Why not just lift heavy and jump? Ep. 5
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John:If you don't like to work hard and and you want a pill, just don't even waste your time. Okay? Because it because because you're gonna have to you're gonna have to train, unfortunately. That's the only way you're gonna be able to get better.
Isaiah:Yeah. It's just it's it's a really sad reality that you have to work hard if you wanna
John:To achieve your goals.
Isaiah:To achieve anything in life. Yeah. That's
John:it's truly unfortunate for a lot of people that sign up and realize, oh, I actually have to do the workouts. You do have to do the workouts to get better. Harsh, harsh reality. Anyways, so today's topic will be introduced by Isaiah, but I'll give the simplified question. Go ahead.
John:What were you looking at today?
Isaiah:Is there a point in doing power exercises or can you just do max strength work and jumping a
John:lot or sprinting a lot? So basically, why is it do you wanna do a polarizing approach? Right? Both ends of the continuums, heavy slow, really fast, or do you wanna surf the curve? Do you wanna do all this stuff?
John:I think that both ways can work. I've seen both ways work. I use both ways, but I prefer conjugate. So like, think for me, I would use track, you know, always kind of as the great equalizer in terms of human performance because it's so objective and we have a lot more data on especially with training, we have a lot more data. What what are you doing over there?
Isaiah:I have the research study
John:up here. Nice. Nice. Mhmm. Okay.
John:So if we're just talking about research, I think it's pretty clear that you're gonna get better doing any of those. Research You is gonna show
Isaiah:want me to show those results of those researches?
John:Yeah. Actually, I'm curious. What does it say? Alright. So I can I predict what it's gonna say?
John:Yeah. It's gonna show that they all work, probably just different amounts for different things, and that the specific stuff, if you're less trained, strength work's probably the best thing, if you're more trained, the more specific stuff's gonna make you better.
Isaiah:So they had four groups, control, one of the groups was attempting to do jump squats at 90% of their
John:max. 90%?
Isaiah:Yeah. But it it said that obviously They're not gonna get up the ground. But it's it's the force intent. Based. Right.
Isaiah:Yeah. They had one group that was working at a percentage where there is peak power, and then another group, this was what was really interesting, is taking into account their body weight. So relative power?
John:Or relative weight?
Isaiah:So it was like one group was like 20% of their max weight because they were also accounting for their mass. Then the other group was probably at like 6070% of their weight.
John:And what was the dependent variable?
Isaiah:So, oh and they all did the same exact routine. They all practiced jumps. They practiced jumps? They all practiced jumps, yeah.
John:Like standing jumps?
Isaiah:Yeah. Was like repeat jumps, think. Repeat jumps.
John:Yeah. Alright.
Isaiah:It was like five it was like five sets of three repeat jumps, and then they increased the sets over the course of like four or five weeks, and then they all deloaded.
John:Subjects? Are they all athletes?
Isaiah:They were all trained. Like, they had experience in training legs for at least six months continuously before doing the study.
John:Okay. That's decent. Yeah. Is it pure is it double blind?
Isaiah:I forgot what double blind means. It means, like, they don't necessarily know the researchers don't know what group and the subjects don't
John:know what group they're in.
Isaiah:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then Let me double check on
John:that definition, but I'm pretty sure that's what it is. It removes bias. Yeah. I'm glad we faced this way because that Yeah.
Isaiah:That wind would have been horrible.
John:Actually, let put this over here. I am the de esser. Dick sucks now. Alright. Hold on one second.
John:I gotta set up my ISOs again and then look up double blind. Jamie, pull pull up that study on on on double blind research. Okay? Alright. Double blind.
John:What does double blind mean? A clinical study, which neither the participants nor the researcher knows the treatment intervention or intervention they're receiving until it's over. Yeah. Perfect. I was right.
Isaiah:Alright. So you ready for the results?
John:Yeah. Let's hear it.
Isaiah:This is the results. Variable.
John:Like, what am I looking at? Vertical jump?
Isaiah:Yeah. We're gonna look at the Vertical jump. They tested a lot, but they tested depth jumps, contact time So
John:they did a lot of dependent variables.
Isaiah:Yeah. Yeah. But their workouts were the exact same. It was just different percentages of squat jump. How many days a week?
Isaiah:Height. Oh, and they also all did, I think, three sets of six squatting. Interesting. At a percentage of their max. So they all jumped.
Isaiah:They all had the same max strength stimulus. It's just one group had a absolute strength stimulus where again 90% of their squat max. Okay. And they otherwise did power work.
John:Are you ready for this? It's gonna be specific to what they did. So guys that did the lighter faster stuff are gonna get better at the lighter faster test.
