the subconscious. Of course, given that you're going to go out and do the reps every day. Exactly. The amount of reps just continues. But with something like a band, that doesn't even hit the conscious. You literally just made a change at the subconscious level because you let them feel it instead of hear it. You let them feel what they're doing wrong, instead of hearing what they're doing wrong. So now they can step in and boom, we get a big improvement. And that's a big thing. Like anytime we're looking for mechanics improvements, we want to do the best job we can of just putting you in situations to feel it yourself. Because if we don't have to coach it, we're not going to. And you always, when you're going to make a change on your mechanics, you always got to ask yourself, is it worth it right now? There's times where we'll get an NBA player and I see something and I'm thinking I could improve his vertical by three inches and I don't make the change. And the reason is it's probably not that time of year. Maybe we got them in August. And I'm sitting there like, I can make the appropriate change by September, but could it become fully in the subconscious, you know, by October? I don't know, especially if we're going, well, what are they doing on the court? Well, he's learning this move and that move. He's adding to his bag. He's not just maintaining. Sometimes you could guys who are just like, look, I'm just going to maintain my shot so I could focus on other areas. Shoot. You might have a guy who's really trying to improve a certain skill. That's more learning. You might have a guy who's trying to learn his team plays, right? You don't want to keep compounding that. And you have, at some point you have competing stimuli. And I don't want my jump mechanics to be competing with what's happening on the court. So you got to be very careful. You got to understand their overall schedule of where they're at as a player. That's super important as far as just being a trainer and understanding, being devoid of your ego. Like that's a perfect example of why as a trainer, it's important to not have an ego with what you're doing because of what you're just saying. Like you sacrificed, you know, even though it looked great for what you do personally to add that three inches. You know, you care more about the athlete in a hole. It's like, okay, I may be offering a competing stimuli where it's going to jack you. It could be that one thing that just throws everything out the gate for what he was trying to improve this entire offseason. Yep. So, yeah, that's. Yeah, I mean, you don't want to. So a big thing in the learning, and I don't want to go too far, but I like to rant. So, you don't. Okay, so I'm cool with people learning a lot at one time. But again, at some point it does become a competing stimuli. So a big part of improvement is in the reflection process after the session. Remember, the improvement doesn't necessarily happen while you're there. It's when you go home and you're thinking about all of those reps over and over and over again. It's really sitting in your brain. So you get some improvements in the session, but a lot of it happens in the reflection process. So if I'm trying to go all in on improving my jump shot, I'm changing my form or I'm working on this skill or I'm learning my team plays, that reflection process has to be there. So if I give you five different things to learn, your reflection process is now split between five things. That's not good. It's not your mastery. It's like, okay, if you told me you have to master calculus and I hate math. If you have to master calculus, if you have to master calculus in the next two months or you're going to die, you either get to just folks on calculus for two hours a day or for two hours a day, you can do calculus and then an hour of history and then an hour of social studies or whatever else. Well you could look at and say, well, you're getting two hours of calculus either way. You're getting the same. But because I'm splitting my time, I now have competing stimuli and I don't have that same time or that same time or mental focus for the reflection process on the calculus that I just learned. Yeah. Is that all the, I think is, I think is Bruce Lee, the whole, the quote, the man is more dangerous. The man who practices the same kick 10,000 times is more dangerous than the man who practices 10,000 kicks. Love that quote. Love that quote. So now when I'm building like, okay, so then you might take that and say, so you don't think school is important. You think they should just master one thing from age five? Well, again, now let's go back to what we always talk about. General into specific. Exactly. So general when at those younger ages expand the brain, tap into new parts. Like I don't use math that much right now, but it, I do believe it tapped into a certain part of my brain or because I was so bad at it, I had to open up a new part of my brain to figure out how to get good at it. Same thing like you expanded your mind by doing all these different things, even though you don't use it now. And then at some point you got to transition into the specifics. Same thing with training. We're working general where I'm fine with working on all these different things and then eventually we got to get into the specifics. That's no different. Anyways, that was a nice little tangent, but we were talking. about teaching. So yeah, I mean, you got to know your time of years. Now, if you come to me, you come to me in March, April, May, hey, we got time. And then I'm looking at like, oh, you're on the