Regular Squats?
Box Squats?
Front Squats?
I’ve done them all, but haven’t noticed a difference except for the weights I’m able to lift. Reg being the stongest lift (been doing it for 10 years), followed by Box (2 mos) and Fronts (6 mos).
I’m 5’10, 200 lbs with 30’’ vertical, need 3-4 more inches to dunk.
Will Plyos be necessary or have any of you done it the old fashioned ‘weight lifting way’?
Any advice?
Really, you need to be strong relative to your body weight and you need to be flexible and explosive. So even though you are squatting, if you are only able to squat say 225, you aren’t very strong. If you are strong but you are tight and inflexible then you really won’t maximize your jumping ability.
You could try the hip stretch Defranco uses to loosen up your hip flexors. You could also start incorporating mobility/rom drills. Last piece of the puzzle is speed. You need to be able to go from down to up very quickly.
So basically you could have a 3 day plan. First day would be maximal strength using squat variations. The second day would be an upper body day. The third day would be a speed day using waves of plyos and speed squat movements. Mobility and ROM drills could be done each day, and even everyday if you felt you needed it.
I think you need to find out where your weakness is. Some people specially basketball players are plyometrically fine but have no leg strength. Others have leg strength but no jumping ability. Then there are those that completely forget to jump.
How many days a week are you sprinting? and or jumping?
What’s your stats? It’s widely accepted that once you can squat twice your body weight it’d be beneficial to do some plyometric work, just not to overdo it.
As for what’s the best squat you need a variety, check out this DeFranco Article, I think you’ll find it useful.
http://www.defrancostraining.com/articles/archive/article_fab15.htm
If you have been squatting for 10 years, I think it’s safe to say that you aren’t lacking in the strength department. You most likely would do best to incorporate some plyos into your routine. You probably already have the strength, so get the power and explosiveness needed to really fly.
You see it all the time, guys that don’t even lift weights but are able to jump over a house. This is because they probably do nothing but play ball all day which adds up to a ton of jumping (plyometric work). I’d say for vertical jump ability, explosiveness is more important than strength.
You say the weight’s your lifting aren’t increasing…??
You are actively trying to push them up right? Sounds silly I knw, but I’ve seen people do the same workout, with the same weight month after month an wonder why they’re not improving…
VARIETY!
Have you ever tried tabata squat jumps?
Thank you all for your informative replies.
The DeFranco’s Training site is a gold mine of useful information for the weekend warrior. The meathead in me wanted to glide above the rim by lifting heavier and heavier weight. I’ve no delusions about; I’m no basketball player, just a guy that wants to fly.
Well to get good at jumping, I better start f’jumping. It’s that simple, just too bad it took me so long to realize it. Once again simplicity seems to prevail, Eureka!
Have any of you ever had stupid/stuborn moments?
My original goal of pressing four and squatting five plates raw while being able to dunk seems more and more conflicting. It’s time to prioritize, so I’ll focus on dunking first. Once I get it on film, I’ll switch to lifting heavy again. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.
God bless,
TKO
yeah dude, you need the box jumps etc. to make it work. Also power cleans are also key to developing expolsive power in your jumping range. worked like a hot bitch for me. the higher my Pclean the higher my vert. Get lazy on the Pclean and the vert gets lazy too.
-chris
Get the Vertical Jump Bible by Kelly Baggett.
Best investment I ever made.
Everything I’ve been reading lately says that the Olympic movements have the highest correspondence to vertical jump out of any lift. Olympic lifters, according to me reading, are best able to apply power to pretty much any situation.
Dan John (I think) recently wrote about incorporating jump shrugs - basically a power clean without the catch - which he said carried most of the benefits with almost none of the technical difficulty.
Here’s a post by a friend of mine who is a high level coach that you probably already know about. Read and enjoy.
"Knowing that you’re probably gonna ditch what I’m fixing to say in favor of a bunch of complicated BS that will take you the next 6 months of your training time to figure out, here’s a very simple answer as to what I’d recommend you do:
Get stronger. Until you’re going all the way down with 300 lbs on your back you simply don’t have the raw horsepower necessary to blast 192 lbs up in the air like you’d want.
After you accomplish #1, shift into more explosive work.
There is an easy (fast) way and a hard (long) way to accomplish the above.
A: The easy way consists of going to the gym every monday and friday or Monday and Thursday. On one day knock out sets of 5 in the squat followed by some Glute Hams for sets of 6-8. On the other day knock out sets of 6-8 in the bulgarian split squat followed by some more glute hams.
Maybe do some light squats as well just to keep the feel of the movement. Try to put more weight on the bar everytime you hit Mondays workout. Do this until you can throw around 300 for reps.
