The best way to improve performance in one’s sport is many times, not exercises, but playing another sport with highly transferable qualities.
Exercise is exercise, but sport is competitive, dynamic, and full-throttle.
Ultimately, most of the things athletes to do train speed and power come from other sports: Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting, and then track and field.
In Transfer of Training, coaches get what can only be termed “chart-porn” for coaches, with plenty of studies showing just how much things like squats, standing triple jumps, standing vertical, cleans, etc. transfer to a wide spectrum of speed-strength events in track and field.
Of all the events in track and field that requires the greatest raw explosive power, I don’t think it gets much better than the triple jump. I’m even biased, since high jump was my best event!
In my work with college track and field, the athletes with the best standing vertical jumps, explosive weightroom power, and overall athleticism, were typically those who could claim the triple jump as their primary event.
You can see this explosion, not only in the events of track itself, but in the transfer to something that the world is now so familiar with.
Dunking.
You don’t see triple jumpers with 50 thousand instagram followers, but there are plenty of dunkers with this crowd. The world knows dunking. Dunking even has it’s own TV show now.
With that connection in the clear eyes of the masses, I wrote this article to enlighten aspiring dunkers out there, the training gold that is track and field jumps. This is reflected in how I wrote my vertical training book, Vertical Ignition.
Triple jump transfers to dunking, whether the athlete is a basketball player to start with, or a track athlete moonlighting a dunk contest.
See below, the famous Mike Conley, behind the free-throw line dunk.
Mike was also a pretty good triple jumper.
I’ve known about this for some time, and those of us coaches who have been around track and field know that track builds athletes…. really well.
I was reminded about this the other day, when dunker Nico Christie contacted me about how much bounding and sprinting twice a week has changed his athleticism for the better.
Nico decided to train for triple jump this year, with no prior track and field experience. He made rapid progress, and his already-great dunking really started to take off. Check out this recent dunk video of his below, compared to a few years ago.
Just a year and a half earlier….
Nico a year and a half ago… pre-triple jump training. Not bad, but he still had lots to be gained!
Finally, one of the new great dunkers on the scene is former UCLA triple jumper, Jonathan Clark, also known as “J Clark the Jumper”.
Jonathan is one of the most dynamic dunkers in the world today, and has a track and field training background.
According to Jonathan:
“Most of my training has not changed from my triple jump training from college to the concepts that I apply to my dunking, they are nearly identical
Approach work has been replaced by dunking technique.
“I feel that because of the nature of the triple jump, triple jumpers are the most explosive athletes in the world.”
Finally, I couldn’t write this article without mentioning how the reverse transfer is also true. I strongly believe that dunk training can also help out track and field athletes immensely. Athletes don’t get to play enough in training anymore, plain and simple.
Dunking is the ultimate free-play for jumpers.
Below is a fun jump video I saw from Dan Back of Jump Science. I’d love to see what some elite triple jumpers could pull off in this “event”!
This dunk was 26’ from the backboard.
Remember, track is a great fit for any sport. Part of the reason I enjoy writing these articles is to help spread the word of it’s benefits, as well as help bring back the legend of the “multi-sport” high school athlete.
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