Max Strength Isn't Your Vertical Jump Deficit
It's it's oh, welcome back to the THP Strength podcast.
John:On today's episode, we're talking about rate of force developments. We're doing it from afar today because we trained our, you know, what's off. We're trying to be more PC, and we forgot. So we're back in the studio back in the studio, baby, with the mics. And, Isaiah, you did some interesting RFD stuff today with me.
John:How did you feel? Did you like it?
Isaiah:Yeah.
John:You big fan? Let's define rate of force development. What is rate of force development? It's the
Isaiah:rate at which your
John:force develops. Yes. Isaiah, ding ding ding. Correct. So it's essentially how fast does your force go be on a force plate.
John:Right? Which we have force plates. Yeah. It's gonna be awesome. I'm so excited.
John:And, yeah, essentially, it is the probably number one determinant specifically in reactive activities. So when you're talking about reactive activities, you're talking about going up or down and then up really fast. That is reactive rate of force development. So you can have rate of force development eccentrically, downward. You can have it upwardsly, up upwardly, concentrically.
John:You can have it isometrically. All of those are very important, and how you store and release energy really, really well is also measured with rate of force development. So, Isaiah, what are some of your favorite concentric or just up phase RFD exercises? Do you like them? Do you not like them?
John:Do you feel like they help? I love them. Yeah? What are your favorites? Yeah.
Isaiah:Power cleans.
John:Yeah. Second pull measured specifically, how I like to do it is put the load in power clean, like, between 5070% and move that so fast on the second pull. So we looked at BBT for Josh. This is a major emphasis for him. If you're really, really strong
Isaiah:Isaiah. It goes up.
John:Yes. But if you're really, really strong, but you have but you don't jump very high Oh, yeah. Get in there
Isaiah:and do some fast shit. Fast stuff. Fast stuff.
John:Fast stuff. Fast stuff. So I've been doing quite a bit of this, and I have done it in different iterations with step up jumps. And I have Josh doing them right now. He actually, his rec fem, because he's so anteriorly tilted at his pelvis, got a little tweakarude.
John:So we had him do it on the box, and we had him do just foot sitting on the box and then just basically reactively, boom, generate as much force as you can. Really, really good for triple extensors, the hip, the knee, and looking at the ankle as well. So triple extensors, we know triple extensors are really important. Isaiah, what are some other iterations that I've used that you've seen me use of that exercise?
Isaiah:Of the step up?
John:Yeah. The step up progression. Got Step up jump progression.
Isaiah:We got repeat repeat step up jumps. We got it with a stomp. Stomp your foot into the into the bench. I've seen were you doing drops into the bench, step up? I did
John:it off the remember off the truck? The truck bed? Yes. What was your yeah. What what do you think?
John:That was that was fun. I like that one a lot. It's probably the most one of the most fun and novel training stimuli I've ever used as a as a reactive RFD exercise. So I progressed. I went from the box or the bench first and just max force.
John:And that was mostly timing, learning how to time up my hip first, putting myself in a position where you're kind of forced to load up your hip. And then the next one I did was with a a drop. So I would, like, stand on the box, drop down, and then explode out of it. Then I did repeat. So I would, like, jump, land, jump, land, jump, land, and I would do it without my foot touching the ground.
John:And then I did it, like, shock loading. So I stood on the bed of my truck, dropped down onto one foot, which was probably, what, like, a 24 inch drop or something? Yeah. And then land Yeah.
Isaiah:A little higher. Maybe a little higher. From the bed
John:of the truck? Yeah. But it's onto the box, like so.
Isaiah:Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's, 24.
John:Yeah. Something like that. And that was one of my probably one of the most specific things I've done that seemingly moved the needle for me, that and losing weight. What's, and then and then another one that I really liked was the split squat variants for RFD. So I did split squat, and I went from the pins, which actually maxed today.
John:I said, you need to send me those videos. And I did
Isaiah:It was a terrible video.
John:You took a terrible video? Yeah. Shout out.
Isaiah:I'm gonna I'm gonna show show it it in the chat, actually.
John:So if you're a one footer, this is gonna be that Donovan, is that Josh? Just what the is that's a terrible video. That's okay, though. So I've done it, like, different positions. So I started lower, and then I progressed up from the pins.
John:And then I did it from the front front rack position for RFD. So it's literally and then I've done it reactive. So Isaiah would say go or someone would say go from a split position. So that's more specific. And then I've done it with rhythm.
