How To Jump 6 Inches Higher In 7 Days
What's up, guys? Welcome back to the THB Strength podcast. My name is John Evans. I am the coach of roughly five to 800 different athletes at any given point. I'm the head performance coach.
John:I've helped Isaiah go from roughly a 43 inches vertical to 50.5. I've helped Austin go from about 41 to 47. Are you at this I
Austin:think was lower. I think it was 39.
John:39? And I've actually helped probably 30 to 40 other pro doctors improve their vertical and get healthier, along with thousands of other athletes improve their tendon health as well as back health and their athletic performance. So today's topic, we are gonna be talking about deloads and how to quickly improve your vertical after you've been training for a period of time. If you do this correctly, you should be able to improve your vertical roughly two to three inches with about two to four weeks of not training, I guess, is the right way to say it.
Isaiah:But before we get into it, I want to give a quick word from our sponsors over at thpstrength.com. They were gracious enough to put a sponsorship into this video.
Austin:Thank you, guys. Thank you.
Isaiah:If you are looking for jump training, it is the best jump training on the planet, and they also can get your knees healthy if you deal with any kind of tendinopathy anywhere in your body. So if you're interested in that, go to thvstrength.com.
Austin:Hey Isaiah. What's up, Austin? We should give them a discount. No way. I I think that that's the best thing to do.
Austin:If you've been sitting around on the couch too long, getting really deep into Red Dead Redemption and played over two thousand hours, now is your time to sign up for THP. Use code THP at check off for 10% off your first month. It's gonna be the best decision ever, and you'll get off the couch.
John:How many hours of Red Dead and Resemption have you played?
Austin:Around three hundred.
John:I thought you're gonna say three thousand. I was like, oh my god.
Isaiah:What's cool is dunking fits really well with gaming if you wanna do both at the same time.
John:Yeah. Yeah. That is true. That is true. Andy, Andy, real quick.
John:Can you just double check, make sure the recording's recording? Can we push the red button? It's recording.
Austin:Oh, we're
Isaiah:going to edit this out? I think it'll be funny. Okay.
John:So getting into it. What is z
Isaiah:from not recording?
John:Bro. I do. You can't edit in something you don't record. I tell you that right now. Alright.
John:So backstory, I accidentally forgot. Andy or I forgot to start recording during Isaiah's session, and he hit a three sixty JRich two hand finish or something like that.
Austin:Is that
John:what it was?
Isaiah:No. It was a inverter, two hands.
John:Yeah. And it had never been done. And Isaiah, we didn't know until, like, thirty minutes later. So I'm just moving my camera around nonstop for, like, thirty minutes. And then I look, and I'm like, oh my god.
John:It's not recording. And I'm like, maybe it just stopped randomly in the last I was
Isaiah:really sad.
John:I don't know if sad is the word I would use. But it's okay. We work it worked out in the end. He ended up hitting it the next week. Right?
Isaiah:Yeah. Yeah.
John:With a spin?
Isaiah:Yeah. Yeah.
John:You did the harder version anyways.
Isaiah:Well, the harder version's been done. The regular Yeah. That one that in. Whatever.
John:I don't care. It's fine. You'll do it you'll do it next week. Yeah. So let's go with our experiences with a deloader.
John:Actually, even before we do that, we should probably explain what What is? Yeah. What it is. So, basically, you wanna drop your volume or intensity by roughly 20%. Typically, it's during the fourth week of a training cycle and this functions to help the body recover and kind of settle, I wouldn't say settle in, set in some of the physiological adaptations and let your performance or your preparedness come up as a result of fatigue coming down and also your fitness climbing up.
John:If you go too long without a deload, you have a couple of things happen. One is something called monotonous overtraining, which is where you do the same thing too long and you're basically not allowing your body to recover and it becomes so well adapted to the stimulus that the stimulus doesn't allow for overload or adaptation. Another issue is you can overtrain. So that's basically where you go the other direction and you're training so hard that your body cannot recover. That can lead to a lot of sicknesses.
John:It can lead to drop in your HRV score, which is like a measure of your parasympathetic nervous system. You can see your resting heart rate climb up as a result. A lot of weird central nervous system stuff starts to happen. You can look into that. That maybe might be another topic for another time.
John:But the deload helps mitigate the onset of overtraining, and it can also allow you to feel a little bit better about your training because it's hard to go through long periods of arduous training without seeing much of a return on your investment. A lot of people have a hard time with So, typically, that's only a week, but you can extend that deload out and more or less do a taper or peaking. So I typically just call it unloading. I don't really call it, like, peaking or whatever else because to me, it's just loading and unloading. Right?