Isaiah:So we're looking purely at standing vertical jump. What do you think were the results in the in
John:the I mean they all got better. They all got better. They're probably all significantly different. If they're well, if they're trained, maybe not significantly different, but they're probably all different. I would assume that the guys that did the most specific training are gonna get better at that.
John:So I would say like, if they're well trained, I would think the lightest movements that they move the fastest, the lighter movements would be more specific, and they would jump better on that. Yeah.
Isaiah:Alright. So the 90% squat group, they increase. Can you pull out a calculator here actually?
John:Yeah. I got you. Got a calculator, a timer. Why does this feel like it's only thirty seconds? It does not feel like forty five seconds.
John:I'm just getting stronger. Alright. Go ahead next week. Go ahead.
Isaiah:Alright. The half the 90 group increased their vertical from 32.96 centimeters to 35.73 centimeters. So What's that difference? 32 what? 35.73 minus 32.96.
John:2.77. That's one
Isaiah:inch. Alright. Two point seven
John:two point five four is one point o nine inches.
Isaiah:Alright. The group where they did power work, not taking into account their their body weight, so they're probably working at, like, 70% of their max. They went from 38.05 minus 34.25.
John:So divided by 2.54, 1.5 inches. Alright. How many subjects were in that group?
Isaiah:11 subjects. The first one had 12 subjects.
John:Okay.
Isaiah:And then the last group, so they're working at like 20 to 30% of their max. So this is more of a speed strength stimulus. They went from 37.98 centimeters or I'll tell you the last number. 41.33 minus 37.98.
John:3.35 divided by 2.54, 1.3 inches.
Isaiah:There you go. And then the control? What did they do? They improved by What did they I'm actually not sure what the control the control group did, but they improved by point one eight centimeters.
John:Point one eight? Yeah. Oh, so they basically didn't improve. Yeah. So they probably didn't train.
John:Yeah. I mean, of those are that's like like, it's like negligent. They all work. Yeah. Like, okay.
John:First off, here's the thing, guys. You know what 41 fucking centimeters is divided by 2.54? That's a 16 inch vertical. So this is like Bro, we could I could fucking have them
Isaiah:And this is where we're gonna go
John:and I could why I don't like coffee have them and they're probably gonna get better. Yeah. They're probably gonna test 1.5 inches higher. Right? Whether they drink coffee or not is probably or the setting.
John:I mean, yeah, it's something. I mean, I guess that's good and it's probably on a force plate, so it's probably more reliable. You know, you're probably seeing, but even that's like a 24 inches vertical.
Isaiah:Yeah. Like
John:even best, best case, they have like an average of like the highest
Isaiah:Oh, it's no, no arms. Oh, They tested Probably four.
John:They probably have 20 inch squat jump verticals or pause squat jump verticals.
Isaiah:So they're probably like mid twenties, mid to high twenties. Yeah. Depending on their
John:school level. Might see one guy at 30, 80. Yeah. Pretty bad, pretty bad, not good. I mean, yeah, for for all of that that tracks.
John:So the the question though is like, how does this pertain to guys at elite elite levels. Right? And I think you could, like, if you did just this very polarizing approach where it's like, I'm only gonna do dead lifts and squats, and then I'm gonna jump. Right?
Isaiah:Which I alluded to yesterday.
John:So you're basically just in a constant max strength cycle? Yeah. And you alluded to this yesterday. And what what was my response?
Isaiah:Look at guys that have done it. Yeah. We got Jay Clark, he did it during COVID. He got his squats 500, 500 plus.
John:That's what Dan Back basically preaches. Mhmm. And
Isaiah:then do all
John:these and just get strong. Yeah. I think it can it can work for a little bit. I think it can work for a little bit. I think your LTAC your long term athletic development is gonna be hampered.
John:I think your genetic you're not gonna reach your genetic ceiling doing that, I would assume, because you're just you're on both ends of the spectrum. You never touch anything in the middle and, like, you need variety. Right? Variety is helpful for long term adaptation. If you're just doing the same thing over and over and over again, you're gonna reach your kind of limits very quickly.
John:You're gonna stagnate really, really quick. You're gonna get really strong really quick. You might see good improvements really quickly, but then you're gonna stagnate very, very fast. I think that, like, especially oly lifts have so many benefits outside of just, you know, it being a power exercise. I think it's very technical and you have a lot of stress shortening cycles that happen in that singular weight room exercise that you wouldn't have.
John:I mean, unless you did like a hinge to, like you're starting at RDL, that even is not the same. I mean, it's just so complex, that movement as a whole.