same team, you already got those plays master, master, you're going all in on a couple of skills that you already have on the court. Great. You got plenty of brain space to make this change. So then we'll make the change and we'll rip it out every day. And a lot of times, even at the NBA level, you'll see positive gains. The only time that it's really almost always a non-negotiable that I'm going to make the change is if I think it's going to lead to an injury. So if you're jumping from a position that could lead to an injury, I don't care where you're at in the overall process, I'm the most important skills trainers, you stop there, you do less team stuff, you do less. I got to fix this because we need him healthy landing mechanics. That's something like we'll always clean that up or something that is very separate from the game, because remember as Hooper's, we do a good job of separating things. So like, if you have a bad hip hinge in the weight room, and basically whatever you got going on, I feel like I can teach you the hip hinge in the weight room, because they can separate it. They can go, okay, I'm learning this in here. When I get on the court, it's not like I'm going into a crossover where I'm pulling up for a jump shot and thinking hip hinge, these are separate worlds. So it's not as much of a competing stimuli, whereas if I'm saying like, hey, the way that you are pulling up on a jump shot, you got to work on your hip hinge. Well, now you put that into their realm, you put that into basketball. And so now every time they pull up for a jump shot, they're going to think hip hinge. And so you now change the brain's focus, which can absolutely change a ton of things, it can change your mechanics, right? Movement and intent are linked. So when we have a different intent in the brain, the movement that follows is not the same. It's not the same motor pathway. So yeah, I mean, like if it's in the weight room, and I'm trying to teach, we're pretty safe doing it any time of the year. But when it has to do something like jumping where they're going to be doing on the court, I can't have them thinking about that. So if we're going to make the change, it's going to be early off season, maybe in the mid off season. I like that. Yeah. And then if you say your youth, because I want to, because I know there's a bunch of kids like, what if I'm not in the NBA? What if you know what I mean? Because there's no, like that's one problem with club basketball is because there's a blurred line of what is the Aussies? And you know what I mean, kids care so much about their club basketball experience that they don't know when the right time to build is because they don't know if they're looking towards what's more important their high school season, their club season, they end up playing year round where they got like three weeks off. Yeah, well, the real secret is nothing actually matters. Exactly. Like who cares? Yes, just go get better every single day. Just go get better. It's whatever this age. Like, okay, if you're a junior senior, yeah, we got to go out and perform. If you're a seventh grader, you're probably not going to get recruited today, unless you are at the top. And if you're at the top, you're going to get recruit later anyway. Exactly. So who cares? Yeah, but like that club season, man, just just go get better. That is your off season. And if that is not your off season, and you have so much competing demands on the court, you got a question if that club team has the right intentions. Because you need enough time to train. That's a number one priority. Exactly. Like I love that clubs get guys to play. That's great. But if you have so many practices per week and so many tournaments and you can't train, you got to step back and be like, well, maybe this isn't the best option for me. Maybe you go to that club director and you say, Hey, man, we're in, but we're only halfway. Like we'll do the tournaments, but we're not trying to win any trophies. We're not trying to be the MVP of this tournament. We're just trying to get better right now. Exactly. So yeah, um, anyways, so that's for length and lift, um, turnstance verse straight stance. So this is number two, turnstances, what we always talk about. So that is basically if I'm planting right left to take off my, my chest would be facing the right side of the basket. So being aimed towards like the the court, the right side of the, the backboard, right, whereas your square stance is your toes pointed straight forward towards a rim and your chest pointed straight forward towards a rim. We don't have enough deceleration capabilities in that stance. So run through this in your mind. If I was going to, if I'm going to take you 40, right, any distance, whatever, we'll say 40 are dashed, take off goes fast as you can. All right, are you doing it in your mind? Fast as you can. Now I'm going to randomly tell you, stop. What do you do? You didn't do it with your toes forward. You were going too fast. That's not a good way to decelerate. You turned, you did a hockey stop. So you turned your body to decelerate because that's the best way to decelerate. So it's no different when we're jumping. Now, when we're jumping, when I say decelerate, that doesn't mean we're stopping. We don't want to kill moments and we're transitioning. Yeah, transferring. But that's still the most effective way to do it. So we step in and I'm going right left and I'm turning my body slightly to the right, not too much. I'm doing like a full 90 degree turn, but maybe like half of that. And then I'm taking off. And that is the best