How Long Should Sessions Be For Vertical Jump Gains?
What's up, guys? Welcome back to the TSP Strength podcast. On today's episode, we are gonna be discussing session length, specifically dunk session length. It is a question that we get a lot. How long should my sessions be?
John:How do I know how long my sessions should be? How should I set them up? And specifically why this matters is it usually determines how much pain you're gonna have if you have knee pain is the length of time that you're jumping. Isaiah, oftentimes, when he has a flare up, it's because he jumped too long. Same thing with Austin, same thing with me.
John:And so we're gonna teach you guys how to set a certain session length, how to progress it, what you do if you're currently in a flare up with your your session length. And when I say session, I mean dunk session. But before we do that
Isaiah:Wait. I also I think we should also address, does it help you jump higher?
John:Oh, does it oh, yeah. Yeah. We'll definitely do that too. And how to do sessions to get them to get you to jump higher. Lastly a little distracted.
John:Lastly, we wanna give a shout out to our sponsors over at THB Strength. If you're interested in jumping higher and getting healthy, all of this coaching information is used over there at t h b strength to help you achieve whatever your athletic goals are.
Austin:Yeah. You know what? We should should we do it?
Isaiah:Do what? I don't know what you're talking about.
Austin:We should give them a discount.
Isaiah:No way.
Austin:Yeah. 10% off your first month with the code THP. I repeat, it's THP. And if you are weary to get started because you're like, these guys are some nincompoops. Yeah.
Austin:THP, first month, 10% off your first
Isaiah:month and you
Austin:will not regret it.
Isaiah:That's so crazy because there's already an 83% discount.
John:There's already.
Isaiah:That is true. And I heard Yeah. An inside informant at THP What is it? Told me
John:It's like water.
Isaiah:I I have to I have to keep his name secret.
John:Okay.
Isaiah:But he told me that prices are gonna go up soon when THP hits a certain limit, and that limit is gonna happen soon.
John:Wow. That was very, very intuitive. Oh, one other thing. The guys over at THP were were talking to me about some of the complaints. If you're one of our athletes and you don't come to a call when you need help or ask us when you need help, we can't help you.
John:Okay? So if you're like, oh, well, it's just, you know, things aren't working out. Like, if you're not giving us feedback and you're not telling us, we can't help you. So if you need help I mean, sorry, the guys over at THP. Can't help you if you don't tell them there's something wrong.
John:They just wanted us to relay that to you guys. Yeah. Anyway, so we'll get it started. This what? Go ahead.
Austin:Code THP for 10%
Isaiah:off the
Austin:first month if you're weary.
John:It's like subliminal messaging. I
Isaiah:think we should start by saying our experiences with how long how long are our sessions?
John:Okay. Okay.
Isaiah:How long have they been and how long are they now?
John:It depends if John's Yeah. Depends if on that.
Isaiah:About us.
John:So I personally, recently, my sessions that have worked have been thirty to forty minutes. Specifically, thirty five seems to be the sweet spot for me right now. This is after I do ISOs and this is low rimming. So going from eight foot all the way up to 10, typically the last five or ten minutes is where I'll start my all out jumps on 10 feet. We don't always have to do that.
John:Like, obviously, these guys when they go to a session, they're only dunking on 10 feet. If I'm doing a one foot session, then the first thirty minutes are usually warming up and kinda trying to get going. And then the last twenty to thirty minutes are me jumping all out, so maybe an hour. If I do that off one foot, usually I'm okay. If I go past that, I start to get issues.
John:If I kept them at forty minutes, forty five minutes, I'd be totally fine. What are you?
Austin:Honestly, I'm in the same boat. Anytime I do break that hour and a half range, I typically do regret it and get injured the next day. I come to John crying for help and How
John:many your jumps are above 70%? What what percent of time?
Austin:Probably like 80% of the time, I would say. I warm up probably the beginning of first 20, you know, first build up jumps or, like, the earlier session part of the session, then I'm always just going for it. Nice. Trying to maximize. Go crazy.
Austin:Fly.
Isaiah:And then I would say my average session length is probably an hour and twenty minutes. I spend around twenty minutes warming up and then about an hour of jumping. It tends to be on the lower end of the spectrum, so closer to an hour if I'm not trying to hit a new dunk or a difficult dunk. If I am trying if there's an objective of hitting a certain dunk at the session, it'll usually it'll favor to the hour and a half length. And then anything past an hour and a half is where I'll start having issues with injuries the next day and I'll have to do some rehab work over that that week.
