How to Jump Higher for Volleyball
What's up everybody? My name is Isaiah Rivera. I took my vertical from a measly 24 inches to a world record 50.5 inches. This is my coach, John Evans, and he started training me when I had a 42 inch vertical and crippling knee pain, and he got me all the way to where I am now. And today, we are going to be talking about how you should train to jump higher if you are a volleyball player.
Isaiah:But before we do that, John, can give can you give us a quick word from our sponsors?
John:So a quick word or a huge, huge shout out to our sponsors over at THB Strength. They are the premier jump coaches in the entire world. If you are looking to jump higher, get more athletic, and get healthy, go to thbstrength.com. The best, absolute best thing you can do to be a better athlete. No no insole, no other coaching, no specific exercise is gonna be as effective as their coaching.
John:Cool. Also, yes, again, we know we are our own sponsors. Alright. So you wanna introduce the topic?
Isaiah:Yeah. So volleyball is a very popular sport where this a little bit further away because No. The the success in volleyball is very correlated to how high you can jump. It is a skill that is very in demand as a volleyball player and luckily that is our specialty is training how to jump higher and because of the nature of volleyball we do I do have a big percentage of viewers that that is their main sport. That is the entire reason that they are training to jump higher and quite frankly there isn't a lot of information, good information out there about training specifically for volleyball like there is for basketball.
Isaiah:I think, the basketball world is way bigger than the volleyball world and thus there's a lot more information on dunking. But hopefully we can bridge that gap for you guys. We've actually trained a ton of volleyball players. It it plays I I need to actually take a poll and see how how much of it is, but I wouldn't be surprised if like 20 to 30% of the athletes we coach are strictly for volleyball. So without further ado, let's get into it.
Isaiah:I guess the first thing that we need to define is the
John:You like definitions, don't you?
Isaiah:Yeah. Well, I I like to give kind of like a framework for the for the for the topic, but guess what what biomotor capacities do you need if you're a volleyball player? That's probably a good place to start.
John:Yeah. So I I actually think that volleyball and dunking are pretty much the same. I mean, it's the same in terms of what you're trying to do for the KPI, key performance indicator for success, which is jump high. Right? They're pretty much identical.
John:The biggest difference in volleyball is that you don't have infinite amounts of time like you do in dunking. So in dunking, specifically in the sport, you get, what, thirty seconds to a minute or something like that to make a dunk or three rounds
Isaiah:Yeah.
John:With as much time as you need to
Isaiah:set up? Basically, three attempts in in a typical dunk contest, you would have three jumps spaced out anywhere from thirty to forty five seconds in between each jump and then, like, five to fifty minutes in between those three those three jumps versus volleyball. What's the timing for volleyball?
John:I have I mean, I would guess, like, each between, like, the ball going to the other side and then passing, setting, hitting, I mean, anywhere from, like, I don't know, three to eight seconds or something like that in that range. I don't know. That's just ballpark based off me trying to think, like, probably around there. Could be more or
Isaiah:two if the if the ball isn't coming towards you. Like, you could be not jumping for a couple minutes.
John:Yeah. You could you could be oh, like, as an actual player on this. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
John:Yeah. Yeah. So you could be waiting longer, but the time interval you have to actually set up for a jump
Isaiah:Oh, yeah. Is Oh, I see what you mean. I see what you mean. Yeah. And dunking, you you can take all the time in the world to start your approach versus volleyball.
Isaiah:The ball's coming your way. The bump the bump set spike is happening. You have, like, five seconds. Yeah.
John:You probably have yeah. You probably have about that.
Isaiah:And and you're limited too by the distance. In in a dunk, you could hypothetically start full court and run versus in volleyball, you're limited by, like, three steps, maybe four steps.
John:Yeah. I guess what was your what did you feel the difference was when you were playing volleyball the one time we played versus dunking in terms of the the jumping and the approaches?
