Do these stretches to jump higher
What's up, everybody? Welcome to the THB Strength podcast. Out of six people on the planet that have officially tested a 50, he's coached four of them, me being one of them. And if you want us to coach you with those same principles to level up your vertical, go to thbstrength.com. Link is in the description or in the pinned comment.
Isaiah:You can get six months for free when you buy six by choosing the annual plan. Alright? Nice little Christmas sill for you. So what are we talking about today?
John:Talking about dynamic flexibility. We're talking about flexibility in general. So it's one of the biomotor capacities or mobility, whatever you want to call it. Five biomotor capacities are going be strength, speed, power, coordinate, or sorry, strength, speed, coordination, mobility, and endurance. There we go.
John:So it's one of the five biomotor capacities. It is more important, I think, than maybe I initially would have given it credit for. I would have probably when I was younger just said, yeah, this doesn't matter. Just get as strong as possible. I think it is task specific.
John:So if you are throwing darts, you probably don't need a lot of mobility. If you are a gymnast, you need a ton of mobility. If you are a one foot jumper, you need less mobility than what a two foot jumper would need, depending on what you're doing. High jump, it's kind of similar. You can probably benefit from having similar levels.
John:Sprinters, good at internal rotation, really important. That's another one. I would
Isaiah:also say if you're a dunker versus just trying to jump higher, you also need pretty crazy levels of mobility.
John:I think it helps. It's To do
Isaiah:something like a kamikaze?
John:Yeah. That that one. Yeah. For sure. My knee If you're like mega elite.
Isaiah:Like my knees at my head. My foot's at the net. That's true. While I'm sideways.
John:So yeah. And one of the things that we don't do a lot of is static flexibility. Static flexibility, you can lengthen fascicles, but it loses strength and it's at end range when you hold it for copious amounts of time. You oftentimes can fatigue the nervous system by doing too much static flexibility, especially deep long stretch static flexibility. If you guys have seen a bit of the research, if you do long holds and you go jump, you're gonna be in trouble.
John:So you definitely don't wanna do that, and that is partially why we employ flexibility routines. So Isaiah, what is our flexibility routine? Tell the people.
Isaiah:My favorite one. I do Yeah, tell the people your favorite one. If you don't have back pain, do 10 toe touches. If you have a history of back pain, you do 10 hinges where you feel stretch in your your hammies. Then I do 10 body weight squats, then I do 10 long lunges each leg, then we do 10 side lunges each leg, leg swings forward, leg swings sideways, and then we do a little like hip mobility circuit so we do like a butt stretch for externally rotating and then like the hurdler walking stretch where you're doing circles with your leg to the side and that's pretty much it and then from there the barbell warm up serves as a sort of yeah because I do I like going like deep squats on my barbell warm up as well probably like 15 to 30 total reps of squat, like deep squatting I do.
Isaiah:And then I start my jumping or or sprint development or my jump warm up from there.
John:Yeah. So the reason why I picked that specific kind of flexibility warm up or why I made it was one, because Isaiah had a history of back pain and a lot of the track and field warm ups that I was accustomed to would sometimes piss off his low back. Specifically, it would like kind of show up in the squatting, not necessarily during it, but it would be like, yeah, I could see how this would be hurting my back. And then we'd go to sprint or squat or clean or something like that, and then it would be, you know, flared up or whatever. So I had to make some adjustments where his spine was very neutral.
John:There wasn't gonna be any spinal flexion or twisting or anything like that. And we wanna address all of the relevant musculatures that we're gonna be using in the lift. So one of them that he didn't say would be like, you know, an arm circle or whatever, but that that's pretty simple, you know, obviously. So the first one, the hinging, that's gonna cover the hamstring. Doing 10 reps of that.
John:We also have And lower and back. Lower back. Yeah. That's gonna kind of start to work on bracing and stuff like that. Then in the lower leg, we have kneeling ankle stretch.
John:And the reason we do that one is because we're trying to stretch the soleus, get the ankle warmed up so that when guys deep squat, it feels a little bit better.