Isaiah:That's why really do tough to like
John:like That's basically what you did when you were in high school, right?
Isaiah:You
John:just did strength work and then jumped, right?
Isaiah:Yeah, yeah.
John:So I mean it can work, it can work to an extent. I think back to the track thing though, like is, or what were you gonna say actually before we go into this?
Isaiah:I think it's also really hard to isolate what's working, like a lot we of we mention this all the time, What but
John:the fuck? Was it 80% of what you did or the 20%? Like, can you know?
Isaiah:Yeah. Like, we we mention this all the time, but it's like, you can't base your progress based off of what the last cycle was. You have to look at your last year of training. Yeah. The stuff that you're doing that we're doing right now, you know, February, March, is gonna affect how we're gonna jump in June come come competition time.
Isaiah:Right? When I jumped 50 inches in early March, that was the result of the training I did August, September, October, November, December. The hypertrophy work I did, max strength work I did, the overloaded eccentrics, the plyos. Right, and the unloaded. All that stuff plays a role.
Isaiah:And I used to think, because I would respond really well to max strength work, for example, which in a way, you think about it, a max strength cycle is kinda that. We still implement some power training and stuff, but it's basically, I get really strong and I jump once a week a lot. Mhmm. And I used to used to be like, oh, yeah. That's when I jump my best.
Isaiah:But then I ignore, like, when I did plyos in at the very 2022, I did I did two months worth of, like, power work, basically, and I wasn't jumping that well. Jumped 49, I think, around that time.
John:Mhmm.
Isaiah:And then I was like, ah, this shit don't work. But then guess what happened in February when I tore my IT band. The potential, I could have tested 50 plus that day. Yeah. For sure.
Isaiah:And I didn't think about, oh, wait two months prior I was doing a lot of high power work. Maybe I freshened up from that. Because the month leading up to that was basically, it was a John Evans special type type setup that I was doing.
John:I think too what you have to realize about any exercise, anything you do with the human body with biomechanics. Right? You start at rest. You get to a velocity. To get to that velocity at one point, you were at a slower velocity.
John:Meaning, if I'm running if I'm lifting or jumping if I'm jumping. Right? And I leave the grounds with 720 degrees of knee joint per second of knee joint extension. Right? That's the joint velocity.
John:At one point, you were going zero degrees. You didn't just instantaneously teleport to 720 degrees per second. Like, you had to accelerate there. Right? Which means you covered each velocity all the way up to 720 degrees per second.
John:So it's like, doesn't matter what you're doing. At some point, you were at rest when you're doing a change of of momentum, when you're doing an acceleration, when you're changing velocity. Anytime you're changing velocity, you're going to at some point be at a previous velocity. That's not necessarily true for slower movements or sorry. That's you don't necessarily hit those higher velocities if you're only doing slow movements.
John:So if you're jumping, right, like the reason why you get stronger when you're jumping is it's one point, you were at rest. Yep. At one point, were moving an immovable object, your body. Or sorry, at one point, you're moving a body at rest, which is your body mass. Same thing's true of a dead lift.
John:Right? Like the the bars at rest when you stand it up, it went from zero meters per second to 0.0001 and then to 0.002 and then to zero point zero Yeah. That might have happened in infinitesimally small periods of time, but like you still had to cover that velocity Yeah. At some point. So when you look at like the really, really fast stuff, that makes sense.
John:The problem is like, you know, at at what load are you at those velocities and what is the implications of that? So, you know, if you're like a sprinter and you're moving your body weight, you know, you're not moving that at a very high load. Know, you're doing now if you're doing a resisted sprint or take it a step further, really, really heavy sled sprints. Right? You're moving a really, really heavy mass relatively quickly and it's different getting there.
John:How you got there is probably very, very different. And so then you have to take it a step further and say, well, what does that mean in terms of the nervous system? What does that mean in terms of the muscles? What does that mean, you know, for the for the tendons? And that's where I think things get really complex because it's like, so what you're just, you're only gonna do stuff that's in in the velocity range of zero to fucking average of point five.
John:Yeah. Maybe you hit a peak velocity of one in a squad or something like that. I mean, technically, you're not even allowed. Technically, you're not allowed to even hit that. If you wanna be max strength, you're only allowed to hit like point four.
John:Like, that's true max strength. So, you know, if you're just like, how are you even gonna do that in the first place? Are you Yeah. Like on the on the early sets, are you just gonna go really slow, like pace? Let's say let's say traditionally you're probably hitting like point seven meters per second, right?
