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Hey, I was just about to post about this.... I have begun to start the idea of having a certain amount of "extra jumps" in my workouts each week, and I think I am going to start with a 5lb weight vest.  I already do a really good amount of plyos, and intense ones at that, but I am so good at plyos in comparison to my actual jumps... I need to get on the motor pattern of jumping. 

Personally I think the best time to implement extra jumps is outside of your workouts, the more time you can put between all your workouts the better. 

I am going to personally start at 20 or so extra jumps a week off two legs, and play with things from there.  Anyone else have any thoughts or experience with this type of thing?  Honestly, one of the big mistakes I have made over the years is just not jumping enough during the week. 

I posted a video on youtube recently advocating practicing max vertical jumps on top of your workouts every week or two, but it really should be done more than once a week I am really starting to think.  I might have to delete that video, plus I look like a tool with my black eye.

A Russian high jump coach I have been talking to who worked with the 2000 olympic champion klyugin and jumped 7'6.5 himself back in the day.... they did an unreal amount of total jumping volume in their workouts, would make most of our CNS's burn up in a couple days, although they had worked up to that work capacity and were probably on some PED's. 

Looking forward to thoughts and discussion.  Also a random thought, what if you gave some of the TFB guys weight vests and had them just do their typical dunk workouts in 5-10lb vests for a couple weeks? A couple hundred dunk attempts in a light vest would probably guarantee some results.  , think of Golden Child with even 2-3 more inches on his jump, haha. 

I can see how the tibia/femur ratio can make sense.  Thinking about it a bit more.... I think squat strength is a big inflencing factor, as when you look at most any football player, they get down pretty deep as well.  That cam wake 11'8 jump is a good example too.  Then again, I remember watching staffan strand do some standing high jumps, and he dug down unbelievably far, especially for a high jumper with a bad squat. 

I have long tibia length compared to my femur, but I can't squat for sh#t (not being able to hit 2.0x when you have been lifting for 13 years is kind of weak), and I have less knee bend than anyone I know on my standing vertical.  A lot of this though is because I get a lot of power out of my upper body, and my legs play a slightly more reactive function than most.  I suppose there are a lot of factors, I would like to see more research on it.

I bet achilles length and structure has something to do with it as well, a great study in the JSCR came out a few months ago talking about how athletes with differently structured muscle-tendon complexes in their calves produced force differently in standing and running verticals.  Long tendons were good for standing vertical jumps, and short were not good.  Case in point I had a swedish long jumper who went 22' this past year and wasn't that fast either, who only had a 25" standing vertical.  His achilles were really short.... and so are Stefan Holm's for that matter, and his standing vertical is like... half of his running.  KB wrote about that in one of his recent articles too. 

I would be really interested if more research came out on the knee bend topic as well. 

holy sh%t.... actually though, this is how a lot of awesome two leg jumpers take off, his center of mass is crazy low, but his left leg doesn't bend all that much.  Just working speed and com lowering to his best advantage.  That right leg is bent pretty far though, but I think most of the force is going to the left leg.  This is kind what gives a lot of "speed" high jumpers their lift without them bending their knee much, because they are leaning to the side which lowers the center of mass.

I would recommend pumping up that sprint volume a bit, most american acceleration development days involve about 200-300m of total work.  I had been doing about 250m of work twice a week prior to that VJ pr I hit on video. 

I say this mostly because it will be some good training you can do without bothering your knee so much.. and break you out of the 90m training you typically do...... and I do need to also take your advice and get my squat up to 400lb

Hey Matt, I can help you with switching the format around to cater to your needs, just PM me or something,.  Glad to hear about the gains you are making!  I think that training format is one of the best out there!  I am at 100 pages on my new book which is focused on that specific training block (and a ton of other things) should be done within a month!

Raptor, we need to get that knee of yours fixed up!  You can just bound on your off good leg, and maybe do a bunch of double leg stuff aside from that on the plyo days.  Honestly, you don't even have to bound a ton on the plyo days, just substitute speed work in instead, like 2x20m, 3x30m, 2x40m, and then do a bunch of double leg stuff and use the power jumper from time to time.  You can also do med ball or shot throws with powerful hip extension, that is great too.  It is more the format of the days the exercises are presented, and not quite as much the exercises themselves. 

J

damn

multiple response, which is typically the way I do single leg hurdle stuff... is more effect on the muscle tendon complex as a whole.  insane exercise for ankle stiffness... which is a good thing bc holm has 4x as stiff achilles as the average human.  The single response will be more all out CNS drive than doing multiples over low hurdles, but they are both good exercises.  I would actually recommend doing multiples over several hurdles, but you can certainly do both in training.  I think multiples are good also because you will always have a good forward momentum and hit the ground at a constant angle.  jamillian kind of shuffles down into his plant to get a better liftoff instead of really dropping and you can't cheat with multiple hurdles