Isaiah:Which caveat, I actually stopped doing that one because I was getting like tendinopathy flare ups. So I'd be careful of that one if you have a history of Achilles tendon pain. You're getting Achilles pain from that?
John:Yeah. Yeah. From stretching? From compression?
Isaiah:Mhmm.
John:Oh. Yeah. So be careful with
Isaiah:that one. So I I basically replaced that with ISOs. But for most people, wouldn't say it's a risky thing to do. Yeah. I think it's a
John:good one. And I get
Isaiah:it from like my squatting.
John:Yeah, squatting. So that's the other one I was gonna say is the deep squats are gonna stretch out your adductors. It's gonna stretch out the internal external rotators. You're gonna have, you know, the hip mobility that you need in flexion. You're gonna be stretching the quad to a certain extent, and then, yeah, like I said, you're gonna be stretching the ankle.
John:So that one is just super basic. The wide side to side squat is going to warm up your adductors really, really well, and anything medially on the inside of your leg, which is obviously important. It's also going to start to load the hip, because you're going have to generate some force through your hip and your quad each time that you take that step back and forth, which another purpose of this is to increase core warmth. And core warmth isn't necessarily like how physically warm you are, like to the touch. It's like internally, you know, do you feel warm?
John:You know, it's not just sweating or sitting in a sauna. There's more to it. Are your tendons compliant? Are your muscles compliant? You know, is the actual core temp high?
John:And so that's why I like to do a lot of these squat variations and why I also do the lunge one. So long lunge, you'll push the hip forward so you're able to stretch out the rec fem and psoas, and then you're also pushing back and stretching out the hamstring again. The hamstring tends to be a big problem area, so I really like making or at least doing a bit of work there for guys and making sure they're warm. And then leg swings, you're gonna do front and back, side to side again. You're gonna get both inside, outside of the leg on the side to side.
John:Front back, you're gonna get the front and the back of your leg there. Did I miss anything?
Isaiah:Internal external. Hip stuff.
John:Yeah. So internal external touches, you're going into external rotation. So you're gonna be stretching your internal rotators. You're externally rotating. So you're stretching your Yeah.
John:Internal And then vice versa, when you do internal rotation, you're gonna stretch your external rotators, your hips. So you wanna do both of those. Those are important. And after that, I think
Isaiah:And then you start then Yeah. You start doing fast
John:Then we start getting faster. So
Isaiah:also wanna note something interesting. I sprained my ankle maybe six months ago, I wanna say five months ago.
John:And
Isaiah:it is crazy how much it affected my jumping. Oh, yeah. It was Like not being able specifically not being able to Plantar flex? Dorsiflex. Well, plantar flex too, but
John:Yeah. It was bad.
Isaiah:I was having issues getting low. Like that is how I lower. Like this? You with the with the foot forward. Like this angle, like my hip angle doesn't really change.
Isaiah:Like I literally lower by doing
John:a know what I On do, what is one foot is my hip flexor.
Isaiah:Yeah.
John:Like a ton. When I'm if I don't have good hip mobility because my labrum is like pissed off or something.
Isaiah:Yeah.
John:When I go to do that last stride, I cannot open up and like time up the takeoff well. Yeah. I've And worked on it a little bit, but the caveat for me is I have a lot of hip issues. So if I were to force these positions, I would get more hip pain. And so it's a little bit of a delicate balance, but I still try to do some of it.
John:I always do it in the dynamic warm up, you know, dynamic flexibility every Yeah. So, yeah.
Isaiah:It's, it, what's interesting about it is like
John:And we don't forget to, when we forget to do it, I've seen guys get hurt so many times. Yeah. I've seen guys pull muscles so many, I'll be like, did you do the dynamic warm up today? They'll be like, no. And I'm like, it's such an easy way to just get compliance up in the tissue at end ranges in
Isaiah:my opinion. Yeah. I also think like, you get the mobility by jumping.
John:Yeah.