Isaiah:Yeah. So for those of you that don't know, I messed around with playing a little bit of volleyball a couple months ago. The biggest difference was the timing. I think that's the biggest thing that I struggled with is just getting the timing down. It it was basically like having someone throw you an alley oop, but I wasn't used to how how that would happen.
Isaiah:And and then the spacing, the distance. So like on a basketball court, I'm running basically full court on a fast break and I'm looking at my passer the whole time and we're kind of gauging that versus volleyball, it was a different line of direction. I had to backpedal. I've never on a basketball court, I've never backpedaled and then ran. So it literally felt like I was like backpedaling and I didn't know how much I had to backpedal and then I had to start my approach so the timing was very different.
Isaiah:So that's one thing that was difficult. The approach distance wasn't as much as I wanted it to be, but I think that was mainly due to a lack of experience. I think if I played more, I'd be able to give myself a little bit more room to approach with. But it's definitely still not as much as a full like five or six step approach dunk. So I I would say those are those were the two biggest things is the time or the three biggest things.
Isaiah:The timing was different. I had to back pedal and less space.
John:What about the height of the ball? Was it like that varying? Was that difficult?
Isaiah:That was difficult because I'm used to a a lob on a dunk being essentially the same every single time, whereas it was different with when I was playing volleyball. Mind you, I think that would change if I played more consistently and got used to the timing. And then, if you're playing with a consistent with a passer, you'd probably get to understand each other's timings and all that stuff. I will say a lot of those issues were just from a lack of experience. Yeah.
Isaiah:I think.
John:And bad players.
Isaiah:Yeah. But I think if I were experienced, the biggest difference would probably be the space. You don't have as much space and time to set up for your jump.
John:Yeah. I agree. I think that watching you play and seeing your dunking and your max effort jumping, you have what does this I mean, what how far is it from the hoop to the three point line college?
Isaiah:From I mean, from where I start, it's probably, like, 25 feet away 20 to 25 feet away from the hoop.
John:Right. And so a 10 foot line is back row. So if you're doing a straight ahead approach approach, you'd have to be like, where you serve to the net would be for you to hit 50.5 inches on an approach.
Isaiah:Yeah. That's crazy. So I could cover most
John:of that. Yeah. That exactly. So, basically, you'd have to work within and if you move laterally and stuff like that across the court, which some guys do to stay in the front row, I think for you, back row hitting would be more similar to actually dunking, like a distance dunk almost or something like that. And then if you're front row, you'd probably have to be maybe you'd have I mean, you'd be behind the 10 foot line before your approach.
Isaiah:Take a step and a penultimate.
John:Yeah. Kind of what do you think you could hit on that in
Isaiah:terms of vertical? I mean, I've kinda tested. That's what I did when I did my height check two dunk sessions ago. When I tested my vert, like, with flight time, it was, like, 44, 45.
John:So you could hit a 45 inch vertical with, like, what, four foot contacts into a jump? So, like, one step penultimate plant block.
Isaiah:Three steps. Three foot contacts. I could hit a 45.
John:Wow. Okay. So I think you could probably get one more in there. What if you had one more? Like, a baby, like, one additional step.
Isaiah:At most of my vertical for sure. On my highest jumping day ever, I could probably test 48 with that.
John:Okay. So pretty pretty much the same. That's the biggest difference. Right? So you're dealing with slightly less horizontal momentum.
Isaiah:It's like how many percent of your vertical? Accent.
John:May maybe well, more. 95%. Right? 90 to 95% the whole time. Now most times when I watch players in volleyball, they're more focused on the timing, and part of that is related to their height.
John:Right? Like, if you're a volleyball player at the men's collegiate level and you're really, really good, odds are you're probably six three to six ten or something like that. And the timing of the sets is gonna differ. Right? And I'm not a volleyball expert, but I've talked to a lot of volleyball players who are pretty good, like Josh Barrina, Jimmy Ho, Richard Tan.
