jumping higher

[vinceforheismen]

hey, i was wondering what excercies would help me add a couple inches to my verticle leap. could anyone help me? i dont play basketball on a team but i play for fun and i am so close to dunking on nba regulation 10 foot rim. i can get rim jumping but when i try with the ball i get stuffed by the rim. gracias

 

[CowPimp]

What is your current status with resistance training?

 

[vinceforheismen]

huh? lol sorry im kinda new to weightlifting lingo

 

[CowPimp]

How long have you been lifting weights, or have you ever lifted weights? What kind of program have you been following?

You can always practice technique too. I honestly couldn't explain the form of an optimal vertical leap to you, but you could research it. That could help you without getting stronger or more powerful.

 

[Squaggleboggin]

I agree. I'd be willing to bet a small sum of money not greater than .5% of the total funds legally binded to my name that if you improved your technique dramatically, you'd easily get the extra couple inches you need.

 

[Duncans Donuts]

Here's a tip: practice jumping in a context that is related to how you will use the affect, IE if you are doing it for basketball practice jumping in basketball situations.

Work on improving your muscular size. Squats, Leg presses, Bottom-pause Squats, Nautilus Hip/Back Machine is a good one.

Summary: Train your legs for strength, Train your legs for jumping in a different context, and you will improve.

 

[camarosuper6]

Another tip:

Volume rules.

if your not doing 40 sets of everything, youll never get better.

lmao

 

[Squaggleboggin]

Here's a tip: practice jumping in a context that is related to how you will use the affect, IE if you are doing it for basketball practice jumping in basketball situations.

Work on improving your muscular size. Squats, Leg presses, Bottom-pause Squats, Nautilus Hip/Back Machine is a good one.

Summary: Train your legs for strength, Train your legs for jumping in a different context, and you will improve.

Wouldn't training the legs for explosiveness perhaps be a better option? I just figured that, because jumping is focused on power, the exercises should be too. Maybe explosive exercises are too advanced for a newcomer and that's where you're coming from, or perhaps I'm just a little off base in my thinking. Of course, this isn't to say that I think strength training isn't a good idea, I just think that implementing power might serve him better for this in particular.

 

[Duncans Donuts]

Wouldn't training the legs for explosiveness perhaps be a better option? I just figured that, because jumping is focused on power, the exercises should be too. Maybe explosive exercises are too advanced for a newcomer and that's where you're coming from, or perhaps I'm just a little off base in my thinking. Of course, this isn't to say that I think strength training isn't a good idea, I just think that implementing power might serve him better for this in particular.

No, I think jumping is a complex neuromuscularl action that has no correlative association with so called "power" exercises.

The jump is the ability to coordinate and harness "power", the training itself is to increase the power potential. Most here disagree, but show me someone mimicking a jump in a weight training exercis and I'll show you a huge potential for disaster.

Slow exercises in the gym don't create slow athletes.

 

[Squaggleboggin]

No, I think jumping is a complex neuromuscularl action that has no correlative association with so called "power" exercises.

The jump is the ability to coordinate and harness "power", the training itself is to increase the power potential. Most here disagree, but show me someone mimicking a jump in a weight training exercis and I'll show you a huge potential for disaster.

Slow exercises in the gym don't create slow athletes.

No correlative association? Isn't a jump the perfect example of power - strength applied over a short period of time?

And isn't the best way to increase the power potential to use the method of training what needs to be trained? Olympic lifts are essentially jumps with weights and olympic lifters suffer very few injuries compared to most sports. In addition, olympic lifters would humiliate powerlifters in a comparison of a vertical leap, and that's a perfect example of explosive lifting vs. simply strength training.

I wasn't suggesting that slow movements create slow athletes, just that faster movements create faster athletes. I definitely disagree with those who say that, for example, squatting heavy will not make you faster.

 

[Duncans Donuts]

No correlative association? Isn't a jump the perfect example of power - strength applied over a short period of time?

And isn't the best way to increase the power potential to use the method of training what needs to be trained? Olympic lifts are essentially jumps with weights and olympic lifters suffer very few injuries compared to most sports. In addition, olympic lifters would humiliate powerlifters in a comparison of a vertical leap, and that's a perfect example of explosive lifting vs. simply strength training.

I wasn't suggesting that slow movements create slow athletes, just that faster movements create faster athletes. I definitely disagree with those who say that, for example, squatting heavy will not make you faster.

A jump is an example of a very complicated, very coordinated muscular/neuro compendium. Every movement has an element of power, so no I don't believe a jump is a "perfect" example of power.

In addition, olympic lifters would humiliate powerlifters in a comparison of a vertical leap, and that's a perfect example of explosive lifting vs. simply strength training.