way to be able to decelerate horizontally and transition vertically. Do you need to be able to jump from a square stance? Yes, because there is going to be times, right? If I'm driving left and you're on my hip, there's a lot of times where and I started kind of on the right side of the hoop. And I'm going towards the middle. There's times where the only angle I'm going to be able to get is me facing the basket. I'm not going to be able to turn because that turn would be turning into you. Yeah. So there's a lot of situations where you do have to go off. But as far as like jumping as high as you can in open space, right? You're going to get a dunk. You're going to get a big rebound. You're going to get a block. That's what you would want to get to is that turn stance. That's one area where you can make really quick improvements, add several inches just on improving that. And I do think it it leads to better health because stopping anytime you're decelerating with your toes where you're going when you when your toes are pointing straight forward and you stop. That's a lot of stress to the anterior compartment of the knees front of the knee. Tell it to get a lot of stress. Just like an outside footstop in basketball, like a hard diesel with a toe point straight forward. That is so that's no glue. That is all quad dominant knee down. And when you get that turn, now we get the hip structure involved. I would rather be absorbing a lot more of that force through the hips instead of just through the knees. So I think from a longevity perspective, it also makes more sense to get to that turn stance. Right. And then I mean, just let's think about it logically. If I tell you to go as fast as you can and you don't hit that turn and you jump, you're not going to be able to get straight up. You're going to fade. You're going to jump forward. So you're going to have a combination of height and distance. That's not what we want. If we want max height, we don't want to get distance. Even even on the defensive side of the ball when you think about rotating over from a defensive position, you just want to offer a good contest. If you don't have the ability to stop your forward momentum and transfer it vertically. Exactly. You're going to be out of the game exactly. Well, and the handling over guys getting it. And most of coaches will say, well, we just got a chopper feet. Yeah, that's not the best way to decel. That's not the best way to decel. Maybe we should talk about that on another podcast decelerate of why chopping your feet may not be the best in every situation. There's a few situations where it makes a little bit of sense. But overall, that is not the best way to decelerate. Yeah, we should do an entire episode on just like the traditional coaches miss. That's a good one. That's of like defensively like turning your foot lead point and slide. Like there's a lot of good ones that we don't. Gosh, that one's crazy important. The opening up your foot on the defensive side. And that one's still you could walk your ass 75% of the gym in the country. See all the kids opening all the time. Okay. So where were we turn stands for straight stance. That's pretty simple. I mean, this one, go watch Vince Carter. Go watch Michael Jordan. Like all these guys have perfect turn stances. So you can really learn from watching these guys. All right. Let's move on to the one foot jump. So number one is stiffness. And so we talk about this all the time. When you're stepping into that one foot jump, we need the right amount of stiffness. Now, some people are power jumpers where even off one foot, they get a little bit deeper. So they might get a 90 degree knee angle. Most people, especially hoopers are not going to be those deep low jumpers are going to be more of a LeBron where the knee is almost stiff. Yeah. And you're relying on the momentum from the run up. And that stiffness is the key. Now, this isn't necessarily a mechanics thing. It's one of those things where you improve the structure, which takes care of the mechanics. So improving your single leg jump stiffness. I've never been able to do it by saying like, Hey, try to keep your knee stiffer. It's like, sounds like you dangerous Q. Yeah, no, it is it's it's more so let's build that trait in the weight room. And then let's see if we can gradually transition it into pliers. And then let's see if we can eventually get that into your single leg jumps. So yeah, that's I put it under mechanics, but it's not necessarily a mechanical fix. It's a structural fix, which then takes care of the mechanics. Anyways, like, have you ever had it where your fast break bringing in a bunch of speed and then your leg gives out you go to go off one leg and your leg gives out. That was right. I mean, the first time that coming back from my meniscence injury when I tried to rush a bagging like freshman year high school, I was coming off fast break and that happened to me. And I thought, you know, I thought I destroyed my knee, but it was literally just that. I had coming off of injury. I hadn't read, you know, I mean, organized in terms of having that straight leg approach. Yeah, - Yeah. And what is that? I think there's a lot of factors. I think one of the factors is the GTOs, Goldie Tenden organ. So basically it's your mom in attendance. So you know you're-- - Tell her you want to do it. - Yeah. - It's too dangerous bail. - Yes, yes. I think of the GTOs as like a overprotective mom. But they're right. That's the thing. You're the kid, you little shit kid. It's like I'm gonna go do this. And your mom's like yeah, don't do that. And she