John:So I've, like, done it where I pause and just do one, and then I've done it where it's just repeat. And that's actually where I failed. That was probably the most intense shock loading, but I also jumped relatively high after doing a lot of that stuff. So it's definitely helped me quite a bit. For two foot, Isaiah, what do you feel like are the exercises for you in terms of rate of force development other than power cleans that that you feel like the move Alright.
Isaiah:I've done hex bar jumps and barbell squat jumps. The first time I ever did barbell squat jumps, my vertical skyrocketed. That was actually the month before I pulled my quad, which is always a good indicator I'm in good shape when I pull my quad.
John:Explain that. Go into detail about that.
Isaiah:Because I've
John:I've talked about it extensively, but why?
Isaiah:Because your tendon's dipping up, and then your quad is trying to yank on it. And it's strong enough to yank yank on it, and it ends up ends up pulling.
John:When the when the tendon's stiffer, your bony tendon musculotendinous junctions really stiff, it yanks harder than the muscle can yank, and that's when you tweak it. And that's usually when you see the highest, you know, reactivity. I think too
Isaiah:Oh, yeah. Go on.
John:No. I was gonna say, yeah, I I think, like, you know, in in shock loading, you know, like, stiffness hops and stuff like that, I've tweaked my my calf whenever I've been, like, double leg, hundred and fifty milliseconds on the ground, snapping off it. Yeah. That lower leg. And I've never really had any lower leg issues like my soleus, but when I really, really got fast on and off the ground, that was Yeah.
John:Brutal. Like, even springs. I don't I don't have that happen. The forces aren't Yeah. I don't I don't know.
Isaiah:It was, especially in the first year and a half of training with you when we were doing, like, normal training, not load management. It was like clockwork get stronger, then move into RFD work, and my vertical would skyrocket. What changed is I've had phases, like, periods of time where I'm doing RFD work and my vertical doesn't go up, but I was less robust as an athlete during those periods of time. Do you think
John:you weren't trying as hard? Like, your intent was low?
Isaiah:It's not that. I think I think to get more out of it, you need to, like, physiologically change during your general work.
John:Like, you train to train. You need to train to train.
Isaiah:I didn't, like, I didn't train to train hard enough to get to reap those benefits from the from the power work. I feel like I I've seen it happen a lot. Like, with Austin, I've seen it happen where he gets into more specific stuff, but he's, like, out of shape. And it just always ends up. Yeah.
Isaiah:And usually, guys are pretty excited to, like, get into it. Like, they wanna do it, but it's, like, you gotta earn it in a way.
John:That's how I feel body centric work too.
Isaiah:Yeah. Definitely. It can be centric work as well.
John:Really good long term, but acutely, you know, if you're not ready for that stimulus, it just doesn't
Isaiah:Yeah. But some of the highest some of the highest period some of my highest jumping, like, months came at the tail end of a lot of RFD work. Like, another good example is what I was I was just telling the guys at your house this. The the first time I reached 50, I think, was six months before I actually tested 50. It was I don't know if you remember when I dunked with Billy and we did the all the boys are athletes.
Isaiah:They're, like, throwing
John:Oh, yeah. They're always
Isaiah:in dunks. That that session, I had a height check. I think Anthony's, THP, like, in the back when I did the height check. But that was a period of time where I was doing a lot of RFD work. Just a lot of fast stuff.
Isaiah:Like, I was sprinting a lot. I was bounding. Then a year later, we went back into it, and I was doing this is like like the Zay cycles, but we would do, like, med ball jumps. Like, I was holding a med ball and, like, squat, go up.
John:Yeah. That was during
Isaiah:these sessions. Dumbbells dumbbell squat jumps. I think we put we actually there's a long long conjugate sequence systems. We put dumbbell squat jumps in the middle of a general cycle. Like, instead of doing my power cleans, it was doing squat jumps, then I was hitting, like, four by 14 squat.
Isaiah:Those two were paired together. We've paired yeah. We've paired a lot. We've I've done a lot of r d stuff. Like, now, like, thinking about it, like, I could go probably five minutes straight just listing all the r d things we've done.
Isaiah:You've done a lot
John:of different variants. We've done Yeah. Split split lunge jumps. We've done clean pulls, power cleans, power snatch, high snap, high pull, like, snatch high pull. And squats explosive, like, 70%.
John:Squats for yep. I like those
Isaiah:a lot. Hard way. Even squats the hard way when we strip off the weight and then from the bottom Yeah. Move the weight fast.
John:It's fun too because now I'm starting to get into it with these guys because they've kind of accumulated, you know, some good cycles. Like, Josh, I think, has done four mesocycles at this point with me, like, person. And his outputs this past week, even after, you know, I said, like, he kinda tweaked his rec femme sprinting, He was fine. Like, he was fine by Saturday or Friday. What day did they jump?
John:Saturday?
Isaiah:That was Friday.
John:Friday. And Josh had probably one of his highest jumps ever, like, outdoor. And, like, three jumps.
Isaiah:Like, three max.
John:Yeah. And I he was like, I'm I'm good to jump. I was like, I don't know about that. So we, we call it ruble one, chowder one. There's a couple other names for it that he wanted, but I haven't been able to list those publicly.
Isaiah:It works. That's why when I see like, it's the the age old argument in the jump training space. Like, why not just get stronger and jump? But I've just seen it work too many times at this point. Like, our with, like, big sample sizes.
Isaiah:Like
John:I think too, one of the other aspects that I was thinking about was, oh, well, you know, the the argument about sprinting is, well, if you wanna get faster, you have to sprint because the ground contact times are, you know, really specific. You have to get under a hundred milliseconds on and off the ground, upright sprinting or, you know, acceleration. You're a hundred hundred and thirty ish, something like that. But just because it doesn't always look like it doesn't mean intramuscularly, it's not specific or neurally, it's not specific. You can like, what's really high forces are specific.
John:I also forces in the muscles. So there's a lot of other things that are specific. Yeah. Even and it's a continuum too. You know?
John:Yeah.
Isaiah:I also don't know if this is like a like a fallacy, like a argument. Like an argument bias? Logical like a logical fallacy, whatever. However, is Probably. It's like types of fallacy you use in arguments.
Isaiah:Like, people, like, argues for for a
John:He's a straw man.
Isaiah:Yeah. Yeah. But the leave no stone unturned. Like, I almost feel like you should in case it does work. It reminds me of I don't wanna get deep into it, but, like, when people argue for religion, they're like, you should be religious just in case there is a heaven.
Isaiah:Like, you don't wanna and it's almost like there's so much evidence for power work that, like, why why even not do it? Like, I don't know. Like, if there's no I don't see a downside. I don't
John:see a downside to to doing it. And it's it's like, again, it's continuum. So, you know, if you're looking at plyos and loaded hex bar jumps, like, is that a plyo? Like, I mean and even then, you would get into some arguments about different timelines for the stretch reflex or stretch shortening cycles and what tendons can and can't store and release and things like that. And I think it's all important.
John:It's just a matter of when you use it. And because we're jumping all the time, we're always checking that box of doing some sort of, like, rate of force development. It's obviously it's always rate of force development. You can't you can't remove it or isolate it in a sense It's
Isaiah:a from jump balance. Like, I would say, like, guidelines to stick to are, like, don't do it the whole year. Have certain parts times of the year where you're doing it. I think at least once a year, it's important to touch on that. Even if it's for, like, you know, two or three cycles out of out of nine out of 12, I mean.
John:You're saying the
Isaiah:RFP work? Yeah. Yeah. And then I think you have to be very careful with your jump volume and jump sessions when you're doing it. You have to be very mindful of, like, chondromalacia, like, cartilage stuff
John:when you're when you're doing it. That's, like, what I've been realizing with Fabian too. Like, his jump sessions are just too long, and backing off of that has allowed us to be more specific, but also in lower volumes. And I think you've probably seen it with me too. Like, my volumes have gone down, and I've kind of, like, internally known this recently, was body weight.
John:I was out training a bad diet, essentially. So when I dropped my volumes and I also had less time, and then I was like, okay. I'll just eat less so that I can, like, cut down a little bit. I was able to jump higher because the quality was so much higher. Like, I am getting close to that eight.
John:Like, I'm it's weird to say I'm thirty two. But, yeah. It's crazy. I'm thirty two as a one foot jumper. But I I just I don't have as much time to train.
Isaiah:Down, Don.
John:Yeah. I don't have as much time to train. And, you know, as we get busier with work and things like that, that also makes it a little bit tougher. But I also am not as resilient to you know, just just all those injuries kinda, like, building up, I realized number one thing that's gonna determine if I jump high or not is, like, am I healthy enough to try a 100% in a session? Yeah.
John:And rainbow. Yeah. Yeah. That's because I have a 50 inch vert. Most people don't know that.
John:But
Isaiah:No. It's definitely tie time and place for it. More and more, I realize how much guys overjump. I think
John:I've always thought that, but it was, like, built into the culture early on. Like, Steve would be like, I could have a pre jump day before my jump day.