A basketball player would humiliate an olympic lifter in terms of vertical jumping. This is an example of MY POINT, actually, that the practice of the ump itself is what will you get you to be a good jumper, not a weight training exercise. However INCREASING the cross-section of a muscle, thus increasing it's power output potential, AND practicing a jump will make for a fantastic jumper. And regarding a powerlifter as a jumper, initially I would argue yes that they probably won't be great jumpers but more from their SPORT SPECIFIC training. If a powerlifter wanted to be a good jumper he could do it without doing any olympic lifting, just as many NBA players do.


What makes an open-system jump in a basketball game different than other jumps is really quite amazing. What makes a jump unique from a so called explosive lift in a weight room is even more interesting.



When performing a skill that seems as simple as a jump in the midst of a basketball game, you really are looking at a level of complication that any engineer working to design a jumping robot would find nearly impossible. Here are steps involved in a body that have to be "calculated" in a context-specific 3 second complicated movement.

Elements involved in a task establishing unique motor patterns to coincide with skills sets in a unique task:


1. Posture and body position - leaning to the side, direction, location of limbs)

2. Speed of contraction (temporal patterns and rhtym of movement)

3. Nature of contraction (the quality of movement, including any vibration on the body via the environment, has a bearing on skill acquisition, as well as the attributes within concentric, eccentric, and static phases)

4. Force of contraction (strength curve, the measure of force at any point within the range of movement, and within each muscle or from muscle to muscle as movement continues; all have a an issue on skill acquisition)

5. Joint angles (locations of joint angles providing different proprioceptive feedback to the CNS and motor learning, altering force of contraction characteristics as well as it relates balance, agility, reaction, etc)

6. Range of movement (skills are specific to the range of movement and adaptation is dependent on the specifics of the movement ROM)

7. Neuromuscular patterning - the ORDER of muscle contraction, the timing and sequence of contractions.

8. Motor response classification (discrete, continuous, and serial)

9. Energy stystems - the duration and extent of the respective contractions within each muscle group and as a muscle proceeds throughout a range of motion, the difficult and energy requirements along every inch of the ROM.

10. Mental perception and cognition of the tasks and cognitivie processing of stimuli (emotions, feelings, focus, anxiety, arousal, clarity of thinking, diversification of stimuli, ability to concentrate and make decisions)

Re; #10 - Attentional Focus, External Focus, Internal Focus, Narrow Focus, Broad Focus

11. The quality, quantity and nature of the stimuli (extrinsic factors affecting performance and decision making including opponents from another team, wind, noise, visual distractions, how the environment changes from moment to moment determines which action and set of skills are most appropriate via decision making).

12. Situation Context (specificity of a task versus non-specificity of a task).

13. Equiptment

To say that mimicking a sports movement in a weight room can meet these requirements is wrong in my opinion.

Granted, there is an element of jumping in certain pliometric movements. You're also absorbing the force of collision of you and the bar. And in that regard if you NEVER planned on practicing your sport and just wanted a jump improvement in your exercise, you would get a very moderate advantage from performing power cleans (or what have you) than squats IF no other jumping was performed.

HOWEVER - I am thouroughly convinced that deep, rest pause, bottom pause squats (and other exercises that provide time under tension on the muslce) will increase the power potential of your myofibril cross-sections better than snatches and cleans, which are more dangerous (in my opinion) and less productive. And yes I have done them before.

So given the increased power potential from doing slower techniques in conjunction with learning to harness the power, I believe that this two pronged (practicing jumps and doing slow squats) technique would be more advantageous than practicing jumps and doing olympic lifts. I'd love to see someone conduct a study on this.

 

[Duncans Donuts]

just that faster movements create faster athletes.

I agree! Given a constant of power potential, adding a weight to an athlete by definition will make them slower. Therefore the best way to train for an athletic skill is to NOT USE WEIGHT to permit the fastest motion possible - unless THROWING weight fast is the goal.

Fast training in a gym will make you faster at performing that specific task in a gym, It doesn't correlate to the field. I sucked at cleaning last year but had one of the top squats. I ran a sub 4'6 40 time and I was faster than guys cleaning high 200s at my position.

 

[Squaggleboggin]

That is very interesting. I used to be of the same opinion: That is, if I maximized my strength, I could apply that by practicing the technique of whatever it was in which I wanted to excel and use both to improve dramatically. And then I got into olympic movements, which changed my mind about the ideas of strength and power. And I have now just read a very compelling argument supporting what I first thought (when I was less educated that is). I'm glad you brought things into a new light for me. As knowledgeable as P-Funk and CowPimp are, they seem to agree on most things, which means that the rest of us (AKA me) don't get to see some of the reasons behind their thinking at times; you're helping me understand things a lot more because your point of view seems to be quite different, and I thank you for the diversity you bring to this board.

I believe the main idea here is that, in the same way that muscular size can increase muscular strength potential, muscular strength can increase virtually all muscular performance potential. Is that accurate?

I just want to point out that I have also done both bottom pause squats and olympic lifts. I love both. Do you no longer practice olympic lifts? If not, I presume you've replaced them completely with bottom pause squats. If this is the case, do you do back squats, front squats or overhead? I'm just curious because, while I want to build as much functional strength that can be applied to a variety of areas as I possibly can, I obviously want to spend my time as wisely and safely as possible. Thanks a lot.

 

[Duncans Donuts]

We had a long lengthy debate about this a year or so ago. I defitently respected the countering opinion to this, but I simply can't accept the throwing a weight transferring to an explosive motion on a field or court idea.

What really settled me was talking with my Dad about the complex integration of movement that goes into doing something as "simple" as walking. The worlds best engineers struggle with making a biped robot; paticularly one that is "aware" of it's surroundings. Our own coordination is simply too complicated to fit into a one size fits all theory of specificity and subsequently transferrence. I believe that for a skill to be transferred there have to be several points of "commonality", otherwise a new firing pattern code will be designed and implemented by the mind.

Does anyone wonder why you can use massive amounts of weight on a dumbell press and then go to a bar, and after not using the bar for several years, be relatively weak and akward? And why strength can go up so fast for new trainees even if there body weight doesn't? It really is a fascinating little field of interest.

 

[CowPimp]

The reason I asked his training status is because you should posses a certain level of strength before bothering with speed or power work. If you are going to try and increase your rate of force generation (Which I contend that you can do; there are numerous studies to support this idea), then you need to have an ample amount of force to generate first. Not to mention, if you increase your maximal strength, then it also increases the amount of force you are producing at the velocity end of the force-velocity continuum.

 

[CowPimp]

I agree! Given a constant of power potential, adding a weight to an athlete by definition will make them slower. Therefore the best way to train for an athletic skill is to NOT USE WEIGHT to permit the fastest motion possible - unless THROWING weight fast is the goal.

Fast training in a gym will make you faster at performing that specific task in a gym, It doesn't correlate to the field. I sucked at cleaning last year but had one of the top squats. I ran a sub 4'6 40 time and I was faster than guys cleaning high 200s at my position.

I'll see if I can find the study done where it was shown that weightlifters had better verticals and 40 times than powerlifters.

 

[Squaggleboggin]

I'll see if I can find the study done where it was shown that weightlifters had better verticals and 40 times than powerlifters.

I don't think he's disputing that. I read his statement as, "Given constant force over a constant time, the addition of resistance will increase the amount of time it takes to go through the same ROM." In other words, throwing the weights and catching them is still extremely slow in comparison to jumping with nothing more than air and body resistance, making it pointless compared to heavy squatting because both are slow in comparison to jumping, but squatting has much more potential for strength increases. Of course, I could be interpreting that completely incorrectly.

 

[CowPimp]

Here's the study. Sorry, the 40 wasn't part of it, the vertical leap was though. My mistake:

http://ironmagazineforums.com/showthread.php?t=52133

 

[CowPimp]

So given the increased power potential from doing slower techniques in conjunction with learning to harness the power, I believe that this two pronged (practicing jumps and doing slow squats) technique would be more advantageous than practicing jumps and doing olympic lifts. I'd love to see someone conduct a study on this.

That would be interesting indeed.

 

[Squaggleboggin]

That doesn't contradict MY understanding of what he's saying.

That is, heavy squatters have a greater potential to jump higher with proper technique training, whereas those who perform the olympic lifts are more accustomed to jumping out of the box, and will outperform the heavy squatters from the start. However, their lighter loads prevent them from getting the maximum in strength potential available to the heavy squatters; the heavy squatters will eventually surpass the olympic lifters because of this advantage in potential as long as they have time to properly practice technique.

I believe this idea is closely related to the idea that an increase in muscular size gives a greater potential for an increase in muscular strength (the reason many powerlifters do hypertrophy training).

 

[Duncans Donuts]

This study is embarrasing. Anyone who would supervise people doing vertical jumps with 20 & 40 KG dumbbells in there hands needs to take a physics course.

Secondarily, this study prooves nothing. I already said that olympic lifters have jumping as a component of their training. And clearly, AS EXPLOSIVE WEIGHT TRAINING is a very specific part of their sport, they will out perform as "more powerful" in the weight room. Also, my training philosophy for athletes is NOT involved with powerlifting. Powerlifting is NOT about time under tension - it's a very hard, very techniqued sport.

