Should You Sprint To Jump Higher?
What's up everybody welcome to the THP Strength podcast my name is Isaiah Rivera, I have a 50.5 inch vertical which is the highest officially recorded vertical on the planet, this is John Evans 42 inch vertical of one foot and he also writes all my workouts and today we are going to be answering the question, do sprints make you jump higher? But before we get into it, I just want to give a quick shout out to our sponsors over at thpstrength.com. If you want to get jump higher and get rid of knee pain go check them out they are the number one vertical jump trainers on the planet. They happen to be us by the way. But yeah if you're interested in that go check it out But let's get into it.
Isaiah:I think a good place to start is with our anecdotal experiences with sprinting. If you didn't know this, John's background is actually in track and field. There was a comment we had in one of our previous videos and there was a guy, he was like, can you relate all of this to high jump and I was like well funnily enough John that's what.
John:Actually I can do that quite a bit. So yeah I coached at Duke well I guess in order of chronologically. I started in high school, ended up working with a guy named Mike Young who coached at LSU for four years when they won eight national championships indoor outdoor or seven or something like that. And then I went on to coach for him, went to Duke and coached there for a year where we won ACCs on the women's side for high jump. First and second place while I was there.
John:And, yeah, I've had the privilege to speak with a lot of super talented guys. Shelby McEwen, the what's the guy's name from Tennessee? Southern mine. Oh my gosh.
Isaiah:I don't remember his name.
John:Oh, yeah. Ivan Yuk. Ivan Yuk. Daryl. Daryl Sullivan.
Isaiah:Yeah. I don't
John:know why that's on my mind. And currently, I'm working with a guy named TJ Shankar, who is from Kansas State. So I've I've worked with a lot of fast guys. Oh, I was also with Altus and worked with all those guys. Think that's pretty important.
John:A lot of world record holders and stuff. So, yeah, ton of experience in track. That was my passion, my first passion even before dunking. I would say I would argue arguably spent more time studying that. So I know a lot about springing.
John:I know a lot about track and how to get faster. Maybe at one point probably knew more than I know about dunking even. So yeah, I think that it's it is an integral part of any speed and power development program. It is a great training tool. It is a form of plyometric and Isaiah has been on and off doing sprints for five or six years on training that I've given him.
John:Me personally, I've done ton I don't even I don't even know. I've sprinted three times a week basically since the time I was 15 until I was 26 or 27. So a lot a lot a lot of sprinting and sprint volume and with my personal experience, as I got faster and more explosive, it helped my high jump a lot, but I did not actually see as much of a correlation with my dunking skill as I would have wanted to. I did not dunk nearly as much as what a lot of these other guys did. I spent more time getting faster, getting more explosive in the weight room, seeing all those metrics come up, but I did not see as much of a return on investment when it came to actually dunking as I did when I focused more on dunking.
John:And I think this is maybe one of the reasons why I've started to personally move away from it as a coach. I think that it is a valuable tool. I think it's a great tool, and I I like it for specifically body composition. But you know what? Actually, I will say this.
John:When I did a lot a lot of sprinting, it paid off later on. That's what that's the biggest thing I would say. It's not something where you have oh, what the heck is that? It's not something where you have a a quick return on investment. It's like investing.
John:Right? You you put that time in, and it pays dividends in the long term. But in the short term, it definitely does not have as much of a payoff. So again, quick anecdote twenty twenty, twenty twenty one training to East Bay. I sprinted three times a week and was doing intensive extensive tempo two times a week.
John:I did that for three months. My vertical went down a lot. And then come October or September after a deload, I jumped higher than I ever did. Right? I have not sprained as much since that time, mostly because of my hips and time.
John:I just don't have as much time as I used to, and logistically, it's more difficult. You know, we're running a business, so it can be difficult. So that said, and Isaiah doesn't it's for him not as much of a priority at this point in his athletic career either. And so I would still do it if I were trying to peak and hit all time highs probably, but I can spend my time more wisely and have a better ROI doing other things. Right?
John:So focusing on creating good content for you guys is really important to us and to the business. So I have to spend more time doing that. Dunking on a low rim going to be way better use of my time. And more fun. And more fun.
