Front Squats for Vertical Jump Training?

[quote]CoolColJ wrote:
I think you can maybe squeeze it up to 3-4 inches higher off a run. Just practise it more, get a smooth flow etc
Approach aggressively and and explode as hard as you can. Don’t pussfoot around.

Honestly my difference was 2 inches before, the same as with a step, but after a lot of practise is now up to 4 inches. And it’s been like that with or without a ton of depth jumps. So it is pretty much genetic.
I have naturally large quads and glutes, thick legs and calves. So that’s how it is.
Even Kelly Baggett only has a 3 inch difference.[/quote]

I hear you. However, I keep hearing that speed in many ways can be taught. I know the importance of limit strength. Kelly seems to be a huge advocate of jsut keep getting stronger in the weight room and practice your sport to either get faster or jump higher. Bottom line then, if I get my front squat numbers closer to twice bodyweight( which is quite a bit away now), then my standing vertical will eclipse 36" so long as practice jumping from a standstill and from a run up? Thanks.

Nick

I’m sure, plenty of evidence backs me up.

Why is it the people with the highest vertical jumps are all very strong in regards to relative strength?
There isn’t one person with a legit 40 or more inch vertical jump who can’t full squat well over double bodyweight for reps, who has been doing weights for at least 2 years.

a nice quote from my mate JackM :slight_smile:


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.

Also if your just front squatting then IMO your talking the long way to increase general lower body strength. I would switch to low bar full squats.

I switched over 7 months ago from front squats and high bar olympic squats to just low bar full squats. In that time I added around 70lbs to my low bar full squat.

Last week I decided to high bar olympic squat to see what the transfer was. I did 315lbs for 7 reps with a rep in the tank and that was on my 2nd main work set, and in the middle of a deloading period so I’m not fully fresh. Form was upright, clean and controlled as well, beltless.
I figure fresh I could do 8-9 reps and maybe 10 with more practise and greasing the groove under my belt

I could only do 285lbs x 6 for both in the same session when I first switched over styles 7 months ago. Since then my low bar full squat has gone from 285x6+ to 365x5 at least.
So my Low bar full squat gains do transfer over to high bar Olympic squats, and if my oly squats go up, then so does my front squats. Judging by my oly squat numbers today, I’m good for a 315+ front squat, without having done any, as long as my upper body can support the load without rounding over that is.

That means I never really need to bother doing high bar and front squats anymore. Low bar squats feel so much better as well! You feel it your whole body, unlike high bar squats. Your quads get less pump, while your glutes, hamstring and erectors get hit way more, even your upper body is working much harder. Probably why low bar squats feel more tiring, more muscle involved. High bar is actually quite relaxing in comparison

So for athletic goals I recommend low bar full squats. Best all around squat style by far!!
I do let my knees drift forward though, and I only use around shoulder width stance.

They’re a lot more stable, and much easier on the knees and back than high bar olympic squats. Especially if your doing a lot of jumping

[quote]CoolColJ wrote:
I’m sure, plenty of evidence backs me up.

Why is it the people with the highest vertical jumps are all very strong in regards to relative strength?
There isn’t one person with a legit 40 or more inch vertical jump who can’t full squat well over double bodyweight for reps, who has been doing weights for at least 2 years.

a nice quote from my mate JackM :slight_smile:

[/quote]

In your profile you say that quote is by Kelly Bagget…is that a typo?

Same person :wink:

[quote]CoolColJ wrote:
Same person ;)[/quote]

Huh?

[quote]CoolColJ wrote:
Same person ;)[/quote]

!!! WHAT !!!

CoolColJ…you just blew my mind!

Is JackM, the JackM from DB hammer? So is that JackM actually KellyB? Why does he have an account under a different name!?!?

AAAhhhhh that’s what they meant when they said kellyb copied jackm word by word in a thread awhile back.
http://www.T-Nation.com/free_online_forum/sports_body_training_performance_bodybuilding_strength/vertspeed_training_thread?id=1180867&pageNo=6

Bodybuilder Hops!!!

pure strength jumping at it’s finest, very slow and low dip, but he gets up there :sunglasses:

Don’t know how heavy he is, but he’s about 5’9". Probably lighter than me, since he looks pretty lean.
With a bit more practise and technique work, he could get another 3+ inches higher.
Rim is slightly bent, but not too much. Pretty close to dunking off vertical!

