Very good thread so far, I have already Kelly Baggets training programs and am liking them so far, very good advice given so far. Btw that formula is about spot on if you modify the 39 number. Ddoger, thanks for the advicve on those moves, I’ve been working on them, especially the “2-handed jump hook” I’ve really made progress with that move, I can sink it very often now where as in the begining I was airballing it lol.
The Top 10 Mistakes When Training For Vertical Jump by Kelly Baggett 
The Talker: “Just yesterday I heard a talker tell me that he had to spend 30 minutes per day in the sauna to �??sweat off�?? all that creatine induced water weight to reduce the strain from it on his kidneys.”
This one had me rolling on the floor.
Excel sheet with my vertical jump formula
also added an entry to calculate the squat required for a desired vertical jump and bodyweight
http://www.members.optushome.com.au/coolcolj/Temp/CCJ_Vertical%20Jump%20formula.xls
I need a 520lb full oly squat for a 46 inch vert at 190lbs…
495lbs at 180lbs bodyweight which is quite possible
455lbs at 165lbs bodyweight is pushing it a bit size wise.
Should add an entry box to allow the “39” value to be changed. It’s the distance from where the bar is in the hip crease (while hanging down in the snatch) to where the bar ends up overhead for someone who’s roughly 5’9".
Proper snatch grip width has the bar sitting the the hip crease, with a slight forward tilt.
Awesome, thanks a lot. props on the excel.
That formula works suprisingly well but I don’t know what you mean by hip crease. Could you draw a picture or something. Thanks
[quote]Shammy12 wrote:
That formula works suprisingly well but I don’t know what you mean by hip crease. Could you draw a picture or something. Thanks[/quote]
where the bend in your body is when you sit down
should be around the boney part of the pelvis
Yeap the formula works pretty well
there are people who can power snatch big numbers, but can’t full oly squat much and jump that well relative to the power snatch number
That’s why the formula is the way I had it. Relative strength in the legs and hips is still the main factor in a vertical jump.
if your 5’9" with a proportional body and full squat 2.5xBW and can’t vertical jump at least 40 inches then you know either all, or one of these factors apply
- your form is terrible
- your RFD is lacking
- your reactivity to a lesser degree is not optimal etc
if the jump goes up in unison with the squat, then, why even bother doing an explosive and plyo work?
but that’s also why I made the formula, so you don’t have to do any snatching and olys, just jump, up your squat, while making sure your glutes do the brunt of the work when squatting and things will fall into place. If the jump doesn’t line up to the squat, then you know RFD and form work is in order etc. Takes out much guess work
My calculator is on Kelly Baggett’s site now as an online version - so no Excel needed or manual maths
It’s pretty accurate in 90% of cases. Other than for really tall or short people. People who don’t do enough jumping or people overtrained from strength work, which kills your hops!
nice post by Kelly Baggett
On squatting and VJ development
It’s not that huge squat equals huge vert. It’s not even that strong legs equals huge vert. If you take a group of 100 athletes and test their maximum isometric leg strength the correlation between maximum force and vertical jump isn’t all that strong.
However, there is a difference between vertical jump and vertical jump IMPROVEMENTS. There’s a difference between strength and strength IMPROVEMENTS. And improving relative strength does improve vert.
To get into this a little more, unfortunate as it is, other than skill (movement efficiency), maximum strength is really the only quality that we can improve to any significant degree.
It’s possible to double or triple strength levels…you can train 10 years and if you’re lucky you might increase your rate of force development, rate coding, neural processing speed etc. 5%.
Truth be told you’re more likely to improve those through altering your endocrine and neurotransmitter physiology then you are training. To see the impact of those, see how many 75 year old men you can find with any quickness or speed.
The main difference between 25 and 75 is the same difference between slow athletes and explosive athletes. No amount of training can turn a 75 year old into a 25 year old. Think about that.
Strength ain’t perfect but it’s really all we have to work with. It’s really more or less a shotgun approach. The muscle innervation during a jump is something like 30%. Only 30% of the fibers are firing to any significant degree.
So by squatting you’re hitting 100% of the fibers to improve the force generated by those 30%. Same goes for glute ham raises, deadlifts, calf raises etc. Keep in mind no exercise is 100% specific either.
I have some yet to be published research that looked at 5 different movements (jump squat, depth jump, power clean, power snatch) and the most specific movment to the VJ as far as EMG, order of recruitment etc. is actually the hang power snatch. But anyway, a better method of increasing sports specific strength IMO would be implanting FT fibers in certain muscle groups of the body.
No doubt someone will eventually do that, or come close, but until then we have to work with what we have.
So it’s not pefect but it freakin works and works consistently. You can continue to increase the strenght of those 30% of available motor units and plug them into your existing movement efficiency, leverages, processing speed, neural drive, rate coding capabilities and continue getting higher and higher.
Maybe if you’re lucky you can also improve those factors to some degree as well. It turns out that strength work also works well for that. Thats how PAP or the stim method works.
After thinking about that it might be clear why size in FT motor units is quite under-rated as well.
Hum my power snatch is good for 32.56 inches and my squat is good for 25.93 what does this mean ? xD
I am 17 and 6.0 and I can get my hands alitle abow the rim, atleast last time I checked and I do no jump training at all, how high would that vert be considering I have “normal lenght arms” maybe alitle short.
Also, how much can one expect to increase his vertical to “just get used to” jumping?
First measure you standing reach - Stand in the shoes you will jump in, and stretch up as high as you can, try and rip your arm out of the socket!
Then measure from the floor to the tip of your finger.
Then subtract the distance from where you touched when you jump from the the standing reach. Rim = 10 feet or 120 inches.