Is there a study that suggests being skilled in a 13 step, super integrated exercise like a snatch will transfer directly to the field? Is there evidence that the sprinters outperformed the "explosive" athletes in a 40 yard dash? (Of course not - lol - why were sprinters even included if there was no 40 yard dash included? HONESTLY, according to the "explosive in the gym, explosive on the field" theory the sprinters and olympic lifters would have been in a dead heat. I'd bet my life that the sprinters would annihalate the olympic lifters)?

I read this study and see no evidence of anything except the contention that skills acquired are EXCLUSIVELY specific. The study is biased, in my opinion. How the conclusive:

"This study certainly supports theories on the specificity of training. If you want to increase power, you must train with powerful movements. Strength is an important component, but is only part of the equation. You must have velocity as well. High force, slow velocity exercises will create high force, slow movements. High force, high velocity training (as seen in weightlifters) will create high power movements."

Is reached given that information is beyond my scope.

 

[Duncans Donuts]

That doesn't contradict MY understanding of what he's saying.

That is, heavy squatters have a greater potential to jump higher with proper technique training, whereas those who perform the olympic lifts are more accustomed to jumping out of the box, and will outperform the heavy squatters from the start. However, their lighter loads prevent them from getting the maximum in strength potential available to the heavy squatters; the heavy squatters will eventually surpass the olympic lifters because of this advantage in potential as long as they have time to properly practice technique.

I believe this idea is closely related to the idea that an increase in muscular size gives a greater potential for an increase in muscular strength (the reason many powerlifters do hypertrophy training).

Yes, exactly.

How do you produce strength? Strength is simply:

Neurological efficacy. (that is the ability your brain has to control your muscles)

Muscle Cross Section Potential. (The actual size of the muscle. These produce the force involved)

And of course the rate of performance.

Of course other factors like amount of glycogen come into play but for this purpose they are irrelevant.

The theory of explosive training is that your body can non specifically be trained to fire FASTER. There is no evidence that suggests this is true. While anyone can improve in a specific skill (like ping pong) in terms of speed, it is inherently silly to claim that improving your speed in ping pong will transfer to the field.

How is this any different than doing cleans to become a good football player? Because more muscle is being stimulated? Because of more similiarties? I've already detailed the biomechanical difficulty in even simple movement, and I just don't know how people can claim that anything in the weight room is similar to anything on a field.

So what do you do? Practice on the field. Learn to use your shoulders and arms to block someone. When you go to the gym, don't try and confuse your neurology by doing blocking exercises with free weights. Instead work to improve the cross-section of the muscle fibers which will immediately be transferred to blocking strength assuming you have practiced this behavior to harness the new power potential.

 

[themamasan]

I had a 36" vertical leap in high school. I never worked out my legs in the gym...EVER. I actually didn't work out anything for that matter. All I did from the age of 13 up until about the age of 21-22 is play basketball constantly (average about 3 hours a day).

Now I don't play basketball anymore, work out all the time (legs included), and I am slower than ever, and can't jump for shit.

 

[Duncans Donuts]

I had a 36" vertical leap in high school. I never worked out my legs in the gym...EVER. I actually didn't work out anything for that matter. All I did from the age of 13 up until about the age of 21-22 is play basketball constantly (average about 3 hours a day).

Now I don't play basketball anymore, work out all the time (legs included), and I am slower than ever, and can't jump for shit.

Exactly why you have to practice jumping to be a competent jumper.

 

[themamasan]

Exactly why you have to practice jumping to be a competent jumper.

After taking 6 years off from playing basketball, and then trying to play again, I realized all the different muscles used in jumping, running, sprinting versus those used in squats, deadlifts, etc. Even though I had been working out in the gym during those years, the first time I played basketball after the 6 year layoff, my whole body was completely sore to the point I could barely walk. I am talking around my shins, hamstrings, lower back, upper back, calf muscles, and quads. It was a hard lesson learned.

 

[Duncans Donuts]

I realized all the different muscles used in jumping, running, sprinting versus those used in squats, deadlifts, etc.

I have to disagree with that. The muscles used in sprinting et al are worked during these exercises to the point of cross-sectional improvement, but the specific way and order they are utilized is different.

 

[CowPimp]

Exactly why you have to practice jumping to be a competent jumper.

I'm not suggesting you shouldn't practice jumping in order to improve your vertical leap. You bet your ass you should. You can't transmute the benefits provided by other exercises to their fullest extent without practicing your jump. Not to mention that a vertical leap has a specific technique that goes along with it which must be practiced in order to create a more biomechanically efficient movement.

You make for a very compelling argument DD, but I honestly don't think there is sufficient evidence out there to support what you are saying, at least not yet. I still feel like trying to exert maximal force against greater resistance alters the force-velocity curve such that it can supplement your unweighted jump training.