Judging by his head to net height, I would put his vertical jump around the 36-38 inch area

and a 56" boxjump

he’s got some muscles on his legs :slight_smile:

I guess that answers the question about muscles gained from bodybuilding do anything for power/strength. No difference IMO

well he does appear to practise some jumping, but not a like BBall’er would. I see a hurdle hop video in his channel

Anyone know how far apart those track markings are at teh end of the clip? That would give you an idea of his broad jump as well

but it backs up my belief all muscle and strength work is general.
Get big/strong and practise jumping = hops

whoa, nice find

that guy has the slowest jump I’ve ever seen, his legs must be strong

[quote]BetterAthlete wrote:
Little side story

Read an article recently about Georges St. Pierre, the MMA fighter, stating that he had a 40 inch vertical. I would believe it, he is a freak athlete.

However, when his coach was talking about his lifting numbers, I was surprised at what he said. I have the article right here in front of me (from latest Men’s Fitness–BS magazine I know but its a quote from his trainer), so I’ll just post it:

“St-Pierre can do a chinup with 120lbs around his waist, bench 120lb dumbells, AND FRONT SQUAT 270LBS.”

At 190lbs, that’s less than 1.5 times his bodyweight. The context of the sentence, at least with the other lifts its mentioned with, makes it sound like it was a max effort lift. If this is true, how is Georges jumping so damn high?[/quote]

I really don’t think you need a very high squat number to vert jump so high, it sure helps I bet, but I had a mid thirties verticle back in highschool with no weight training at all. Picture as proof.


.

-Tiberius- you had good genetics, and good structure, long femurs for jumping. And light bodyweight. Not everyone will be like that

especially if the jump is off a run, but no one is gonna have a 40 or more inch vertical jump without strong legs!

There are a few guys on youtube that have running jumps over 50 inches, but they were jumping like that at 14-18 years old. They’re born like that. One thing for sure, none of them have a vertical jump near 40, in fact, none have a standing jump over 37.

no surprise the highest vertical jumper I know has some of the best relative strength around

Tiberius, how tall are you?

CoolColJ, what do you consider to be a long femur (in inches)? Just curious cause I want to go measure mine after haha.

I dunno, it just has too look long relative to your body :slight_smile:

probably inseam to height ratios. I’ll dig some stuff up, I remeber looking into it a while back

The bodybuilder guy replied back -

I am about 84kilos right now but bulking a little. My best squat is 200kilos, ass to the grass :slight_smile:

Now bulking can mean many things, especially when your as lean as that guy is.
440lbs with 185lb bodyweight = 39+ inch with my VJ formula. And he is definitely jumping around there!

He has potential to jump higher with better technique and off course when leaner.

[quote]CoolColJ wrote:
The bodybuilder guy replied back -

I am about 84kilos right now but bulking a little. My best squat is 200kilos, ass to the grass :slight_smile:

Now bulking can mean many things, especially when your as lean as that guy is.
440lbs with 185lb bodyweight = 39+ inch with my VJ formula. And he is definitely jumping around there!

He has potential to jump higher with better technique and off course when leaner. [/quote]

He seems to work on plyos as in his video on the track. However, he seems to go down to a virtual full squat on his jumps, which he appears to do slowly. If he did more of a quarter squat and he increased his speed in doing so, wouldn’t that help his stretch shortening cycle and thereby increase his vertical?

He clearly has the horse power by ass to the grass squatting 440 at a bodyweight of 185. His squat is at least 70 pounds heavier than mine. He is strong, but not SquatDr. strong, and hence the difference in the hops between the two.

Nick

Tiberius,

What is that picture supposed to prove? You’re maybe 2 feet off the ground from an approach…

I’ve been exchanging messages with the bodybuilder, and he honestly doesn’t train jumping at all!

So the hops he has displayed are all basic strength to weight ratio, as a result of proper bodybuilding training - squatting more weight for reps over time to build bigger muscles. 2.38x bodyweight squat will give anyone hops :slight_smile:

He can definitely improve a few more inches with regular practise and technique work for sure!!
One of the few people out there with a legit near 40 inch vertical jump, and a Bodybuilder at that :smiley:


Thanks for the link…interesting.

I have never trained jumping or done any spesific exercises, just doing it sometimes for fun.

Next time I’ll try to go down faster, that sounds rational for higher jump. Never thought about that “going down-phase” :slight_smile:

-Jatkis-


and here we have a people “killing” themselves with plyos and depth jumps, jumpsquats and olympic lifts, and the guy just squats and tries to get bigger and jumps once in a while and gets up real good :slight_smile: