I felt that the initial “30 Commandments of Vertical Jump Training” was a fun way to put together a lot of random thoughts on vertical leap training. It has been a while since that last post, so here are 10 more random, but important thoughts I have generated since that point in time.
If you missed it, the first 30 Commandments can be found here: The 30 Commandments of Vertical Jump Training
For those of you who are less inclined to humor (or the English language) you can skip to the end, where I have written out each commandment in average, everyday English (so everybody wins!). I also expanded on some of the points in the second section if you are interested.
Commandments 31-40 of Vertical Jumping
31: Thou shalt develop an explosive hip drive in thy jumping, as thy gravity-bound counterparts tend to start thy jumps with a large knee bend and diminish the power of thy hips during the course of thy jump.
32: Thou shalt learn the hip hinge and kettlebell swing to build and maintain explosiveness in thy hips. Thou shalt get over thy skepticism of kettlebell swings due to their use in personal training and realizest thy benefit of overspeed eccentric work to thy hips.
33: Thou shalt keep on thy heels during thy pulls to transfer maximal power to thy posterior chain. Thou shalt learn to keep thou’s weight on thy heels so thy back doest not synergistically dominate thy glutes during they cleans and thy snatches.
34: Thou shalt maximize the activation and power of thy glutes on a daily basis as to allowest thy glutes to contribute more to thy squats, deadlifts and Olympic lifts and jumping. Thou shalt become familiar with thy cook hip lift, prone glute raise, single leg deadlift, and thy hip thrust. Thou shall fear not of humping the air in thy 24 hour fitness with thy barbell across thou’s waist, for thou shalt realize that the other patrons of 24 hour fitness will continue to have’st trouble filling out the seat of thou’s pants.
35: Thou shalt include training to increase thou’s cross sectional area of thy legs unless thou hast bought 3 pairs of new pants since thou begat lifting. Thou shall realize that thy max effort squats will not increase they vertical significantly if thou hast “chicken legs”.
“this chicken might do better with some higher volume strength training than Westside barbell work”.
36: Thou must take care to include training in higher volumes and rep ranges periodically in thou’s training. Thou shalt not train maximal percentages in thy base lifts in all of thou’s training. Thou shalt alternate lifting to increase cross sectional area with lifting to improve maximal strength. Thou should eatest not a large meal prior to training cross sectional area in thou’s legs.
37. Thou shalt devote the majority of thy high volume squats to the high bar or front squat variety. Thou shalt realize that adding lots of muscle to thy back in favor of thy glutes and legs helpest little in vertical leaping and sprinting. Thou will find that thy back squat variations creating a large forward lean make thou prone to building muscle out of balance to the needs of a jumper.
38. Thou shalt aim to increase the strength of thy hip flexors, particularly the strength of thy psoas and thy iliacus to keep thy balance in thy hips. Thou must realize that thou needest strong hip flexors to set up thy glutes to fire properly.
39. Thou shalt keep the length of thy hip flexors to a level wherest thy hips are not pulled into anteversion. Thou shalt realize that tight hip flexors shall inhibit thy glutes and thy hip extension. Thou must stretch thy hip flexors on a regular basis, especially if thou workest a job where thou siteth at a desk for 8 to 10 hours in a day. Thou shalt become familiar with thy split squat stretch and thy brettzel.
40. Thou must takest care not to undertake excessive metabolic work during thy vertical jump training. Thou must avoid large amounts of interval based training, long distance running, or full court pick up basketball games which takest more than 2 hours of thy day if thou must reach they full potential in thy vertical leap.
The Commandments in Plain English
31: Athletes need to have explosive hips in order to jump high (as well as run fast). Many athletes think they have explosive hips… but they don’t. Check out an Olympic lifter doing cleans or snatches with lighter weight in their warm-up sets, and this will give you an idea of what explosive hips should look like. Athletes with weak or inhibited hips will tend to dominate movements with their quads and back. The quad dominance isn’t nearly as problematic as the back dominance.
32: For those looking to increase vertical leap, the kettlebell swing (make that text a link to my kettlebell article) is a vital ingredient in the mix. The kettlebell delivers a sharp overspeed eccentric contraction to hip movement. In order to perform the kettlebell swing properly, athletes need to be familiar with how to hip hinge. This means that they can perform an RDL with good form. A proper hip hinge involves the anterior tilt of the pelvic to match the decreasing angle of torso flexion. The athlete also needs to learn to keep the weight back on the heels during hinging.