Isaiah:The session length has decreased over time. So when I was in high school, I would say the average session length was two and a half hours pretty pretty consistently. If I was trying to hit a new dunk or if it was a group session, it would it would probably be like three hours. And then rarely would it go under two hours and then that has just slowly decreased over time. The healthiest I ever am is actually very interesting interestingly enough during dunk competition season because I'll usually have a dunk contest every week or every two weeks, and you're jumping no more than 20 times there in, like, thirty minutes basically of all out jumping, and I can maintain health very easily.
Isaiah:So if I if my sessions are like thirty to forty five minutes, that's where like I can train hard, keep making progress. Anything past that is as a result is a result of not being disciplined. So that's my experience with session So
John:how do you guys know if you've gone too long in a session? What are some of the the ways that you tell that a session is starting to get past the time interval of this is productive and now becoming detrimental?
Isaiah:I can't try hard.
Austin:Yeah, performance decreased.
John:Okay. Definitely.
Isaiah:For me, it's specifically the intent though. Like it feels like I can't jump hard. Like I have to like force myself to jump hard.
John:Do you feel like something in terms of centrally, like your brain just can't try hard anymore?
Isaiah:Yeah, like neuro fatigue.
John:Or is it that you start feeling pain soreness pop up?
Isaiah:If I'm starting to feel pain, I already passed the threshold of where I should have stopped. That's usually if I'm healthy, that's usually the second thing that occurs, so it's like I'll get neurally fatigued, performance start decreasing. If I push past that for too long, something will start hurting. Now that dragonfly is drunk. Now if I'm injured, like let's say I'm coming back from an injury, I'm in the middle of rehab, I'll start feeling pain before that neural fatigue.
Isaiah:It's always like avoid getting to that that part of the session.
John:Okay. So how do you guys manage when you're not quite having sessions long enough? Kind of like where I am. Like, I'm not quite having sessions long enough where I'm starting to have that neural fatigue set in, but I'm also, I'm not healthy enough to get to that point, right? So if I am in a position, and I kinda know the answer to this or I have an idea, but I wanna hear your lens, right?
John:Like I can't get to an hour, an hour and a half till I'm getting that central fatigue or else my knees start to flare up. So how do I progress my sessions up over time to where I'm at a point where I'm doing an hour, an hour and a
Isaiah:half sessions? There's two methods to that. The first method is what I suggested you to do is keep the session length the exact same to where a flare up doesn't happen. Progress the weight room work up to where you can handle power cleaning heavy, squatting heavy, and you feel good the next day. Basically there's no pain when doing those things, and then usually you'll be able to kind of cross that bridge from, you have to be careful with jump volume, so you can jump all out for about an hour.
Isaiah:That's not fun.
John:Like a black and white shift. Yeah. Like you go thirty minute, thirty minute, thirty minute hour.
Isaiah:Yeah. I like that method better because it's fun to train hard, your vertical can increase, and usually I'll explain the second method before I explain it's downside. The second method is just feel good lifting, right, do slow concentric strength training, and then incrementally increase the time of the sessions. Ninety percent of people don't have the self discipline to make those incremental jumps in session length. So I'd rather just train hard, build my capacity there while still maintaining jump volume, and then eventually, you know, you you build like a reserve of tendon capacity to where you can have an extra long session.
Isaiah:But that that's kind of the two methods I've used to get myself back jumping hard for a while.
John:Okay. I like that. Yeah. I think, like me personally, a lot of our athletes, what happens is they get to a point where they can handle a couple jumps and then they have like, you know, a little bit of a setback or whatever else. And they're like, okay.
John:Well, you know, I can handle twenty or twenty five minutes. That's But if I go past twenty five, even if by five or ten minutes, you know, it starts to get worse. I think part of that is because their output increases, and so by cutting the time, it, like, at least cutting it down a little bit, what happens is that they're never really hitting that threshold while they're improving their output in the weight room. And then when they do get back to it, when they're able to jump a 100%, you know, then they've built up their capacity to the point where they can handle a 100% jumps. They're still doing jump and then the duration of their session can can go up.
John:For me personally, when I've done the load management setups, what I've really liked to do is have, like, twenty to twenty five minute sessions, really short. The intensity is usually graded, or I'll have one or two jumps at a 100100%, and then my output will climb up each week just because I'm getting better at the skill. You've seen that. Right? You guys have seen me jump a little higher every week.