John:Yeah. Working on my, my strength and things like that that are especially for Q foot. And so I've been able to maintain my vertical fairly well without it. And if I wanted to get to, again, all time highs, I probably would put it back in my training for periods of time, at least.
Isaiah:So
John:go ahead with your experience.
Isaiah:I've been sprinting, I think my earliest memory of sprinting is when I was 14, 13, 14. I did Hershey track meet in the 100 meter, thinking like 13.9, 13.92. Really?
John:Yeah, when I was 13.
Isaiah:Yeah, 13.92. I won the softball throw. Oh really? They had a softball throw in the Hershey meets. And then I forgot what I high jumped at that time, was probably like five one.
John:That's not bad actually
Isaiah:at 13, that's pretty good. So that was my earliest memory of sprinting. We did it in high school when I was starting to dunk. We would do it for conditioning class. Never measured my times though.
Isaiah:And then I basically stopped sprinting from my senior year of high school up until I was about 21 when I started working with John again. It was like four years that I didn't sprint. And then I essentially sprinted three times a week for the next three years straight probably with our training. Things that I noticed I did I think it was a huge part of getting me in shape early on. I think before I wasn't necessarily out of shape compared to normal athletes, but when you compare my fitness now to before I started working with John, my body composition improved drastically.
Isaiah:I got a lot fitter, both, you know, just my body composition cardiovascularly.
John:That's still kind of a weakness of yours.
Isaiah:Yeah, I just became a much better athlete overall. I think I started, I was probably sprinting in the high twelve's. Think we did, after load management Video
John:popped up on my feed the other
Isaiah:day. Really?
John:Yeah.
Isaiah:Yeah, I think That I
John:was five years ago, you know that? Really? At that UCF track that I did with you guys?
Isaiah:That was crazy. Five years ago. That's wild. After a year of train, no, after five months of actually sprinting, like the first five months I started sprinting, I tested twelve one, 100 meter dash, and then I actually got significantly faster over the next year, like significantly faster. Went to North Carolina, me and John were sprinting against each other.
Isaiah:He was beating me. A lot and John went from way faster than me to I was able to catch him.
John:I think the competitive aspect for you definitely pushed your intensity and intent up quite a bit.
Isaiah:Like Michael Jordan?
John:Michael Jordan. And we didn't really think about it too much. Were on grass a lot and just competing. And it was fun. I mean, get me wrong.
John:It was it's always fun to do that. But I would usually gap them upright. And then there was one day where we were on concrete uphill. We were at the park at White Oak. It was like very
Isaiah:slight Yeah.
John:Low Very, grade, which I like for hill sprints a lot. Don't like to see velocity drop too much. So, you know, the first one blows me off the line and I was like, what the fuck? Like that was just a bad rep. And, know, I, I kind of was like, all right, you know, it's not, not a big deal.
John:I might've even, he started first. That's what it was. He, we went on his start and he just like outrammed me. And I was like, okay, it's not a big deal. You know, I'll get him on the next So we went on my start.
John:So I went and he just freaking bolted off the line, smoked my ass. And then upright is usually where I would start to gap him and he just kept going. It was just like, I, I can't compete. And that was when I was like, okay, now you're fast. Like if I'm not crazy fast, but there was a time where I was low elevens, high tens in the 100.
John:And at the time I was sprinting a lot and doing a lot of plyos and I was pretty lean and know those are all things that are going to help you run faster and Isaiah he was was rolling and he was having issues with his TFL at the time and his posterior tib and was that what it was?
Isaiah:Actually the TFL hadn't started yet.
John:It was close to your tib though.
Isaiah:Posterior, yeah. Had And to swing my
John:so we were sprinting a lot because we couldn't jump too too much at the time, but we still needed a power stimulus. So we were doing it a lot, but his vertical I think was 47 or 48 at the time. I think initially
Isaiah:It was 46 and then after that summer I hit 48 for the first time. I crossed the 12 foot mark.
John:Yeah. I guess we always get confused because of the random testing in Utah.
Isaiah:Yeah.
John:I never know what happened when, because we didn't measure the vertex. Have no idea. Probably leaning an inch or two. But anyways, yeah, pretty much we saw his vertical climb up a lot early on from it. Partially because of the, just
Isaiah:Also, nominal I also want to say later when I tested, so I continued sprinting throughout that whole time. And then the year I tested 50.5, so I tested 50.5. The year before that sprinted a ton, moved 29 palms all by myself, and that was actually probably the highest intensity and highest volume that I ever Did you test 50? I tested 50.5.