John:You load for a period of time. You unload for a period of time. Different people have different responses to it, so we'll go through our experiences with unloading for you, what you've seen work, what you've seen not work. And then, Austin, you can go through yours. I'm gonna grab my coffee.
John:Okay.
Isaiah:My delos are pretty freaking dialed in at this point. I mean, it's been about five years of this style of THP jump training. And at this point, it's almost guaranteed that if I train really hard for three to four weeks and then back off hard for one to two weeks that I will have a an outlier top 1% of of jumping performance. And then depending on the style of training, I will see more or less results from that deload. So generally, when I do a lot of, like, high volume work, a lot of max strength work, and I push it really freaking hard and I see a noticeable decrease, namely in my power clean, that's usually where I see a big decrease in my performance as far as, like, my rate of force development.
Isaiah:I know if I unload, I'm gonna have a really good jumping day relative to my baseline level of performance. That pretty seems much sums up my
Austin:How long?
John:How long do you did you say how long?
Isaiah:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Usually a week. The hour I usually load for three weeks and then unload for one week.
John:What if it's all time best jumping? You still, like, seven days?
Isaiah:Yeah. Yeah. Generally. Sometimes if I usually, it's not enough if I push intensity too much during that deload week. And that'll only happen when I'm like trying to max my lifts during deload week.
Isaiah:So if I like max squat or if I am trying to max my power clean, I do too many attempts at a at a maximal weight, I won't see as good of a deload. But if I keep intensity high, just not hitting failure, so if I'm like 90% around there for a single, that's usually when I see an effective deload. There has there have been times where I'll deload. I almost always jump better compared to the the third week of loading, but sometimes we'll extend the deload out a little bit, and I jump better at, like, week two or week three. But at that point, it's more of a taper.
Isaiah:Right. Where I saw that was right before I tested 50.5, so that was, I think, February or early March. We had deloaded for a competition early February, so that was a one week deload. Did the the the show. This was the all star weekend.
Isaiah:Jumped well, but I was still pretty fatigued. Like, I jumped really, really well there, but I think I had I think my power clean numbers were down. So I I unloaded and my power clean was still like 20 pounds lower than my all time max, which is usually a sign that I'm I'm still not like fully recovered. And then we did a basically, I think two weeks of building up my power clean, still unloading in the weight room. And then every week, my power clean climbed up until I matched my PR or close to my PR.
Isaiah:I power clean 300 plus. And then two days later, I hit my all time best jumping day. So I've and then I think I had done a lot of, like
John:So you hit that three zero three hundred and then you hit 50.5 the second time?
Isaiah:Two days later. Yeah.
John:That's actually really interesting.
Isaiah:Yeah. I did not expect that.
John:Mhmm. Because you've done that before and gone the other direction.
Isaiah:I think that's why when because we we've written down my plan basically for dunk camp. If you guys don't know what dunk camp is, the camp that we hold every single summer And for Not
John:us. But Not us.
Isaiah:But But
John:it exists every summer.
Austin:Yeah.
Isaiah:Yeah. And that's basically what we train for to because we always test my vertical at dunk camp. So after I tested the 50.5, we basically wrote out a three month plan on how to beat that at dunk camp this summer. And one of the notes we put in there was build my, I think, functional overreach, which is basically just jump a lot, then unload, and get my power clean up before before dunk. I think it was because of that.
Isaiah:Yeah.
John:So what the biggest thing we noticed with it was that jumping helped a lot, and so we wanted to in terms of the a functional overreach could be anything, but we're going to do a very short period of intense higher volume jumping that is basically at the capacity of what he can handle. And then we're gonna back off all the jumping and then go and see how he does. And, usually, he responds really well to that. So one thing I wanted to clear up, difference between a deload and a taper. Taper in research is usually seven to fourteen days.
John:Deload is usually only a 20% drop in volume and intensity. A taper, you would see a 50% drop in volume, and you would keep intensity very high. When I do deloads with these guys, I generally let them tell me how they feel, and then I kind of guide the session. Like, if they feel really good and they wanna max and I'm five or six days out from when they were supposed to jump, I'm fine with that. But if it's really close to the session, I don't usually like to push volume definitely not volume with intensity, but even intensity, like to stay away from.
John:For jumping athletes, I found that the traditional research of, like, keep keep intensity really high and draw volume really intensely doesn't work too much. A lot of the guys that I work with like to have a little bit of hypertrophy work in there and actually don't like intensity too high similar to weightlifters. OLE weightlifters are very similar. They don't like to max too close to competition because you can fatigue them for too long. That was something that Vance Nugard, one of my Olympic weightlifting mentors, taught me, and I found that to be the case.
John:Like, if he goes really heavy in back squat or really heavy in front squat or power clean, if he does too much intensity for too long, too close to a session, it's not gonna go well. And even when we've been in competitive periods and it's been a prolonged kind of unloading with jumping and trying to maintain performance, you know, we we don't have too much intensity with volume. Definitely not close to competition. So just wanted to clear that up. And, Austin, go ahead and share your experience.
John:Throw it.
Austin:Yeah. My experience is very similar to Isaiah's. I do notice that I tend to get more fatigued than Isaiah does, and I typically need a little bit longer. The deload closer to two weeks. He's built differently.
Austin:Yeah. He is. He he is built differently.
John:He's a two foot jumper.
Austin:I mean, even with my two foot, just neurally, get more fatigued than most, it seems. But, yeah, typically, to jump my best, it's around the same process for Isaiah. But, yeah, I I do notice fatigue immediately. For me, it's more just so, like, I don't wanna even lift. Like, I it's like I sleep extra like, why?
Austin:I sleep, like, twelve hours a night around week three of every cycle, and I do not want to come train. And my lifts go down a lot. Right? Like, I would say my lifts, like I feel like you don't have as much of a decrease as I do, say, personally. I get, like, a 50 pound decrease in, like In, like, lifts?
Austin:Yeah. Like, mine just drops. My vert shoots down, like, 10 inches too. It's it's crazy.
Isaiah:I see I see a lot of decrease personally in, yeah, my clean my clean drop I mean, my clean dropped 50 pounds this last cycle, but, generally, my strength like, max strength work, takes longer to decrease, which falls in line with research.
John:Alright. So I guess this brings up maybe the next question is how do you do this correctly? How do you know if you're unloaded or deloaded or whatever? Right? A lot of the times when we work with athletes, we see them jump way higher after they hop off our training.
John:I've said this before. The reason why is because they basically do a deload. They do an unload or they do a taper. They went from training at a 100% of the volume to training to 10% of the volume, just jumping once a week. That'll work for a little while, and then typically they fall off really quickly.
John:And the reason why is because you don't have you can't maintain your fitness very well if you're not doing power work or strength work. You're gonna fall off in those capacities, and then that's gonna make your output in terms of your performance go down, especially in something that's so force dependent like jumping. That said, if you're kind of wondering, like, oh, should I back off or should I not? I would say if your vertical has been depressed for a period of time, meaning it's down anywhere from two to six inches, you know, you probably do need a period of unloading. I have been working it more frequently into our athletes trainings because I feel like it increases compliance and, you know, buy in and and can kinda help guys long term with motivation.
John:That's a huge yes.
Isaiah:No. I was I was just saying that's a huge reason for that. But I think a lot a lot of times, athletes on our training used to get very demotivated, because the training is really freaking hard. So we started implementing, like, every three, four months. We put them on something called the John Evans special, which was created by John.
Isaiah:He used it to main he he he wanted a period of basically it was, three three months around there where he wanted to, maintain vertical, and he was really fatigued. And we started loading that cycle up for athletes and telling them, basically, you do one hard workout, Monday, do the same workout Wednesday, but back off a lot, and then sessions every Friday, and you can kinda maintain your vertical there. And if you've been training really hard for three months, you you'll usually see your vertical increase every week of that cycle. And it's been it's been the cycle where a lot of our athletes have jumped their highest.
John:Like, Nathan had some of the freakiest performances ever on that. And what's interesting too is, like, when you hit that new ceiling, you kind of understand what that movement pattern or motor pattern feels like, and that long term helps guys improve. It's almost like they understand what it's like to hit that next gear. And they're like, oh, that's what that's like. That's what that feels like.
John:And they can get back to that even in the subsequent cycle. So I like to unload guys, and some guys are like, well, should I unload it all? Or, like, is there a benefit long term or whatever else? I do think long term, it can help when you do hit those new performances, like those new peaks because the basement typically comes up too. Yeah.
John:And once you've been there before, it's easier to get back. Whereas if you've never been there, it's kinda like, oh, I don't know what that feels like. And sometimes that's really, really helpful. So if you're one of our athletes and you're wondering that and you're like, I've been loading for three or so months, then it might be time to to unload. It might be time to kinda freshen up and allow yourself to to perform well.
John:I know in high school, it it took me three, probably two months to fully freshen up, and then I PR'd my high jump by, you know, four inches, by doing that. And then I've seen it happen in in dunking. I unloaded for six to eight weeks. You know, that that's beyond a taper. That's like a on almost a, yeah, John Evans special.
John:You're just week to week, you just get a little better, a little better, a little better, and I've seen it work incredibly, incredibly well for guys.
Isaiah:Yeah. You have to be really wary when you're doing that because there does come a point where Yeah. Your performance starts decreasing. That's where you have to I mean, the whole point of training is to is to spur on adaptation, and the volume and intensity is there eventually get to the point where they're not enough, and your your performance just starts going.
John:We've seen
Austin:Like that.
John:That happen to Travis. I've seen it happen to myself. I've done it too before. And it's like your dunk skill typically gets better. Like, even in high jump, maybe your technique gets better.
John:High jump's interesting because if your preparedness goes down, you're typically gonna jump worse technically. Like, they match each other. The more fit you are, the better your technique looks. You'll have more rotation because your ground reaction force is higher and your red force development's better, and so you'll have more rotation. In dunking, you can jump lower and still hit more difficult dunks, because you don't have to worry about that as much.
John:Where in track, you know, you you'll see other things kinda fall off as a result. Like, fitness typically follows your form in in terms of that sport. Dunking, again, that's not the case. So
Isaiah:So how, guess you actually kinda covered it, but I guess we can go over it one more time. How exactly do you deload?
John:So what I would do for guys is I would have them figure out what they were doing previously. I would cut the sets in half typically, and I only like high intensity, like, five to seven days out from their jump day. When you're, like, two to three days out, you gotta drop everything back by about definitely volume by 50%. Intensity can stay high typically in the power movement in which almost all of our guys have some sort of a power movement three to five days out or probably, yeah, two days out, they'll have a power movement. So I'll keep that in there, and then the strength work all falls off.
John:Your metrics typically go like this in terms of fatigue, like what fatigues first to last. The really sensitive ones are like sprinting, RSI, which is reactive strength index, like a repeat hop. What else will fall single leg jumping, that stuff will fall off first. And then the next thing that falls off is your power output. So you'll see like typically speed strength.
John:So moving a lighter relatively lighter object really fast, like a light barbell and a power snatch. You'll see wattages fall off. You'll see peak bar velocities fall off. Then you're gonna see strength speed, which is like heavy power cleans. That's the next next metric to go.
John:And then the next one is typically your strength. So if your strength is down, you're very fatigued. The other ones will typically come up pretty quick if you're if you're fit. Like, if Isaiah's down, I'm not worried about it. If Austin start to fall off, I'm a little bit more concerned because he doesn't have as many years of training built up.
John:His physiology, when it drops off like that, that's a sign he's pretty far in the hole, and it takes a while for him to come back out of that. Sometimes it's just detraining, but if he's been training, I'm I'm I know that it's it's fatigue. Right? And that's a
Isaiah:I just had such a funny image in my head. Like, I wish we had an animator. I I just imagined Austin, like, in a hole, like, screaming for help, and then a guy with a strong-arm, like and and his name is D load, and he's like and like you guys clap and brings you up. Yeah. It reminds
Austin:me of like an old political cartoon. Like Yeah. Yeah.
John:Like political satire? Yeah. Yeah. Uncle Sam. Rosie the river.
Isaiah:Oh. You're like falling into an abyss.
John:Yeah. That's me, and I'm just digging the hole deeper.
Isaiah:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I literally pictured you, like, looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger like D Lo. Boom.
Isaiah:Just fixing us.
John:Matching him.
Austin:Disregard disregarded dumbbells and plates at the bottom. I'm
Isaiah:like, crawling.
John:Just throwing more weight on top of him. So yeah. If you're if you're seeing that, you typically need to back off. And, honestly, you only need, like, one or two days a week of lifting in general during an unload. One is, like, probably a little too like, that's too little.
John:You need a little bit more than that. One hard day, one easy day is really all you need in a week, and then you'll you'll start to recover or you should. Now if you're really just not trained well, that might even be too much.
Isaiah:I have so much adrenaline right now.
John:Why? You wanna dunk?
Isaiah:I don't bro, I little my my veins are
John:like You're ready to train? Yeah.
Austin:I'm ready to dunk.
John:Alright. Well, I feel like that's a good place to stop. If you guys I'm dunking today. If you guys wanna jump higher and wanna be a part of our cohort of freak athletes, you wanna be a better athlete, you wanna get leaner, you wanna get stronger, more powerful, and be a part of the community, go to thpstrength.com and use code THP at checkout for a 10% discount off your first month. If you're weary.
John:If you're weary. And that said, make sure you like, comment, subscribe. And if you're on a podcast or streaming platform, make sure you give us five stars and leave a comment. Thanks for watching, guys, and we'll see you tomorrow.