Isaiah:Yeah. I think I think it's important too when you're young. Like, when you're really young and your outputs are lower. Like Like, hoop and eight. How you dial in, yes, how you dial in your jump technique.
Isaiah:But once it's dialed, like, I think people jump way too much. And I think it's because of the sport of dunking. Well, it depends on your goals. If you're trying to hit new dunks, they require a lot of reps, and that's what makes it difficult. But if you look at guys that get plateaued, it's probably the guys that are trying to go for new dunks all the time.
Isaiah:Like, people that plateau their their verticals because it's just it's too much. It's too much. And it this is at the forefront of my mind because of how trashed I am from this session
John:on Monday. Session where you tested?
Isaiah:Yeah. Like, I I tested, and it wasn't even that crazy. It was, like, 10 extra jumps, you know, but testing, and it was just, like, how much it throttled me. And then I'm thinking the the negative effects of that. Like, it could be a training stimulus, but the quality of the lifts afterwards have dropped so much that it's almost like
John:Dude, your last two lifts have been doo doo. They've been pooping
Isaiah:doo doo. Yeah. Like, it almost would be if you're thinking if you're taking a long term approach, it would be better to leave the sessions fresh and then go hard in the weight room. But, like, you should be leaving like, you shouldn't have that feeling of, like, you know, we're, like, about to pass out, like, after we're, oh, like like, I think the ideal session is you warm up, and this is specifically for, like, advanced guys. It's like, you go in there, warm up, get the pan hot, three to five max jumps.
John:Got it. Get the pan hot. That's a throwback. 2019 Yeah.
Isaiah:2020. Pan hot.
John:I would just say get the pan hot. Right. And then just
Isaiah:Anytime I've treated sessions like that, like, progress just go and then you can do You train hard. In the weight room. Like, think about the power clean max out that I did last week. Like, being able to catch it there, like, I normally wouldn't be able to do that because I'm so trashed from the session. Yeah.
Isaiah:And it's
John:like Wednesday is the only day you could. Yeah. You know? Because if you dunk if you dunk on Friday or Saturday, Monday is gonna suck. But usually jump on Friday, so you feel good this Saturday.
John:You know, it's usually just whatever, two sixty five belt squad or something. Sunday off. Monday, come in. You're still not recovered if you jump a lot. Wednesday is the only day you can push, but you don't wanna push too hard that day, especially on anything that's gonna load your TFL or your tenants too much.
John:So then Friday, you're kind of, like, in this in between where you kind of adapted from the jump session, but you didn't really adapt to anything in the week. And then I think one thing we've done really unintentionally or, as I like to say, unintended consequence, is because we're trying to get you healthy, we've had to keep the session short, which has allowed you to push a little more in the weight room on Monday, and then you're able to, like, kind of microdose well. Yeah. And sometimes even Wednesday. And then it's this undulating unintended undulation where, like, you'll jump a lot one week, you know, when you feel really good, and then you kinda, like, back off
Isaiah:or you go to one
John:foot or something like that. It Yeah. And then you come back really, really long.
Isaiah:Week, I'll probably come in feeling amazing. If I if I like, if I were to only jump off one foot or cut the session this week, go in feeling insane the next week and then the training, and then it's kinda like a feedback, then you jump high and go until each
John:It's like a fourteen day. It's like a it's like a fourteen day mezzo cycle. And Yeah. I mean, it's it's something that is not necessarily it's a lot of auto regulation in your case because the goal is to keep you healthy right now. And I think that's probably different than what a lot of people that listen to this are used to because you're you're used to us just destroying Isaiah in the weight room.
John:But he's moved into the era that I was in when I was what are you? 28? Are you 28?
Isaiah:I'm about to turn 28 and holy moly.
John:Wait. When's your birthday?
Isaiah:Like, the twenty sixth. That's in Wow. Eighteen days.
John:What Call my birthday. You get Isaiah for his birthday.
Isaiah:An Aventador. Let's start GoFundMe. Let's do a GoFundMe, guys. Come on. Do it.
Isaiah:HP event door. I'll be so mad if that worked and but, like, not guys signing up for THP. I'd be so I'd
John:be pissed too. Well, this is a good place. Feel I like to cut it off. Thank you guys for listening. Go to teachmestrength.com if you wanna get coached by us.
John:And, also, if you want a free 69 page guide, click the link.
Isaiah:In the description. Just look in the description for Yeah.
John:Everything's there. Whatever you want. See effects? World is
Isaiah:yours. Bye.