John:Tops top speed. That's very limited in my opinion in terms of what you have access to. You're only allowing yourself to go that fast. Like that's it. That's all the more you can do.
John:Yeah. I think you're you're missing out on eccentric strength. You're missing out on isometric strength.
Isaiah:Our strength like even
John:based on concentric strength. Like Yeah. What you're real what people are really asking is you're gonna only do slow concentric work and sub maximal eccentric isometric work. And then you're gonna do stress shortening cycles. Yep.
John:Like, you're just missing
Isaiah:That's what I was gonna say, like, with that argument, you're also, like, arguing against all that stuff. So you're you're telling me, like, the overloaded eccentrics didn't work.
John:That. Yep. Those don't do anything. Oh, the ISOs that we did yesterday, those didn't do anything. Those had no roll.
John:Depth drops, those don't count. Can't do depth drops anymore because that's not that's not jumping.
Isaiah:Right? The depth jumps. The depth jumps.
John:Six depth jumps. That's out of the equation because that's not fast enough. You can't do that. That's gone. That's no longer allowed.
John:Really what they're saying is why do I need a power clean? Why do I need a hex bar jump? Why do I need a snatch? That's where this argument comes down to because at the end of the day, like, that's the other shit. You'd be like, well, I'm gonna include that, and that stuff's allowed, and that stuff's allowed, but I just don't wanna do fucking always.
John:To me, that's really where the argument lies. It's not
Isaiah:really being that. And it's a weird gray area because the force velocity curve is a continuum. So it's like
John:And you can't isolate
Isaiah:Right? So you're doing you're
John:you're Also, you're action types for most movements. Yeah. What are you gonna do? Only go from a bottoms up every fucking time? Gonna take out the eccentric part completely?
Isaiah:Yeah. Like you're arguing, let's say let's say it's a squat. Let's say it's a 90% squat, which is whatever over here on the force velocity curve, and then a two foot jumps over here. So it's like, what point are you saying it does apply? Like, like it does help.
Isaiah:You know what I mean?
John:Yeah. It's like, oh, well, I guess only a 100% plus max concentric efforts. That's the only time
Isaiah:And it's like, are
John:you going to failure? And that's still sub maximalist So then centered you're going to failure, what So about then it's like, well, adaptation do you get from that? Right? If you only did concentric work, what adaptation would you get from that? Only fucking concentric work, maximal concentric work.
John:It was, hey, we're gonna one rep max concentric work today. Mhmm. Okay? Mhmm. Well, you're gonna have limited hypertrophy, probably.
John:Your muscles aren't gonna get very they're they'll get big initially, but then you're not I mean, hypertrophy work is technically not at the end of the continuum. Yeah. Like, so you can't do that. It's again, I'm saying they're picking tail ends.
Isaiah:Think the biggest argument too Like,
John:they're they're literally looking at the curve if this is the split in the middle. Yeah. They're saying we'll do everything. We'll even do the isometric shit. We'll do that.
John:Right? We'll allow plyos. We'll allow that. I just don't want these tails that are getting close to the ends, but aren't quite at the ends. Right?
John:Yeah. They're they're they're take taking a tiny sliver out where ollies fit, longer plyo contacts fit. They're saying I don't wanna do that stuff. Yeah. Like that's really what they're isolating.
Isaiah:I think the biggest argument against it, because you could, you can make the argument that, right, two foot jumping is filling in that gap, but there there is one argument, and that's staleness.
John:Oh yeah, you're gonna get monotony, training monotony.
Isaiah:Yep, you're gonna accommodate, you're gonna stop progressing, point of diminishing returns. Then what do do? Even if there is an argument, let's say there is an argument for it and it does work, it's only gonna work for a little bit.
John:At some point, you're gonna have to break through. Yeah. You know? And it's the question shouldn't be what's like at least I don't ask myself, what works? I ask myself, what works the best?
John:What works the longest? What's the most effective? Right?
Isaiah:I think the keyword is the longest.
John:Yeah. The longest. What's gonna what's gonna take him I I mean, would you have been content being at 44 the rest of your life? That's pretty fucking good.
Isaiah:Look, all I care about I I put this in my Instagram video yesterday, the goal is always to jump higher. Like, I'm not training to, like Maintain. Reach a certain vertical, and then I, like, stop, and then whatever I maintain or jump moderately high for the rest of my life. Like, I'm trying to see if I can keep improving and for how long. Like, can I be 35, 36 year old and then PR my vertical?
Isaiah:I would love that. Like, still,
John:like, that that's Can you imagine if, like, every year or two is, like, half inch to an inch? Yeah. Like, Like, even every two years. Even if it's five.