John:And these guys have kinda taught me a little bit about it. And to my understanding, the pace of how fast those sets come across the net, like how fast you can get a set across, and then how quickly the hitter can get to the ball. So if your pace is really fast, you're probably really low fast sets, and so it's more about the timing of the hitter and the setter to get really high paced volleyball, and the more skilled you are, usually the higher the pace it is. So if you're a really high level men's team, you might, you know, set the ball across the whole net, whatever, a foot or two feet above the net, that's only 10 feet, but the the you're basically in the air as they're setting the ball and pushing it across the net, and so the defender doesn't really have enough time to read that, and that makes it really, really tricky. And so that's, like, more of the strategy aspect of it as you get to higher levels.
John:That seems to play a role. At the lower levels, and and the highlights that we see is usually these high school guys or college guys or club guys that are just doing the crowd pleaser level mega hits, you know, from back row, like Leon L. Marshall and stuff, where it's just a high asset. He's coming from back row and just absolutely annihilating the ball. So for those, it seems like it's pretty much exactly the same.
John:Right? You can access 95% of your vertical on those hits, those those really big just massive spikes where they crater it into the floor, which are fun to watch. That's what we all like to watch, and it's probably what a lot of our athletes wanna do and like to do. So I think it's the training should not be that dissimilar, but the big difference is that volleyball players are jumping. I mean, we have a collegiate volleyball player we coach right now, and she sends us all her data.
John:She's jumping each practice 130 times. So imagine and she probably jumps four to five times a week because she's a front row only player. Right? What's a 150 times five? I don't even know.
Isaiah:75750
John:contacts a week. Yeah. What how would you feel if you jumped? And she's probably her best touch is ten one, and what do we know what her reach is?
Isaiah:I don't think so.
John:I think her best vertical is probably like 28. So she is probably within 90% or something like that, right, each time. Imagine if you did that, how would you feel?
Isaiah:I would feel good. I mean, I think it it's more I think it would have been more doable when I was younger and I didn't jump as high, but definitely would not have been would not be sustainable right now for me. And I don't think that's very sustainable for most volleyball players. I think the only way it is sustainable is if you decrease the effort level on your jumps, which I think it is how guys survive, but you're not gonna be pushing your vertical up, which I guess leads to what the biggest issue for training volleyball is that they're just jumping way too frequently, to the point where the weight room quality isn't very high. Because the only way to have high weight room quality is to have higher frequency on all that stuff, higher intensities at which point you're gonna be battling injuries.
Isaiah:So something has to give. I think if your priority is to improve your vertical, like to maximize that specifically, something has to give.
John:Right. I think another big issue with volleyball is that, especially at the grassroot level as you're going through high school and even into college, is that so many of these programs are asking athletes to play year round. So not only are they having a season where they're jumping 750 times, they're having an off season, a pre season, you know, all these different times throughout the year where they're jumping 750 times a week. That's a serious issue because you don't have time to focus on anything else. And I think part of this comes back to the coaching.
John:I think the coaching for volleyball is not very good because they don't they they don't take this into consideration at all. All they think about is we gotta practice these fancy sets, we gotta practice these fancy passes, we gotta practice all this other stuff, and it's like, you gotta be first off in a game, you're probably you should be jumping 90 to 95% of your best. Right? So how are you gonna do that and stay healthy if and this is a major KPI. And if maybe the pace of the game is more of a KPI than than the actual output of the athlete, okay, maybe you do have to do that.
John:Maybe you do jump sub max maximally more. But if your goal is to jump higher and you wanna hammer spikes and that's seems to be as important as what it is, right, or it seems to be relatively important, If it's actually that important
Isaiah:I'm actually curious.
John:Something has to change.
Isaiah:And the for those of you guys that are experienced volleyball players, I'm curious if you can comment below where on a scale from one to 10, how important is vertical jump ability?
John:Or like top touch maybe.