John:And now it's like last week I had a fifty minute session. It was a little bit too much. I did ISOs and slow squats yesterday. Today, I'll probably do it again. And I think I'll be good to probably have a forty minute session next week.
John:So this is maybe another lens too is that you slowly progress up your jump sessions week to week and be really strict with the time. So And track pain.
Isaiah:Yeah. Track
John:pain. So I typically pay attention mostly to how I feel Monday morning. If Monday and the day after. If Monday morning I feel like, dang, could probably jump today, I know that I did it right. If I feel like Monday morning, there's no way I could have a session today, then I know that I went too long.
John:And my sessions are on Friday, so seventy two hours later, if I feel like I could jump again, I know I did it right. Typically, on load management setups, that's how we have it set up as well. So if you feel like there's no way I could jump three days later, then you definitely went too long and you need to cut it back to a point where you could you could handle that. For me, right now, I'm at thirty to thirty five minutes. Forty would probably be a little too much.
John:Since this week I'm gonna be indoor, I'll probably still keep it at thirty, thirty five minutes, and then we'll see how I respond basically to that. If it goes well, I'll stay there for a week or two, and then I'll progress it up, you know, five or so minutes after that. Now if I feel amazing, and I'm like, I'm gonna go for an hour, if I do that, there's a bit of a risk because you could flare it up again, and it could potentially set you back. So to avoid that, I think it's safer to do the the smaller incremental jumps. And like Isaiah said
Isaiah:I've I never see that go well where
John:What?
Isaiah:When you feel good and you push
John:Oh, yeah.
Isaiah:Yeah. That's I'm not saying for you specifically. I'm saying just for anybody, for myself.
John:Where you push up to an hour longer than
Isaiah:you used to. Yeah. Like, if you have been at a certain time limit and then you feel really good one week, it's like more of a reason to cut it there next week and, like, you stick to the plan basically.
John:Yeah. Yeah.
Isaiah:Stick to the plan and, yeah, the long game like Austin said.
John:Nice.
Isaiah:I wanna talk about performance specifically because I know that when we anytime we talk about tendons, most people
John:They check out.
Isaiah:They check out. What
John:about jumping higher.
Isaiah:Yeah. What about for jumping higher? How long should should sessions be?
John:So I think that you could get away with you could see improvement if your vertical's around 30 inches with twenty to thirty minutes, I think. You could see improvement up to about 36, 37 inches of vertical off two feet. Off one, you might have a hard time getting fully warm by that period of time. But if you're like the other thing too that you have to remember with this stuff is the lighter you are, the longer your sessions are gonna be. The more powerful and heavier you are, the shorter your sessions have to be.
John:So like someone like Austin, when he weighs one fifty, he can handle sessions that are a lot longer and he needs to have sessions that are a lot longer to jump higher. Lewis, whenever he weighed one thirty, he could jump almost every day and there was no issue. Yeah. Now that he weighs one eighty or one seventy
Isaiah:And has higher
John:at higher output, his session length has to go down. So I think that's why you see a lot of kids that can handle really long sessions. Well, because they weigh a hundred pounds and the vertical's thirty inches. The forces are just way less, and you're not seeing their output exceed the capacity of their tendon. It's impossible.
John:The total force is lower than the material's ability. Your tendon it's like material science. Yeah. Your tendon's physical structural capacity to handle it. So if you're a bigger guy, like over one hundred seventy five and you have a 36, 37 inch vertical, then you're gonna have to stay probably around forty minutes to an hour.
John:And that's gonna be a little bit of a limiter. As you get lighter and more capable and your capacity goes up for performance, for the sake of performance, you're probably gonna need at least an hour, and probably at least fifteen to twenty minutes of that have to be max effort jumping. And I think at that point, if you have a 37, 38 inch vertical, odds are you probably need to get your all put up in the weight room. So like if you're not power cleaning, you know, 1.4 times body weight, assuming that you're less than two hundred pounds, and your squat isn't at least two times body weight, your RDL is not at least two times body weight, odds are you're probably gonna see your output go up by getting those up and having sessions that are about forty five minutes to an hour, and then assuming you're staying healthy. But if you are at those levels like Austin, myself, Isaiah, we're still gonna try to drive that up, but since I have a big decrement in my jump sessions, I don't need to push in the weight room per se.
John:I just need to maintain, maybe increase a little bit, and then have consistent healthy sessions where I'm pushing hard the last fifteen to twenty minutes. You know, with Austin and and his two foot, maybe that applies with his one foot, that's not so much the case. He's probably gonna get better by getting more capable in the weight room with cleans, squats, stuff like that, maybe doing some dynamic lifts that are adding variety and stuff, and then unloading. That's where he's gonna see those big boosts in performance, same thing with Isaiah. They're not usually gonna jump higher by just increasing the duration of their jump sessions or having more high intensity jumps in a jump session.
John:They've already milked all of there's that word. They've already milked all of the gains and adaptation from having regular jump sessions for hours and hours across the lifetime of their career as a jumper?
Isaiah:One guideline, I would say, is don't jump for so long that your quality of training decreases Yeah. During the week. That's why I I
John:For, like, high level guys like you guys.
Isaiah:Yeah. Like, I I was talking to Travis, we were talking about how his vertical has felt stalled for a while. And then It's like you don't train. And then, yeah, we were we were talking, and then he he made a good point. He said, I just realized I forgot what video he was watching on our channel.
Isaiah:I think he was watching just our our workouts in general. Mhmm. And he said, he's like, and I quote, I just realized I've been lazy as hell with my workouts. And he he said he had he's never missed a single day, but he treats the the weekly sessions almost like a weekly competition.
John:Mhmm.
Isaiah:And he'll meet up, you know, with two or three other guys, and then they just dunk for two and a half hours, three hours, to the point where you go into Monday feeling horrible, you can't even go as hard in the weight room as you could, then Wednesday is basically the only workout where you can go hard, but then you're thinking you wanna
John:jump I might on jump on Friday, so I'm not gonna push on Wednesday. So you have to You're always in the John Evans special. Yeah. Yeah. Even that, you're not even in the John Evans special because John Evans special, at least push Yeah.
Isaiah:So it's like go build up, your jump should be max intensity, but the session should not last to the point where your hurt or the quality like, you should feel like you can try a 100% on little list. This is
John:for the guys that are plateaued, I would This is the this is for the guys that you feel like your vertical is kinda stalled because, you know, you're due to session length,
Isaiah:you're usually guys that are addicted to dunking. Yeah. Like the guy guys that are already good
John:at dunking. For for the guys that are not good at dunking off like for me off two feet or Austin off two feet, we don't have as much time spent doing that skill. We are probably gonna see a lot of gains.
Isaiah:That's a hot take.
John:Yeah. Do you you don't think that if you jump more off two feet, you would jump higher every single week? Oh, definitely. No. That's what I'm saying.
Isaiah:You're saying
Austin:we'll pass
Isaiah:a two foot.
John:No. I'm saying I'm saying you're at a where point right you're at 70 to 80% of probably what you're capable of. Like, if you were regularly jumping off two feet often Mhmm. You're gonna get closer to your your capabilities. And then in terms of, like Isaiah, maybe his one foot for example, or his right left when we first started doing it.
John:He's gonna benefit from doing sessions more than he's gonna benefit from getting his output up. Oh yeah. Yeah. Whereas like
Isaiah:That's actually a really good example.
John:Yeah. Like if you're somebody where you're left If you're looking at leg, maybe my dunk skill I'm gonna benefit. My vertical's not gonna go up though. Whereas if I want my vertical to go up, I have to put a lot a lot of work in in the weight room and jumping and plyos potentially. We don't know how we feel about plyos.
John:Yeah.
Isaiah:So it's And then
John:back off to see my vertical climb up.
Isaiah:So it's like makes sense. The less advanced and more healthy you are. Like if there was like a graph Yeah. And you had like health and then health on the x axis and then what is it called? Beginner to advanced on the y axis, you would see The more
John:of a beginner you are and the healthier you are The
Isaiah:more you should be jumping. The longer the session should be. Yeah. Exactly. I wanna make that graph.
John:I don't know how it's it's like a it's like a grid. I don't even know if it's a graph. Yeah. It's like a it's like the hot crazy scale. Did ever see the way they do it?
John:Yeah. It's a matrix. It's not a graph. Yeah. Where I the any idea one of those points at one time on a graph.
Isaiah:Where I got the idea is in PowerPly Metrics, they have a plyometrics graph. And it's like how complex the plyo is and then how intense the plyo is, and then the volume goes from, like, high to low.