Isaiah:Let's say I'm stuck at 50.5.
John:An inch every five years.
Isaiah:I'm cool. Yeah. I will train. I will train 40 my
John:five, you're jumping 53 inches. Yeah. What? That'd be crazy.
Isaiah:Yeah. Like, I mean, like, I'm cool with that. Like, I'm I'm that's what I'm training for, and I don't think doing max strength work I mean, dude jumping.
John:Like, again, you look at track, I think, as, like, a continuum for this. Yeah. Okay. So let me get this straight. You're an old you go through each of those events.
John:You're a sprinter. Fuck. You might as well just sprint. There's some guys that just do that. There's some guys that just fucking lift heavy in sprint.
John:There's some guys that do that. There's some guys that do conjugate. And each of them have the reasons for why they're doing what they're doing, and people have gotten fast doing all three of those methods. Like, you look at, Carl Lewis, pretty much didn't touch a fucking weight. Just sprinted.
John:Right? Usain Bolt did kind of everything. He lifted not well, sprinted a shit ton. Yeah. He's the fast guy in the world.
John:He's also six five, whatever else. You look at Asafo Powell. Mhmm. He does cleans. He lifts heavy, like stuff like that.
John:You look at Ben, Ben Johnson. Ben Johnson basically just did a fuck ton of weight. I don't even know if he really cleaned. He did, he did vertical integration, he did some. But like Ben Johnson was a freak of nature.
John:And if your argument is drugs, a lot of sprinters are on drugs.
Isaiah:I also don't think you can make an argument. Genetics play such a huge role
John:that you can't
Isaiah:make an argument like, this guy's faster, so his training was the best. You
John:should ask him.
Isaiah:The question is, what could he have changed?
John:How much faster could he have been? Exactly.
Isaiah:Like you
John:can train
Isaiah:a guy. T Dub.
John:Yeah. Exactly.
Isaiah:You could take T Dub, because he's one of the few guys that I would say, alright, Porter Mayberry, even better example. Porter Mayberry, one of the only guys that I've seen consistently. Used to time all his jumps, consistently would get one second flight times. One of the few guys that I think legit had a 50 inch vertical if he would have tested on a Vertex. Guess what he was doing?
Isaiah:What his training is? You can even you can Google this. What did he do?
John:He jogged every day. Jogged. Jogged every day and jumped.
Isaiah:So, alright. He's top five highest jumpers of all time. Go jog every day. Let go jog every day.
John:Let me know. Let know how vertical. Is
Isaiah:Yeah. And then another example would be We should do
John:that with you. We'll have you jog every day and then jump.
Isaiah:Oh, teed up is another example.
John:Yeah. What did he
Isaiah:Another guy that probably would have tested 50.
John:What did
Isaiah:he do? Alright. Go drink a six pack of beer every day and smoke cigarettes and then have go have a dunk session. Or or hoop. Or play basketball.
Isaiah:Let me
John:know how you're
Isaiah:Play basketball seven days a week and then like try to dunk a
John:game as much as do. I think the best thing would be like imagine ask yourself what if you did their methods? Yeah. How much fucking worse you would get?
Isaiah:And that's why I Or if I
John:did that, how much worse I would get.
Isaiah:Yeah. Or injured. That's why I I I mean, we do have a crazy bias for THP, but we're the only guys that have consistently made elite guys better. And then Yeah. Using me as a case study, I'm the only guy that has consistently jumped higher and higher.
John:And broken the world record. Yeah. You have the fucking
Isaiah:It's like not only am I jumping higher than everybody, I'm also improving it.
John:Like, go go Why try to can't wait till you get to 51? When you get to 51, we're gonna look back at you and be like, fuck
Isaiah:you guys.
John:We did all the power work. We did all and to me, Mike always used to say, he's like, leave no stones unturned. Yeah. What do you wanna why are you gonna leave those stones unturned? There's potential gains under that stone.
Isaiah:Because you're still gonna get stronger.
John:You don't want it.
Isaiah:That's the that's the thing is is we're we're still touching on that side, on the four side of the curve.
John:We're not not doing that stone.
Isaiah:So we're still gonna get stronger, and then we're still gonna be jumping. We're just not leaving that stone of power unturned.
John:Yeah. Like, I'm okay Might as well. I'm okay with the lower genetic potential or I'm okay potentially. Yeah. Actually, you might lower your genetic potential by not doing it because you never touched it.
John:So you'll never know what your ceiling is. Ew. Like, I'm okay not doing that because I'm just okay being average. Go ahead. Be okay being average.