Isaiah:Yeah, or like yeah, your max touch and how important is the skill of volleyball. I'm gonna give an example for basketball, as much as like what anybody says, I would say up until like the d the d one level, it's way more important. It's like you need to have like a baseline level of being able to dunk, I would say to be able to compete at a high high level, like if you can do a one or two hander, but then that's like the baseline, but then skills way more important past that. Like you're not really gonna improve as a basketball player, by going from let's say it's me and I'm rimgracing, I have a 36 inch vertical. I as a basketball player, I would become way better and increase my chances of playing at a higher level if I focus purely on the skill aspect of it than going from 36 to 45 inches.
Isaiah:I'm curious for those of you guys that are experienced at volleyball, is it the same thing in volleyball or can you get to a decent skill level, baseline skill level and then from there it's like the ceiling is based on how or yeah. The ceiling is based on how high you can jump.
John:Part of me wonders too, like, I've seen a decent amount of volleyball. What if to to pass, you don't need to be like, row, your focus is blocking and hitting. Right?
Isaiah:Yeah.
John:Maybe some passing, there's, like, some element of reaction time or whatever else, but you don't need to jump to practice that stuff. So it's really just working on timing it with the setter. Yeah. So I'm wondering if you had just one time a week of jumping 50 times maximally, you know, whether it's playing or hitting or whatever else
Isaiah:And you can do
John:And you do that once a week leading into the season, right, in free competition, how I would set it up is oh, there's Austin. How I would probably set it up. Once a week, I would have that.
Isaiah:Right? Jumping?
John:Jumping a 100%.
Isaiah:Like one of those hard practices. Like the
John:Not even a hard practice. Just like, hey, we're gonna practice like yeah. I guess you could call it that where you're hitting
Isaiah:Jump as hard as you can.
John:Yeah. We're just gonna focus on that. And, you know, maybe that's like let's say the season's three months long. That's a month out before season. One when you're in season, though, it's more about increasing your max like, having already increased your max vertical and functioning and having this max vertical reserve where functioning sub maximally, you can have a higher vertical and sustain it throughout the season.
John:Right? Yeah. So maybe your max vertical goes up to 52 in the preseason, right, or precompetitive season. And then you get into the competitive phase, and you're essentially functioning at 48 or 47, but you can do that, let's say, even if it's a 150 times a week. Right?
John:And that's all that's asked of you. And then you're you're killing everyone by doing that, and the skill aspect of it is developed when you're in that grassroot level. Right? I think about dunking, you don't learn to do all those trick dunks on 10 feet. You do it on,
Isaiah:like, you
John:know, whatever else, seven. It's like you could probably practice the skill, the timing, all those other aspects. Like,
Isaiah:you're a young like, if you're a young player, that is the time to get your 150 jumps five times a week and get the skill of it. And then I think as you start maturing your power and your output start going up, that's when it's like time to take a more traditional jump training approach. Decrease the the frequency of the jumping to once or twice a week, focus on the weight room. And then in season if you have to play more, that's the time to do the jumps. Like if you were to take me to answer your earlier question, I could probably jump at 85%, have a 40 inches vertical and sustain that jumping four or five times a week.
Isaiah:It'll probably go down over the course of the season. It'll decrease and my my, injuries will probably increase gradually. But then you take the off season, rehab, increase increase performance and focus on that. But yeah, I think it's like windows of opportunity.
John:Yeah.
Isaiah:You have to have windows of opportunity to get better, which most volleyball, like you said, most volleyball players are playing year round, which is a big mistake in my opinion.
John:I think going back to that, what I would do is Austin's just sitting in his car staring at us. If I had like a twelve month year, right, and let's say that I think three months they're in season ish, two to three months, what I would do is that's their competitive phase. I'd have a, you know, whatever, two to three month pre competitive phase, two to three month special prep, specific prep, and then two to three month of gen prep, maybe a month off at some point throughout the year, right? So I'd focus on heavy, heavy strength qualities when I'm further out, probably even all the way through the special prep phase, I would really focus on max strength. Once I would get into, like, precomp, I would start to really just focus on higher velocity movements.
John:I actually I would still do each of those as, like, a each of those phases I would cut down, and I would probably have a two peak year, now that I think about it.
Isaiah:Yeah.
John:I wouldn't have a a one peak year because you're gonna detrain all those qualities. You can't you can't extend the pre competitive phase out to three or four months. It's not better by doing that because you lose all of the training effects from previous cycles. So I probably would still keep them all at one month, but I would really focus on increasing their vertical as high as I possibly could, you know, leading into the season. And then once they're in season and the competitive part, yeah, it's like strategy becomes more of a role, but they're you have a better product to work with.
John:And if strategy was that important, then five, six players who have great timing would be like, they would be great. But I do think that height and your jumping ability is gonna dictate your success at a super high level. And then on top of that, I think about you jumping and touching twelve one, no one off of one step with two hands. I don't care if you're six ten is gonna touch 12 feet off one step with you with you like, I think you would hammer if you had good timing. You would annihilate the ball, especially knowing how hard you dunk.
John:If you learn to hit a ball, you're telling me you couldn't just look down at their their itty bitty fingers and just break them as you hammer the ball into their fingertips and then blast the ball out of the you know, like, even if their timing's great, I still think you could either that or you're just gonna look you're you basically have a bird's eye view to look at where you wanna hit the ball. You know what I mean? That's how I envision it happening. I don't know. Imagine when you try to dunk on someone like Lewis no offense.
John:No offense Lewis. But if you're taking three steps, four steps, better yet, it's a whole lob, and he has to take one step and try to block you with two hands, you think you're gonna dunk on him every time or try to break his hand in the process at least? Yeah. Yeah. I do actually.
John:Like, that's how you could kinda think about it. Right? How is it is it that much different, do you think?
Isaiah:I think dunking is different because the ball dunking is actually a lot different. I think it's way easier to block some block a dunk than it is to block a hit in volleyball because in dunking, the ball has to go through a a circle that's 18 inches in diameter. It no matter where you start, how fast you're running, the ball has to end up there. So as defender, you just have to put your hand by the hoop. Someone could jump.
Isaiah:Someone could have in a 100 inch vertical and jump from the freaking three point line, and you could and you and you could have a max touch of ten six, and you could block him.
John:Time is.
Isaiah:And the reason I the reason I know that is because of Lewis. Lewis is extremely good at blocking dunks, and he's blocked he's blocked me multiple times. He's blocked Guy Dupuis. He's blocked Doug Doug Anderson. All of us jumped higher than him.
Isaiah:And this is when he was young. Was He like, he didn't have the vertical he does now. It's because the ball has to end up there. Whereas in volleyball, it's like you said, you have a bird's eye view, and it's almost the opposite thing. The one place that someone can get a block is where their hand is.
Isaiah:So you just hit it Away from the away from the hand. So it's like it's the opposite problem of volleyball. Dunking is one target, volleyball is technically like endless targets. The ocean.
John:Yeah. That's actually a really good point. So that said, how it's different and how we get guys
Isaiah:I actually wanna Oh, yeah. Go ahead. I actually how how would it differ? So someone signs up for THP. We load up a cycle for them.
Isaiah:I'm gonna give four scenarios.
John:Four scenarios?
Isaiah:Okay. Healthy person in season, healthy person off season, guy with knee pain in season, guy with knee pain off season. What are you gonna tell him to how how are you gonna tell him to adjust the training and the workouts?
John:This is a good this is a good question. And for those of you listening, if you're athletes, bookmark this timestamp and listen to your whatever of these four you fall into. So if I'm out of season healthy, you know, let's say it's right at the end of the season. Stop playing volleyball. Yeah.
John:Stop playing volleyball and basically start training hard. Right? You know, don't maybe jump once a week. Now if you're unhealthy, get healthy as healthy as possible before and probably stop jumping. Build it in progressively,
Isaiah:If focus on getting you have knee pain, you sign up for THP, we're gonna get you healthy. Perfect. I don't want you because I I I feel like they'll think, oh, let me get healthy before I sign up.
John:I hate that. That is such a bad
Isaiah:ATG first. You first hang up with THP.
John:It's like, okay. Or you could've just gotten better, stronger, more athletic, and still been in the right progression anyways. And then you have the in season guy who's healthy. I'm probably gonna focus on keeping them healthy. So I would want them to work in those windows of opportunity, focus on staying healthy, push when they can push, when they have a lot of time off, and I would tell them to dog it in practice, basically.
John:How does
Isaiah:the weight room work work for that guy? How does the weight room work for the healthy guy?
John:Yeah. I would still follow a progressed plan, periodized plan according to their competitive schedule. So when it's non important stuff, I would load more heavily, still follow a periodized plan as they get closer to a game, an important game, I'm gonna back off in the weight room closer to that game, but still maintain the integrity of progressing intensity, dropping volume, etcetera, and still try to get I I look at it sequentially. So I have a a set workout, and I try to get through four of those set workouts. I don't have as much variety because you don't have a higher a higher frequency.
John:You can't repeat the same day one four times probably. Yep. So you might have two workouts that you wanna progress across three to four weeks, or one workout, one big workout you wanna progress. So I'll try to progress that one or something else
Isaiah:Yeah.
John:And address that that emphasis. But it's relatively general. I'm not gonna be doing a lot of jumping. I'm not gonna be doing any plyos. I'm not gonna be doing fast eccentrics.
John:I'm not gonna be doing overloaded eccentrics, all that stuff is gonna come out. And then as I get closer to the season ending, or the higher competitive stuff, I'm still gonna unload them, I'm still gonna de load them. All that stuff still is is maintained. And then for the unhealthy guy, I'm gonna tell him to dog it as much as possible. Yeah.
John:Focus on getting healthy when they're not practicing. And then on those big competitive games, that's when I'm gonna tell them to jump their highest and then put the pieces back together. Similar to basketball. It's exactly what we did with Nasir. Yeah.
John:It's just identical to what we did with Nasir. His entire he basically came to us one month prior to a season, couldn't walk downstairs, and was like, fix me for the season. And we're like, dude, you want me to get you ready to play basketball six days a week for two hours at a high level, and then compete at a high level, and you're giving me one month to do that, and you can't walk downstairs? Like, that was a very tall order, and we were able to do it, but it was very strategically, and we had a direct line of communication with one of his head coaches, who was his dad, actually. Shout out Ray.
John:And they listened. They did what we asked, and he was able to play the full season. If he had just gone into the season and tried to do what his coaches were asking him to do, there is no way he would have been able to do it. He would have probably been out of commission or played at a very low level the entire season. You'd agree with that?
John:Yeah.
Isaiah:For sure. And I'm gonna if you're if you're a current THP athlete, I would say the order of operations for you is one, go to the jump training course, watch the in season training video, then from there talk to us. So go to a group call or message us privately and we'll give you suggestions like just tell us what your schedule is and we'll give you suggestions on how to move the workouts around, how to adjust everything, and what your priority should be depending on if you're healthy or not, when's your important games, all that stuff. But I think that's a good place to cut it.
John:Last thing.
Isaiah:Oh,
John:yeah. At this point, if you're a volleyball player, you're probably out of season and in club season. This is when you wanna get better and healthy. You need to be doing stuff now because once you're in season, it's too late. Yeah.
John:And then I'll give this back to Isaiah.
Isaiah:Much too often, I see I see somebody signing up way too late and, yeah, they missed their window. So right right now is the time to to really get better. But having said that, that's pretty much it. Comment down any questions regarding this topic and especially if you're a volleyball player, I wanna hear your insights, your inputs, and feedback because something that makes John and I really good coaches is that we love learning and becoming better as coaches, and your feedback helps us do so. So other than that, like the video if you're on YouTube, give us a five star if you're on any of the podcast platforms.
Isaiah:And like always, go to thbstrength.com if you wanna coach Bayos, and we'll catch you guys in the next video. Peace out.