Isaiah:But for someone that doesn't have that pattern down in their body, I think they it's really important for those people to do the dynamic flexibility. And the static flexibility, I haven't seen transfer.
John:Guys who really mobile don't necessarily.
Isaiah:If anything, you know the thing that helps me the most is deep squatting and then seated calf raise. Seated calf raise helped a lot like when ankle rehab like yeah yeah that was like really important. And then just jumping obviously every week.
John:Yeah. I I oftentimes say like every strength exercise should be full range of motion unless otherwise stated. And we do that for much of the probably what? Four months of the year? Yeah.
John:But there's still pieces of it in every program. We never really take full squatting out. So that's one way that we're kind of addressing mobility and stuff like that. It's diet I'll do it rarely on general days with guys. Do you do it with Christian at all?
Isaiah:I actually see it. He programs it every day and I bro, because I I don't feel anything. When I stretch my upper body, I do not like because my I'm like really like
John:You watch this Christian. I'm sorry.
Isaiah:I'm hypermobile, like my shoulders and stuff. So he'll put like I'll literally feel my joints being at max. Like Did you tell him that? No. I just started skipping it.
Isaiah:Because I felt bro, I felt like I was doing nothing. Like, I'd be, like, sitting like, if you're, like, the wall, like, I'd be here, and I'd be, I don't feel like, I literally feel my scapula freaking pressing up. It's, like, like The
John:only one I could see you struggling with is external rotation.
Isaiah:Yeah. So, like And and this on on my right arm because I don't behind the back with my. Wait. Like, look at alright. So I do behind the backs this way,
John:left to right. So internal rotation.
Isaiah:So look at this.
John:So the internal rotation on your left is really good.
Isaiah:Look at the difference here.
John:Yeah. What the fuck? Is your this is probably really good. Oh, yeah. That makes sense.
John:Yeah. Yeah. That's fair. It's because in anatomical position, this is internal, this is external. So if you're back this way, yeah, it's internal.
John:And then you're like in, what would that be, flexion or extension? Yeah, that would be extension. Internal rotation and extension Yeah. Would be where you struggle.
Isaiah:That one's really bad with the
John:Dude, I haven't had to do that since like college. Think of like Yeah. The shoulder because it's a ball and socket joint and an anatomical position gets weird depending on And which way you're
Isaiah:then it's funny to think like my left hand and beyond the backs are way worse. Like way worse. But it's because with the right
John:hand I feel like you guys all because your uppers have gotten so big, just suck at that dunk now. Not you as much, with your right.
Isaiah:Don't talk that heresy. No. Your right.
John:It was your right hand. But Donovan, recently Oh, really? He's had a hard time with it. And Josh, like they're like trying to atrophy their upper body and get more flexible. And they should because that should be an that is an easy dunk.
John:I I I think for you guys, that is a behind I've
Isaiah:been doing it on the on the warm ups.
John:Yeah. Know. It's like I've seen you do it. I've seen you do it with like a 34 inch vertical.
Isaiah:Yeah.
John:I feel like. Is that probably accurate? You probably hit with 34?
Isaiah:Yeah. Like I do like a walk up.
John:I know. It's glorious.
Isaiah:Like it's a little
John:At OT you did it really easily. You just walked up and it was like a warm up. You did it like 10 times.
Isaiah:Yeah. And I
John:was like, oh, that
Isaiah:You know, you missed the one last week.
John:Oh,
Isaiah:really? Last week in warm up. Was literally like jump number three and I just like I
John:stuck it in there. So efficient. But yeah, that's the podcast guys. If you're interested in coaching, go to THP Strength. Go to THP Strength dot com.
John:Currently, if you buy the annual plan, we'll help you for half the price it would cost you if you paid month to month. So it takes time to get better. Consider signing up, and we'll see you guys tomorrow. Also, I am violently ill today, so if you see this, leave a comment. If you made it this far, leave a
Isaiah:comment I actually really struggled. Like, between your sickness and my nervous system depletion.
John:Yeah. This was bad. Yeah. We did it though. We got it done, boys.
John:I can barely walk.