John:Why are you even watching this? Because this is not for people who are okay being average. This is for people who want to absolutely push the limits of human capacity. We want athletes to be freakier than they've ever been. We want to be stronger than they've ever been, look freakier than they've ever looked.
John:We want guys to walk out of our training looking like fucking DK Metcalf. Yeah. Like, just be in an absolute unit, which is kind of happening to Isaiah at this point. It's kinda fun to watch. Like, that's that's the goal.
John:But we want them to be capable athletes too. We want them to be not just like like, when when I see a lot of these general strength conditioning programs, it's boring as shit. I'm like, so you're just you're kinda like good at everything, you're not really great at anything. Mhmm. Like, I don't you're not perfect at all these.
John:You're not perfect at spring. You're not you don't have the highest vertical. Like, to me, that's why I love dunking. That's why I love what we do is it's like we are trying to make you as freaky as possible in all avenues. But on top of that, we're gonna make you an outlier in this specific one.
John:Right? Not only are you gonna be better at everything, but you're also gonna be even more of an outlier in this this far thing that's like Yeah. You know, probably the biggest crowd pleasing athletic movement you can do, which is fucking propelling yourself
Isaiah:Well, it's funny
John:50.5 inches into the air in this
Isaiah:is if you wanna be an outlier and and well, doing our training at some other thing, it's just do that thing more. Yeah. True. Like, I could go out, stop dunking, and then just start sprinting with our training.
John:Yeah.
Isaiah:And just start sprinting. Because I was Like, Kengy. Kengy. Chad Kengy actually asked asked today. He said, oh, how would you train like a a one foot?
Isaiah:Like if someone go goes to your training and, you know, there might be different tendon stiffnesses, like, how would you train someone differently? And then I told him, I was like, generally, it's gonna be this like, everybody's gonna benefit from surfing the entire force velocity curve. It's just that some athletes are gonna jump higher with different cycles because they're more specific to them.
John:You need to know when to put those.
Isaiah:And then by and then also by practicing your specific jump style or whatever athletic movement you're doing, now you're checking that box of specificity in that, and you're gonna improve at that specific thing. So like for me, example, Pyle served with more general work. Somebody else We think. Yeah. Think.
Isaiah:Now we're starting to think that, it might be more specific. For somebody else, they might respond differently to plyos, it's either more specific or more general, but you will benefit from if you're trying to increase your explosive strength, surf the whole force velocity curve and practice your sport or movement that you're trying to
John:do I always use crop cycling as an example. If you only wanted to cook, like make corn, you wanted as much corn as possible, just go plant corn in your field all the time. All the time, Just only plant corn. And you know what's gonna happen? That shit's gonna probably die or it's gonna produce shitty corn or eventually, yeah, maybe initially you get a lot of corn.
John:But then once your soil's just absolutely ripped of everything and this illustration or I guess analogy in this case to jumping. Okay? Once you're stripped of all of the biological adaptation you've gotten from just jumping, only jumping.
Isaiah:Right? Accommodation.
John:What are you gonna do? What are you gonna do then? Right? You've you're at the end of the continuum. Your body has no further reserves for muscle adaptation.
John:Has no further reserves for tendon adaptation. Has no further reserves for neural adaptations because there's no overload. There's no fucking progressive overload. So what are you gonna do? Right?
John:Once your soil is stripped of all its potential, you're you're donezo. Okay? Mhmm. And I think like to do that other stuff, even if it seems relatively nonspecific, it still has a purpose. Right?
John:It's replenishing the field. Right? You're planting another crop so that you can benefit when you do get your corn back. You get the best fucking corn of all time. That's why you need training to be cyclic.
John:That's why you have to have progression. That's why you have to have variety and individuality, and all these other training laws have to be applied. And I think it's like always comes back to that, but a lot of people don't know how to do it better than anyone else. Yeah. It's like cooking too.
John:Everyone uses salt. Everyone uses pepper. Everyone uses meat or vegetables, but how you put them together And
Isaiah:the thing is
John:Makes a masterpiece.
Isaiah:You can make an argument. So like, there's like a continuum of like, I guess like how you overload and stuff. Because you could go starting strength method, three by five every workout Five and then try to
John:by
Isaiah:to add 20 pounds each workout, eventually you're gonna reach diminishing returns. Then, you could vary the overload, with intensities and volumes, but then even then, that has a point of diminishing returns. Like you could back squat as your only workout, and you know vary the volume, go high volume to intensity. But at some point, you have to play around with pauses, overloading the eccentrics, and at some point, have to change the exercise complex that you're using. Like
John:Yeah. It's another one too. It's like, so what? We're just gonna ignore fast eccentrics in the weight room? Not a lot of fucking do them anymore.