A retractable steel tape measure works well for both.
Reach is best measured after you jump when your all loose and warm. Your body does stretch out quite a lot when you jump. People cheat by not fully stretching out.
Even foam rolling, tissue work and self myofascial release will improve your reach - it did for me, by 2 inches!
So weights can tighten you up too…
I would use the squat for the calculator. It’s easy to muscle up a powersnatch.
No dip is allowed to get under the powersnatch and it must be fast and snappy, not upright-rowed upwards.
If I jumped that height, it would be a 30-31 inch VJ for me. I have a 7’4" reach. Based on the average reach of a 6 feet guy, it would around 24 inch for you. Maybe even lower if you have long arms.
6 inches is possible, plus some gains in specific strength/muscle mass. That’s about what I got from jumping a lot. And that’s what these guys who do these crappy commercial jumping plyo programs get
Nothing one would not get by playing BBall regularly and jumping as hard as they can when rebounding or blocking shots. Or Volleyball.
Oh you said a little above the rim, I thought you said a little below…doh
well about 32-34 for me, so I guess around 26-28 for you if you ahve an average 6 footer reach
Right between the numbers then. I guese I’ll increae my frontsquat and do some jumping to see if I can dunk anytime soon
why don’t you measure your reach after a warmup to find out for sure…?
takes like 1 min if that
i’d love to test it but I got nothing to measure with :\
gees, everyone has to have a tape measure somewhere, how will you know how big your arms are?!
Here is an interesting post from the following blog
The Fastest Way to Improve!!! New Secret Training!!!
Do I have your attention now? Ok, so here goes…and lets just use running vertical jump and dunking ability as an example today. So you want to jump higher and dunk better right? What is the FASTEST way to get better. Here are two options:
Option A:
Get your backsquat up to 1.5-2x bodyweight
then
Do plyometrics: bounding, depth jumps and the like
also
Stretch daily, do functional analysis on posture and gait, determine posterior chain vs. anterior chain strength and design a program combating these weaknesses.
Option B:
Get in a competitive environment and practice your jumping and dunking until your legs are sore. Repeat every few days.
Guess which option the ‘top level’ dunkers you see on youtube, etc… use?
here’s a hint…it’s not ‘A’.
Ok, ok, ok…so I understand your potential backlash and perhaps misunderstanding. I also realize that the youtube jumpers such as teamflightbrothers are genetic freaks and will be awesome no matter what type of training they do (which for them is just playing basketball and dunking). I am not saying here, that if you want to realize your ultimate athletic potential that you can get away with just practicing say, dunking, if throwing down nasty dunks is your goal. I am saying though, that you will never become the dunker/jumper you can potentially be if you get so caught up in weights/plyos/etc… that you forget the raw art form of the primary sport movement. This holds true more, the more dynamic the movement. Here is a continuum of sport movements which have increasing importance of practicing the actual sport movement.
Least Important:
Squat Jump
Standing Vertical Jump
Acceleration<10 meters
Running Vertical Jump (2 legs)
Running Vertical Jump (1 leg)
Top End Speed (flying 10 meter)
Top End Speed Endurance (300yd shuttle or 400m dash)
Most Important:
Take a look at some of the greatest athletes in sport: sprinters, jumpers, dunkers, even distance runners. What do they all have in common? They make their activity look fluid…effortless. Yet what do we do when we neglect our primary sport movement in favor of other movements. We get back to our sport specific movement and “muscle it” or “force it”. Because we neglect it, it is less natural. We no longer use the SPECIFIC muscular and neural firing patterns for that activity and substitute it with other firing patterns.
Ok, so the number one way to improve any activity is what? To practice that activity, simple enough. What is the number 2 way to improve then? Depth jumps? Squats? Turkish Get-ups?
Not really, the second best way to improve is just doing a weighted version of the original. Practice dunking with a weight vest on, or sprint with a light resistance such as a parachute.
The third thing to do to max out your neural pathways is to overload the eccentric portion of whatever movement your sport is based on. This is accomplished by an exercise known as depth jumps. Research has shown that the more energy which is stored in the eccentric phase of a movement, the more energy will be released in the concentric phase. The final key to maximizing your efficiency in a specific event is by doing depth jumps and similar plyometrics.
In simple words, what do these three things do, practicing the original sport movement, weighted versions and then plyometrics? They max out your efficiency in that given activity. Once your efficiency is maxed out, or close to maxed out, only then will weightlifting really be the only way to improve. Of course weightlifting is handy before you max out your efficiency, but the closer you get to 100% efficiency, the more it will help you. Basically, practicing your movement and plyometrics will allow you to recruit the majority of your available motor units (except emergency motor units only recruitable by life/death situations), while lifting weights will increase the total motor pool available. It is as simple as that.
Here is a sample program which could help an intermediate athlete (1.25-1.5xbw squat, 26-30" VJ) get better based on the things I have just outlined.
2 Day per Week System:
Day 1:
PRIMARY
Practice Dunking/Jumping until noticable decrease in height jumped.
SECONDARY
3x8 Deadlift, with weight that you could do 10x with moderate/difficult effort
Day 2:
Practice Dunking/Jumping with weighted vest about 5-8% of bodyweight until noticable decrease in height jumped.
OR (if no weight vest)
Practice Dunking/Jumping off 18" box (depth jumps) until noticable decrease in height jumped occurs.
It really can be that simple folks…this type of program will yield excellent short term results.
For good results over a long term, you might want to use a cycle like this alternated with weightlifting oriented cycles.
Good post Regular Gonzalez thanks for posting that. and CoolColJ that vert calc is awsome great job props.