John:After sprinting what?
Isaiah:I sprinted a ton, highest volume ever for like, I would say four months, and then I didn't sprint for six months, and then I tested 50.5 for the first time.
John:So you did what I did? Yeah. Did none what I did.
Isaiah:Yeah, That was definitely the fastest I've ever been. John was having me do 120 meter sprints and I was in literally 120 degree weather outside. So that was definitely the most in shape I've been as far as sprinting. Would say I was knowing I ran twelve one, not in very good sprint shape, I probably was somewhere in the elevens.
John:I think so.
Isaiah:I think I'm
John:my all time best. I think you probably were capable when you were your fastest of low elevens, maybe in the high 10s, maybe on a really good day in spikes, but we never we're never on the track doing max V work and measuring it. So it's really hard to say, you know, with that that for guys like, you know, us that, you know, without training or in the 11s to get under 11 is difficult because okay, with moderate amount of training, you know, in the elevens, we would have to really focus on max D to probably drop into the tens. Yeah. Because that's where we would struggle.
John:Then And speed endurance for you.
Isaiah:And then from there, I have not sprinted actually.
John:Yeah. So a big reason why was your PFP, your back. There was just a lot of issues that kind of came up as we pushed the volume up. The quality would drop a lot in the weight room. And I think moving into the following year before you tore your TFL, you know, was kind of bothering it.
John:And I was like, all right, well, I want to try to focus on other things. And I was like, do you really want to do it? And he's like, not really. And I was like, all right, well, I'm not going to program it, but I can increase the quality and the volume in other we felt like that was making more of a difference than
Isaiah:We were turning the big stones. Yeah. It's a similar thing to what you were saying, where it's like we have a business to run. Could I get You
John:have the luxury of training an extra hour and
Isaiah:a half. Could I, yeah, it's like could I get half a percent better from it? Maybe, but is it worth, I don't like sprinting, is the other thing, I hate sprinting. I'm just like, I'm cool with training.
John:Yeah.
Isaiah:Training without it.
John:Yeah, that's definitely true. And I mean, you like to do what you like to do, and usually that's the stuff that you're gonna have higher quality with. So in the in the grand scheme of things of what I you know, in in terms of experience, just based on our two anecdotes and what I've seen in the past, it's very important as a base for having a very high vertical. But at the end of the day if you're six years in set you know or something like that or seven or eight years in you've been sprinting a lot you got lot of sprint volume in you know how to run etc you probably can get away with not doing it as much anymore and that's that's just the nature of long term athletic development You start very general and you get more specific over time. So unless you're like, you know, ten, what, probably five to ten years into your jump training journey, you probably should still be sprinting.
John:Even then, you still might benefit from it, it's just that it's gonna take a disproportionate amount of time.
Isaiah:And if you're a THP athlete, you might be wondering why sprinting isn't in your training. We found that it was messing a lot. With retention. Retention, yeah.
John:Guys would just not train. They're like oh I
Isaiah:have to go back,
John:I'm just not gonna do it. Or I just won't train altogether. If I can't do everything then I might as well do
Isaiah:of it. And then it goes from skipping a workout, or skipping sprints to skipping the workout To not To not training at all.
John:Yep. And so we were like, well if you wanna do the sprints ask
Isaiah:and we can do And it was a complaint. The complaint of our workouts was that they're too hard and they take too long. So we started like
John:It's like the eightytwenty rule.
Isaiah:Yeah. But if that's you, we can put you on an older training. Like if you want to sprint, we can put you on an older training cycle that has the sprinting in there, but it does add, you know, most gyms don't have a section of a 100 meters where you can run, so usually have to go to the field, you gotta warm up for twenty minutes, the sprint workout takes another thirty minutes, and then you drive there, and then you drive to the gym, it's literally hour to hour and a
John:half extra. I love it but unless you it's good if you're like in high school or college. There's no reason why you shouldn't be doing it at that point. But if you have a full time job, it's
Isaiah:gonna be really hard to
John:like regularly sprint all out unless you really enjoy it and you don't have a wife or kids or a girlfriend. Probably could still, it was a full time job without any of those respondents or a dog and you got access to a local track near you, you'd be fine.