John:Yep. Yeah. That makes that makes sense.
Isaiah:I think we can make one in
John:We can make it with
Isaiah:patent patent look at the graph.
John:It's a patent graph. Yeah. So yeah. That said, if you're an advanced athlete and you are very, very healthy, you definitely need to do more of what Isaiah does and Austin does, where they push in the weight room and that's how they're gonna jump higher.
Isaiah:And you have to be
Austin:okay not jumping high for
Isaiah:and you have to
Austin:be okay not jumping high for a bit during those cycles because
John:They pay dividends later, but it's a lot of delayed gratification. A lot of delayed gratification. And then if you're a really, you know, not so healthy athlete who's in the beginning stages, you probably need to focus on jumping and staying healthy during the jump sessions and training so that you can get consistent sessions in. That would more so be like me when I'm doing right left. You know, when I'm left just jumping off my left leg, that thing's a cannon.
John:I just need to train and then I can do it basically whenever and I'm gonna jump high if I'm unloaded and feeling good. I don't need regular jump sessions to jump high. So I feel like that pretty well sums it up. If you're somewhere in between and you're not really sure, it's probably a balance of those as well, like we talked about earlier in the video.
Isaiah:I I will also say if you're one of those guys that are hurt, you can lift without pain, but you keep like re aggravating yourself trying to have the sessions, that's where the benefit of coaching is most beneficial. I always say this, even coaches need to needed help being coached. Even coaches need coaches. It's so easy. Like, you always have to be battling your self discipline when it comes to that.
John:If you're fall in the gray area, by way. Yeah.
Isaiah:And if you're someone that loves jumping, you're gonna really struggle with it, and you kinda need that third party view saying, hey, chill out this week. Or hey, you can go harder this week. Hey, keep it at fifteen minutes this week. It's really hard. You're gonna you're gonna have your bias creep in when you try to do that by yourself.
John:You know who's done a really good job with this is Tyler. Is it Tyler Moore? Is that his last name? Yeah. Tyler Moore has killed it with doing this recently.
John:So that's been really, really productive. You know, him being able to have that feedback and say, okay, you can jump it up a little bit here, here. Ambrose, I think as well, at one point or another, we had to help him with session length and understanding when to push and not push. Ethan Owens is another one. That's ugly, but we'll work on it.
Isaiah:Beginner, advanced, healthy, injured, jump volume. As you become more advanced and as you become more injured, lower jump
John:really good, actually. Actually, I lied. That's good. I like it.
Isaiah:Yeah. Yeah. Show that.
John:Show that. I'll show it focus. It focus.
Isaiah:I'll show it to the people.
John:There you go. Go ahead. Explain that, Isaiah.
Isaiah:Alright. Hold on. Let me focus this.
John:No. No. No. You just zoom out and then it should focus on its own.
Isaiah:Oh, okay. Oh. Alright. H stands for healthy. I stands for injured.
Isaiah:A stands for advanced. B stands for beginner. And the trend line is session length. So as you become more advanced, you should be jumping less and as you become more injured, should be also be jumping less. So yeah.
Isaiah:Hopefully that was helpful.
John:Alrighty, guys. That is it for the podcast. Go to teachmestrength.com if you wanna learn how to jump higher, get more athletic, and be a freak, a freak, a freak athlete. Just remember that we make your coaches sorry.
Isaiah:I was
John:gonna say your we're your coaches' favorite coaches. That's what I
Isaiah:was actually gonna say.
John:I was I
Isaiah:was gonna say.
John:We're your coaches' coaches. And it is absolutely true.
Isaiah:Guess what podcast all the coaches are watching right now? THB strength.
John:And if their training looks like ours, it's probably because it is inspired by ours.
Isaiah:Also, shout out to all the people that do our training just to start their own coaching.
John:Yeah. That does happen quite a bit, actually. It's it's unfortunate. We see it happen a lot. I won't add anything else to that.
John:Use code THP at checkout for 10% off. Austin, anything you'd like to add?
Austin:Treat your mother with respect.
John:That was good advice. Alright. We'll see you guys next time. Oh. Oh.
John:Oh. One more. One more.
Isaiah:If you're on YouTube Oh.
John:Oh. Yeah. If you're on YouTube, like, comment, and subscribe. It helps the algorithm. It helps us, and it inspires us to keep producing good content like this.
Isaiah:And if you're on a podcast platform
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