was right. And that's what the GTO is. It's like you go to produce this high force. And the GTO is like yeah, don't do that. We're gonna seriously get hurt if you continue to do that. And so it'll actually just relax the muscle. So it's like if you go to pick up the heaviest dumbbell and you don't tell yourself to stop. Like you start to do it, your GTOs realize it's too heavy and you just relaxes the muscle. So like you give up, but you didn't make the conscious decision to give up. You're an idiot. You were gonna keep trying to pull. The GTO is the protective mom sitting there in the tendon. And so that's one of those things. Like you know, I've never been double jumped where you're on a trampoline. And you're jumping with your friend and you're at that perfect timing where you're about to just take off. You could get 50 feet if you get that perfect timing. But you go to get it and it's so much force that your legs just buckle and you just fall. That's happened to everybody who jumps on a trampoline with their friends. - Yeah, that's something about, oh that's what was happening. - Yeah, so that's not like a lack of like concentric strength and concentric power. It's just you weren't able to stay stiff and absorb all of that force. And again, I think that's the GTO. Like, yo man, she'll come home. Don't go out. Don't go out to the club, come home. And so the good thing is that's trainable. So we get in the weight room. We've talked about with like our heavy isometrics that we use in the vert code. Plenty of stuff that we can do there. To train that stiffness and start to get really good absorption. Any type of plios. Any stuff where it's like short ground contact plios is typically pretty good here. So you're bounding type stuff. We do a lot of bounds overall in the vert code. A lot of different variations to the bound. Ranging from sub-maximal bounds to all out maximal bounds. Skips, anything where you're producing high force with a very short range of motion. Where it's actually a little bit more ankle dominant. So it's like a little bit of knee flexion, a little bit of hip flexion. But most of the range of motion is happening at the ankle. - Yeah, just popping. - Whereas if you're like loading up for a counter movement jump, you're more like hip and knee. And you're dipping down low into those joint angles. So like I give the cue be more of a deer and less of a lion. So look, I want to build lions. I want to build that power. But there's also times where I want you to be a deer where you're running effortless and fluid. Yeah. And so a lot of times like we get these guys who are lions. They can produce that force here in Paladin. And they're these two foot jumpers. But like when it comes to speed, right? Like you're on a fast break and you got LeBron coming right behind you and I got to get up quick. Yeah, we're going to want to be a deer. Because we don't have the time to load up like a lion in these deep ranges of motion. And the reason I say a lion, have you ever seen like a lion or a tiger jump? - Yeah, you got that one video where you just want to be able to be over the clouds. - That's so sick. - Oh my gosh. - Yeah, so that stiffness, huge man, huge. The more we can absorb, the more speed we can bring in, the higher we can jump. That is the limiting factor for a lot of single leg jumpers. Okay. And then number two there is coordinating the arm swing. The arm swing is so awkward for a single leg jump. You think about it like, you know, off our two foot approach, we teach, if you don't have the ball, let's get a big counter movement arm swing. A lot of the best are getting their pinky least even with their ears, some of them like, kill Ganon and these guys, it's way up above their head. But yeah, I mean, the arm swing is huge. It's a significant part of your vertical jump, but like one foot, even if you don't have the ball and you're going to catch a lot, we can't afford to have that big of an arm swing because it's too short of a ground contact time. Right, the ground contact time is half on a single leg jump than it would be on a double leg jump. It depends on the individual, but it's probably gonna be half. And so we don't have the time to get that big counter movement arm swing. So you go with these little like kind of like chicken wing things. Yeah, I've heard some people call it the chicken wing or you're kind of just here with like this half arm swing bent arm get up, but it's really, really tough. And then especially once we get the basketball, how do we still swing our arms? So you really? You sure? Yeah, well, you have two options basically. The two options that we teach in the vert code, cross swing. So if I'm taking off with my left foot, as I'm stepping with that left, I'm bringing the ball to that left hip. So then that right leg is back behind me. And now I'm coming up rapidly, explosively with that right leg to drive and I'm driving with the ball at the same time. For most people, this just comes natural. A lot of people though, it does not. So that is one way because we're not getting an arm swing from the back, but we're getting that momentum from that cross rip. Other beautiful thing about this is the torso is highly involved. So now it's not just your arms and it's not just your legs. Your torso is coiling and uncoyling. And we can get a lot of kind of rotational power that adds to the overall jump. Just a picture of LeBron on the fast bridge. Yeah, LeBron is the perfect one because you'll see they don't just do it with the ball. They, if I'm dipping the ball to that left hip, my right shoulder goes with it a