John:It's not fast enough. Not a lot to do it. Okay. Cool. Drop squats out of the equation.
John:Drop RFD, RFEE, R. Another argument for power cleans. That's what I'm saying. The catch. The catch.
John:Like, oh, no. Don't fucking do that anymore. Like, it's just to me, it's you're just missing so many other potential ways to adapt. And I think like when it comes to sprinting and stuff like that, some of the most robust sprinting programs that I've seen, like they they start general, you know, they do all that stuff. Later in their progression, maybe they do a little less power cleaning or they do a little less power snatch or they do it for a shorter period of time earlier in the season.
John:They don't not do it, but they don't they don't do it as frequently or they don't do it as close to competition. And every athlete's gonna be different. And then as they get older, those windows become smaller. The volumes of that stuff become smaller. And that makes sense.
John:That's what you wanna do. You know? And I I think, like, they need to sprint more because it is a more sensitive metric, and it is faster, and the limiter is not necessarily the low speed acceleration, so they don't need to focus on that stuff. Early on, that's what took them from running a fourteen second 100 to getting down to 10 you know, or whatever, eleven seconds. But what took them from 11 to 10 might be different.
John:They still need that other stuff. It doesn't mean they don't do it, but now the focus is more on max velocity. Now we need, you know, accelerated over speed max v work. We gotta work on tendon stiffness in the lower leg to a higher degree. We need to work on hip RFD, flexion extension stuff.
John:We need to work on eccentric strength of the hamstrings. Like, the limiting factors for them going from, you know, ten two to 10.19 are become more narrow. The reasons why become more narrow. And so they have to focus on those reasons for more of the year to get them to go from 10.2 o to 10.19 or 10.19 to 10.18. And the same thing's true of him.
John:Like, for him to go from 50.5 to 51, I mean, we're still kind of experimenting, but it's narrowed down. Right? He doesn't need to do as many of the general days as I had a lot of the other guys doing later in the year. Does that mean he doesn't need to do upper? Does that mean he doesn't need to do med ball circuits or core work or anything else?
John:No. He probably still would benefit from that. Right? But I'm not gonna have him do that stuff when we're a month out from when he wants to break the world record in his vertical. Right?
John:And so I think it's like, we still would do that stuff if he wanted to. He just fucking hates it. Or or like, you know, like his back squat. We talked about this one a lot. His back squat has gotten to a point where, again, that's a narrow we're we're narrowing the focus on what's gonna what matters enough to get him to 51.
John:But if he stopped back squatting, he's fucked. There's like or heavy squatting in general Yeah. He's probably gonna have a really hard time getting his vertical any higher because that's such an important staple, you know? And and I think like same thing's true. If I just said no more power cleans, I think it would be really we'd be hard pressed to get him to improve, especially when we start getting into faster power cleans at lighter weights and stuff.
John:Like, it just limits you so much in the amount of physiological overload you're able to build up in the system. Mhmm. And like I said, if we if we wanted to take this even a step further, why even do max strength work? Again, we're narrowing it down. The only thing that matters is, you know, the the very specific adaptations that happen in jumping.
John:Well, so what? Do we even need to strength work do strength work at all? It's so slow. I mean, we might as well not even fucking do it. And we're only that slow for a fraction of a second.
John:So I mean, we might as well just do the fast stuff. But the thing is those are all limiting factors in him getting better when we're looking at this big long term outcome. If he doesn't do any of that stuff, he doesn't hit 51. He doesn't hit fifty one five. He doesn't hit 52.
John:Because to do that, he's gotta be stronger than anyone else in the world. He's gotta be more powerful in all of those aspects across the entire force velocity curve. And he's gotta do it he's gotta do it negatively on the eccentric, and he's gotta do it isometrically, which we're working on now, and he's gotta do it concentrically. He's gotta be better across the entire fucking thing. So that there's no question that when he goes to dunk cam and test 52 and people are like,
Isaiah:oh, it's genetics.
John:Or 51, it's like, nope. Genetics probably would have got him to 43, I think. Maybe? No. 42, forty, forty three.
Isaiah:Yeah.
John:And then injured, that was what genetics got him. But if he didn't train smart, don't think he ever gets to higher than that. Like, I mean, you trained with medium, I would say higher training IQ than most people on in the world when it comes to jump training before you started getting into the science.
Isaiah:I mean, I essentially was doing
John:That.