Isaiah:Could do it. And it is different if you like it. Yeah. If that's actually something you love doing then of course like you're gonna make time for it.
John:Yep. But yeah I think we could go into all the physiological aspects of it. I feel like in short it's a very good neural stimulus. It's an amazing fast short ground contact time activity with really high ground reaction forces horizontally during acceleration and vertically during upright. It's obviously amazing for body composition.
John:I found it to be very effective at working at very high stiffness rates and it tends to be more specific for one foot. So that, you know, that's a very short, clear, concise reason why it works. In terms of specificity though, I would say it's probably less specific for for two foot. It's maybe less specific than for one foot it's specific but it comes at a cost. That's what I would say.
Isaiah:There's also a lot of value in it.
John:It's more specific for one foot than two foot.
Isaiah:There's a lot of value in it during a rehab program as well. Lot of times if you're on load management training can get really monotonous and then you can also get out of shape pretty easily because you can't load the quads as much and you're not doing as much elastic work but it can be a good bridge like if you have problems you know in knee flexion with things being provocative upright sprinting is one of the best ways to maintain elasticity you get in shape it's fun you're moving yeah and it can keep you healthy there are injuries that happen from
John:that's another reason which I was gonna say
Isaiah:from sprinting like you'll be more likely to pull a muscle hamstring tendinopathy is also like really common with it Achilles issues are really common but specifically for like patellar tendon rehab sometimes PFP upright spraining is really good to have in there.
John:I think so too. That's a big reason why I took it out actually was during one foot jumping I was using my hamstring a lot and I was having a lot of hamstring issues on my jump days because I was loading my hamstring so much outside of the jump session. So I was getting sprint volume in, I'm getting RDLs, I'm getting Nordics, all this stuff and I kept tweaking my hamstring.
Isaiah:Which is specific, it's like injuries are also specific. Yeah, exactly.
John:If you have an injury and it's an overuse injury it's probably because you're doing too much on it, which I was, I was sprinting. So cutting that out helped me get healthy and stay healthy which when I was trying to East Bay, I was trying to windmill off one, that was the number one determinant of
Isaiah:how was actually I was gonna do a good point, like I don't even remember the last time you had hamstring
John:didn't, I don't have any issues anymore.
Isaiah:Whereas before, it used to be like Every week. I used to be scared watching John jump. It was like you're gonna It's just like a ticking time bomb. It's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
John:And I think last year I didn't, since 2022 I didn't pull it and I pulled out the spring. So I've learned that about hamstrings is like, you know, if you're a jumper and you have that as a previous injury and it's an existing issue or pre existing issue it's probably not worth doing. You mean you can have it in there and you can build into it and again as you get older then again it comes at an even more of a cost right it's more taxing. It takes longer to recover and injuries, they build up. So the number one thing that determines you're gonna hurt yourself, have you hurt yourself there before?
John:I have a bunch of times. So mostly when I was speed jumping, I was learning how to speed jump, pull my hamstring a ton of times. That made it difficult to stay healthy power jumping now because I pulled it at that point, think every other week for like two years because I was just trying to learn to speed jump and I didn't really give a shit about my body. I was like, I'm never going to break the world record. I'm never going to at that point, was like, probably never going to windmill even, you whatever.
John:And probably never eats bay. I just want to learn. I want to be a high jumper. So I, you know, use myself in an experiment, suffered the consequences of it. Now I'm like, oh, wow.
John:I probably could have been a lot further along had I not made those mistakes. But now I also know that I can't do that as much anymore. I think for, again, a lot of
Isaiah:you what we're here for though. We'll make the mistakes for you.
John:We'll make the mistakes so you don't have to. But again, for a lot of you guys, you're really gonna benefit from it unless, again, have six to ten years of sprinting experience, you probably should be doing it. Now if you're in that group of people that are that have gotten hurt or whatever else, not worth doing. Yeah. That's I feel like it's a pretty good place to to
Isaiah:end It's a good rundown. If you're watching on YouTube, please like the video, and if you're listening on a podcast platform, give us a five star review please, and you know where to get training, baby, thbstrength.com. We'll catch you guys in the next
John:video,
Isaiah:peace out.