little bit. Yeah, LeBron just me. Yeah, boom. And then it's just a hard rip Zion. Oh, yeah. And these guys are incredible at doing this. All right. And then the other one is my go to, that's the one hand pick. That's the AI style. That's the Kyrie like this. Lamello ball likes this. Lonzo ball likes this. Zach Levine likes this. Cam Reddish likes, there's just a ton of guys that get to this and they jump significantly higher when they get this. Jordan. Jordan's. Yeah, well, Jordan could also, he's different because he could palm it like crazy. Because what I'm talking about is like, there's a lot of guards that do it. There's a lot of this floating in. Yeah, like I can't palm it. And when I post about this, everybody's like, yeah, but they can all palm it. Yeah, exactly. I can't do it. I can't palm it off the dribble. No chance, but I still do better with that. All you got to do, there's a difference between palming the ball and gripping the ball. I can't palm it, but I can get a good enough grip to balance it in my hand. Right. So I can get it here and then I'm bringing it up. And a lot of times you reset in the air. So you'll bring that other hand because you don't have enough stability. So you go up with one, you bring the right to restabilize it and then you'll kind of like cock back a little bit and you'll dunk. Depending on where you dunk packages. The reason that that is so beneficial is because, look, if I put the ball in one hand, I now have a free arm. And so now I can go cross, think about your sprinting mechanics. When right knee goes up, left hand goes up. And now we get that and that is a very natural way to just add a bunch of extra power and keep it nice and fluid. So I'm here, boom, big arm swing with that left hand and then I'm up. And so now once I'm in the air, it's whatever. I can keep it in one hand if I got a good grip or I can touch and reset. But like I jump significantly higher with that. It's a skill thing. It's like whatever you've rep the most, you're gonna be better at. But there's a lot of guys who will get two, three, four, five inches higher when they master that one arm. Yeah. Kyrie's definitely the guy I picture when I think about it. Yeah, Kyrie loves it. And I like to study guys that aren't explosive who still get it done. Like they're not big jumpers. Like Lamello Ball is not a big jumper and he's tall now. But back when he was like six, four, six, five and he was first getting his dunks. Yeah. He was not, he's not a jumper man. You could see like when you do enough force plate tests, you can see force. Yeah. I don't need to test like a C. How you apply force and he's not producing anymore. He's not producing any force. And he was still getting it done, like still getting some decent dunks. Yeah. It's because he's kind of just like squirming and wiggly with that. Like he had, he actually had really good single leg jump mechanics with that one hand pickup. Yeah, Lonzo. Lonzo's good man. And Lonzo does a low one hand pickup. So a high one hand pickup. So like an AI I pick it up at my shoulder height. That's the one that I like. It's kind of like the old Statue of Liberty Dunks. Yeah, it's like a Statue of Liberty. Lonzo, Zach Levine, they would pound and then they'd pick up underhand from the hip level. And then it's up. So they actually get a little bit more arm swing with that hand. Yeah, with the-- My hands aren't big enough. It would be too high of a risk in a game for me to pick up low and swing with one hand. Because I got tiny little hands. You ever seen the Burger King commercial where he's got the big burger in the little hands? That's me. That's funny. And so I don't want to put the ball in one hand because I'm that guy from the Burger King commercial. The ball's going. Yeah, we don't want that. So I played a little safer where I'm here. I'll pick it up with two. And then I'll get it to one hand at the shoulder. And then I got plenty of time to swing. Either way, I want you to mess with the cross. And I want you to mess with the one hand pick up. Figure out which one you're better at. Certain game situations to call from. Because hey, if you're just a one hand pick up guy and now you're in traffic, well, that one hand pick up is not very safe. If you're a cross swing guy and you have a guy right on your hip, that's not very safe. That's what I'm going to do. But-- Don't bring the ball down. This is another area where people coach the instinct out of the player. So sometimes that's the right thing of like, hey, don't cross it if they keep getting stripped. And they don't know how to use it. But the guys who are intuitive and play out feel they know when somebody is here. And so they're not going to get to that cross swing. But then they get in a situation where they got enough open space. Even if they got a guy behind them, they feel like they could still get to that cross swing. And now their coach told him, hey, never do that cross swing. Now you're jumping four inches less because your coach coached the instinct out of you. Everything has a situation. situation. So yeah, that's some ways like with that cross-swing, we have a lot of different ways that we build it in the vert code. We do a lot of core stuff that's kind of like opposite from low to high. In phase 10, we have a basically a box drop where you have a dumbbell and we drop off and then we punch. So as I'm landing, I'm dropping. My right foot is on the box and it's not a high box. I drop off and I'm going to land on my left foot on the ground. As that left foot is hitting, I'm punching as hard as I can with that dumbbell across to the