Isaiah:Pull
John:out Pull of the
Isaiah:out. I was doing max strength work and jumping a lot. And you did
John:follow-up periodization on it. It wasn't great periodization, but you still had period Yeah. Periodized plan for at least a period of time. So I think it's like, yeah, I mean
Isaiah:You know what it
John:you know what it keep doing that? You know what happens? You just get hurt.
Isaiah:Yeah. Or you stop improving.
John:Or you stop improving. Yeah. I mean, that's what That is what happened. How long were you stagnated at that point?
Isaiah:I mean, either injured or your vertical didn't go a max probably of 44 inches on my vertical. That was probably the highest I I had ever got
John:was that?
Isaiah:Twenty sixteen. And then So
John:you stagnated for two and a half years.
Isaiah:And then I stagnated literally between like forty and forty four. I was just Up and down between 40 in that range and then getting hurt, getting a little bit healthier, getting hurt for literally two two years. And then we started training. Then got healthy, started training. And in two years went from 40, what did I, yeah, 44 at Dunk Camp.
Isaiah:Did you
John:test 44 at Dunk Camp? Or was it 43.5?
Isaiah:It might have been 11.8, whatever that is.
John:Is that what you touched?
Isaiah:Oh, it
John:might have
Isaiah:been 43.5. Or it might have been 11.9 and a half. It might have been like 44.5 that tested. If
John:the vertex isn't leaning and we measured it and everything else.
Isaiah:That's another thing.
John:Yeah. I'm about So
Isaiah:may taking into account vertex leaning
John:Let's call it 44.
Isaiah:We'll call
John:it I think 44.
Isaiah:Yeah. It's before forty three five and forty four. So it went from
John:I'm say 44.
Isaiah:Fluctuating from 40 to 44, no improvement in two years to in two years, 44 to 48. And then in two years, 48 to 50.5, possibly 50 if the vertex was leaning to
John:To now
Isaiah:50.5. Five. From 50 to 50.5, 51, somewhere in there.
John:I think With a year of
Isaiah:being hurt. Yeah. Because I blew
John:my What did I add?
Isaiah:I blew my leg up.
John:I don't wanna take the blame for that. I told you it was bad. Don't.
Isaiah:But what I was gonna say is I think the argument this argument even exists because of laziness.
John:Yeah. It
Isaiah:does. It's easier to program like that. And
John:You don't have to be as smart. You don't it's less complex. Easier to train. Yeah.
Isaiah:You just go in, you know what you're doing.
John:Fucking deadlift spot, leaf.
Isaiah:You can be you can be it's it's laziness. I think that's why the argument exists. It it because it does work,
John:but not as well. And it's simple.
Isaiah:I'm gonna add that. It doesn't work as well, but it does work, and it's simple, and That's what people want. Yeah.
John:They don't want I mean, I want the best.
Isaiah:That's what I
John:want I want the best. I don't want like, fuck that, dude. When I was in high school and I wanted to get a college scholarship, I wasn't like, I needed to jump six ten to get a scholarship. So good wasn't good enough. I was only jumping six foot, you know, and I was stagnating, and I was like, I need the next thing to take me to that next level to jump higher.
John:And I went from six foot to six four, you know. I didn't jump my senior year, but like, even applying all those principles, like if I had gone from six four, I needed to go to six four, even six five is a better chance of me getting a better scholar college scholarship, you know, and high jump in that case. So like, for me, I needed that. I needed the very complex stuff and the best option. I didn't need good.
John:I needed the best. Yeah. Good got me good. It didn't get me great. It didn't get me the best.
John:And I wasn't happy with where I was. So I think like I don't think most people are gonna even reach 40 doing doing strength work and just jumping. Yeah. Like probably not, you know, especially because if that's your mindset, you're probably just gonna quit. You're probably just gonna quit, honestly.
Isaiah:You have you have to have a mindset of Like look at Nathan George. Yeah.
John:Gets better every year. I never thought in my life he would achieve what he's achieved, and he is infinitely better than I ever could have imagined honestly. Look up Nathan George dunk on YouTube, and then just watch his progress. Yeah. It's insane.
John:He's I can't wait till he's been.
Isaiah:But, yeah, your mentality definitely needs to be, I want like, I need to train as best as I can. I need to make the most progress I can. That to to make long term progress. If you don't have that mentality, it's gonna be like year or two thing, and then you're done. Yep.
Isaiah:100%. So having said that, if you want the best, go to thvstrength.com.
John:Yeah. If you're okay being average, go to
Isaiah:Just don't even go to their website.
John:I was gonna say, you're okay being average, go to these
Isaiah:I don't even wanna train you if you wanna be average.
John:Average is not what we like. Alright. That was let's see how long that was. That was four