33: It is an important coaching point to keep force going through an athlete’s heels during the initial phases of pulling (deadlifts, cleans, snatches). This is especially important during Olympic lifts, as pressure should be consciously kept on the heels up until the second pull. This will keep the movement as posterior chain oriented as possible and is the key to unlocking that killer hip speed you see with a lot of good Olympic lifters.
34: In order to maximize what the posterior chain is doing in pulls and squats, an athlete needs to put some extra work in on their glutes. Many athletes have glutes that are not nearly working up to their potential. If the glutes are weak, the back will often pick up the slack. This is a bad thing for both performance and injury. A great quote by coach Mike Boyle: “A bad back is often a strong back”. This is because a bad back has to make up for weak glutes. Keep your glutes strong and watch your performance take off! Basic activation exercises can be performed every day, and strength exercises for the glutes can be done every couple of days.
35: It is important to be strong to jump high. To reach the highest levels of strength, athletes need to have a certain amount of mass in their legs. Nobody with 20” legs will squat 500lbs. Unfortunately, lifting with low reps, such as 4×5 (20 reps in a session) isn’t enough for a lot of people to put some cross sectional area on their legs. Doing maximal strength oriented work in lifting for few reps does wonders for improving the body’s neurological wiring, but not so much for muscle size increases. If you are a genetic freak, you can do low reps and still get huge, but for the average trainee, max strength work will only take them so far in the size department. Workouts such as 4-5×8 reps with a slower tempo done deep will get some size building done in the prime movers of the human body. If you are a little crazy, you can also throw a ladder in there, such as 10-8-6-4-6-8-10.
36: It can be helpful to alternate periods of volume based leg training with strength based work. The higher volumes will provide a contrast from the heavier stuff and give your nervous system a bit of a break. The size oriented and strength oriented work will complement each other and allow you to make more consistent gains. The higher reps won’t necessarily make you a slow twitch bodybuilding machine either, so don’t worry about that aspect of things. If you don’t believe me, check out this great article by Kelly Baggett: The Myth of Non-Functional Hypertrophy . You won’t turn into Tom Platz and be stuck with a 18” vertical by doing some higher rep stuff every once in a while. Try alternating blocks of size and power for the best results. How often to alternate depends on your situation and genetics, but I would say a good split would be one 4 week block of volume based work for every two 4 week blocks of strength based work.
37: When you are doing high volume work, you need to make sure that they hypertrophy goes to the right places. In line with talking about the synergistic domination of the back to make up for weak glutes and legs, it is wise to take advantage of the higher reps and work on technique, hitting the squat positions that allow for the highest leg and hip development. I feel there is nothing better for this than high bar and front squatting while keeping the weight on the heels. Try front squatting through the heels for 4-5×10 reps on a front squat and see where you feel it the next day. If you did it right, you will feel an equal distribution of soreness between glutes and quads. This is what you want if you want to jump high, rather than just feeling it in your quads and walking around with a stiff back the next day.
38: Although it doesn’t seem directly relevant, improving the strength of hip flexors is important for a couple of reasons. One is that the hip flexors, particularly the iliopsoas group, set up the hips and femur in a position to allow for optimal power transfer through the glutes. The iliopsoas help to keep the head of the femur firmly in it’s socket… without strength there, the head of the femur can rattle around and this throws a brick under the glute gas pedal.
39: Along with strength in the hip flexors/iliopsoas, flexibility and mobility is also needed. Hip flexors are often both short AND weak. Tight hip flexors can potentially pull an athlete into extreme lordosis and are also associated with tight spinal erectors. Being tight in the hip flexors will inhibit hip extension, and stretching them out can provide both acute and long term increases in vertical leap and sprint ability.
40: This one is pretty simple. The human body can only adapt to so many stimuli at once. You can’t be an Olympic lifter and a marathon runner, you need to pick one energy system and stay close to it. The only real advantage of longer duration work is tendon strength and weight control, but this can be done without getting excessive. Try and avoid high intensity interval workouts with incomplete recovery as much as possible, as well as long distance runs and extensive pick-up games if you want to maintain a big vertical. Of course the intelligent team sport athlete will realize that often times, conditioning will trump the last few inches of vertical leap when it comes to on court effectiveness.
Good luck in using this info in your training pursuits, I hope you found it useful!
Joel
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