outside of my left knee. So one, that's nice because I'm adding extra force to be absorbed on that leg by punching downwards with weight. Right. So now I got to absorb more force, but now to get out of that position and get back on the box, I have to have this cross-rip. So now I got to rip that dumbbell back up and what did I just get? I get that core coil and it's resisted because I have that dumbbell. Yeah, wait, wait, wait to get there and then once you get there, you're going to like it. Yeah, like it's just it's a very smooth exercise and you start to feel like, oh, that's how I start to build in that that power. And I've seen this, I used a lot of this, the core stuff, I mean, think of like your low to high child, right? That's on the general level, but that's building those right muscles. And so I used a lot of that type of stuff for this reason in my first program six, seven years ago. And then pretty recently, I've seen some articles where people are starting to come up with some good ideas like different Med Ball Tosses, cross Med Ball Tosses. I saw somebody do an article, I don't know the guy's name. But he was doing some cross Med Ball Tosses. That makes a lot of sense. To start to get the the cord actually do what is supposed to do in that vertical so you can jump more like LeBron and less like a just a stiff guy relying on peer muscle. Okay, so yeah, those are the those are the different styles. And then obviously for our approach off to the biggest problem is lacking the opposite of what you're comfortable with. So if you're right left you suck it left right. We want to balance those two out. Yeah. Will you probably also have always have some sort of imbalance? Yes. But I want you to even it out as much as you can. The more you become even the more lethal we are in games. Because remember, I want you to master that go to because yeah, I understand you want to throw down windmill dunks, but I don't want you to be a warm up dunker. I want you to be an in game reactionary. You can don't you can get up in certain situations to extend off the glass like I want your vertical to improve your game. That's the goal. For me, yeah, right? Like if you want to be a professional dunker, that's an entirely different goal. Right. And that's cool. Vert co can help you with both, but we're more so on that side of we're going to build balance and we're going to also work on those weaknesses because if it's about basketball, it's about balance. And then the same for that one foot like this is the imbalance is even more drastic. If you're right handed, you're going to be jumping off that left foot all like 90% of time unless you're a John wall, but there's a few cases, but yeah, I mean going off that right leg. And like we've talked about before, like you're not going to clear that up in the weight room because you're going to clear that up by working on the skill of jumping because again, like me and most athletes, we jump off our left, but our right leg is stronger weight room wise. A standing vertical jump my right leg is more because that's more strength and power running. It's about skill. It's about what did you build what kind of childhood reps did you get and I got more with my left leg. And so that's always going to be ahead, but like when it comes to balancing it, people just go, oh, yeah, I just got to get strong on both legs. No, it's not it has not it. You got to go get real life reps. Yeah. And so man, we do it very we do so like 20 minute dunk sessions will progress will go 10 minute dunk sessions and then later will go 20 minute dunk sessions. And so basically for a certain amount of time, like the first 10 minutes, I want you to go off your go to's. So it's left leg and it's a right left plan or whatever you like the last 10 minutes, it's all weakness. And I want you to freestyle and have fun with it, but you have to do all the stuff that you suck at. That's perfect. So you're going and you're trying to dunk you're trying to dunk off your right foot. You're trying to dunk left right whatever it is. You're trying to dunk with your you're trying to jump off your right and dunk with your right and just like do different stuff that you hate to do and you would never naturally do on your own. But you start to really balance out and then you notice little things like you're finishing options all of a sudden go to the roof because you're so used to going being good off that left leg. But now you go off that right leg and now we can finish with either hand because we actually have some general coordination in the air. Like there's so many areas that it improves when you get better off. Oh yeah, exactly that's argued the most important factor. Yeah, the amount that you're going to increase your game just by having the ability to control yourself going off that opposite foot right. Right. Right. Right. All right guys, thanks for watching episode eight. I really enjoyed this one. If you're willing to apply this stuff and stay patient with your jump mechanics. Trust me, you can make a huge transformation. Mechanics is half the battle. It's boring. It's tough to get through, but it's so important for your long term development in your vertical jump. Hey, be sure to check out PJ performance dot net off season is all about the gains and hey, even in season we got guys making gains. We got guys making crazy transformation in their vertical jump. They're explosiveness. They're balanced or core strength. We basically every serious athletic trait that you got a master. We include in the programs. So let's get after it. What are you waiting for?