Prior to your workouts on Monday and Friday, as well as on Wednesday, do a low volume of some garden variety plyometric drills such as a few sets of lateral jumps, low squat hops and low box depth jumps or whatever else you want. They all do pretty much the same
B: I’ll let others tell you about the hard way.
4A. Keep the same basic schedule in place. Monday and Thursday or Monday and Friday etc. On one day do some depth jumps followed by some wave loaded jump squats for sets of 5 for a total of 4-5 sets of depth jumps and 8 sets of squats. The squat weights will vary between 20-50% of your max.
Do one set with more weight followed by one set with lighter weight and alternate back and forth until you’ve done all 8 sets. At the very end of your workout you might do a few sets of 3 reps with 80% of your squat, as well as a few glutehams, just to maintain your strength.
4B. On the other weekly workout make it a workout based around jumping and sprinting for PRs. Simply go out and get warmed up and try to jump as high as possible from a variety of starts (running, single leg, standing, bouncing off a box). Maybe add in some sprints if you want.
When you no longer are getting consistent weekly results from 4A and 4B (which might take 3 weeks and might take a couple of months), then it’s time to start over with #1.
Keep repeating Steps 1 through 5 for as many years as you like until you either get to where you want to be or until you get old, gray and worn out"
That is all you need to get your vertical up.
Go play basketball if you want to dunk, I played all through middle and high school and could dunk in highschool at 5’11"/6’, I played all the time, like 5 days a week. Now I don’t play at all and I can’t dunk anymore, but I am much stronger than when I was in highschool, so IMO lifting weights is very ineffective at improving jumping ability…unless you are very weak to begin with but you don’t have that problem.
I know you asked specifically for squats (just to get that out of the way), but have you tried doing snatches or C&J’s? They are great for explosive strength.
-Joey
[quote]RJ24 wrote:
Here’s a post by a friend of mine who is a high level coach that you probably already know about. Read and enjoy.
"Knowing that you’re probably gonna ditch what I’m fixing to say in favor of a bunch of complicated BS that will take you the next 6 months of your training time to figure out, here’s a very simple answer as to what I’d recommend you do:
Get stronger. Until you’re going all the way down with 300 lbs on your back you simply don’t have the raw horsepower necessary to blast 192 lbs up in the air like you’d want.
After you accomplish #1, shift into more explosive work.
There is an easy (fast) way and a hard (long) way to accomplish the above.
A: The easy way consists of going to the gym every monday and friday or Monday and Thursday. On one day knock out sets of 5 in the squat followed by some Glute Hams for sets of 6-8. On the other day knock out sets of 6-8 in the bulgarian split squat followed by some more glute hams.
Maybe do some light squats as well just to keep the feel of the movement. Try to put more weight on the bar everytime you hit Mondays workout. Do this until you can throw around 300 for reps.
Prior to your workouts on Monday and Friday, as well as on Wednesday, do a low volume of some garden variety plyometric drills such as a few sets of lateral jumps, low squat hops and low box depth jumps or whatever else you want. They all do pretty much the same
B: I’ll let others tell you about the hard way.
4A. Keep the same basic schedule in place. Monday and Thursday or Monday and Friday etc. On one day do some depth jumps followed by some wave loaded jump squats for sets of 5 for a total of 4-5 sets of depth jumps and 8 sets of squats. The squat weights will vary between 20-50% of your max.
Do one set with more weight followed by one set with lighter weight and alternate back and forth until you’ve done all 8 sets. At the very end of your workout you might do a few sets of 3 reps with 80% of your squat, as well as a few glutehams, just to maintain your strength.
4B. On the other weekly workout make it a workout based around jumping and sprinting for PRs. Simply go out and get warmed up and try to jump as high as possible from a variety of starts (running, single leg, standing, bouncing off a box). Maybe add in some sprints if you want.
When you no longer are getting consistent weekly results from 4A and 4B (which might take 3 weeks and might take a couple of months), then it’s time to start over with #1.
Keep repeating Steps 1 through 5 for as many years as you like until you either get to where you want to be or until you get old, gray and worn out"
That is all you need to get your vertical up.
[/quote]
I didn’t know you were friends with KB, Roger? That guy kicks ass. He keeps it simple and is very generous.
Since you don’t use full squatting ROM when jumping, you might wanna do heavy quarter squats to improve your strength in the ROM that you use when you jump. Obviously, you have to be good at jumping as well, so do jump squats and depth jumps to practice your motor skills in jumping. Olympic lifts are also a great way to add explosiveness to your physique.
BTW, never abandon ATG squats. You still need them for balanced musclular development.
while full o-lifts are great for explosive power, they take to long to learn to be effective, and even so, it takes a while, until your putting well above your bodyweight overhead to get the kind of VJ and sprinting speed ELITE O-lifters have.
keyword is elite there.
I would say, try hang clean pulls or hang power cleans and learn the technique (not much, took 5mins to teach a D3 Baseball team) and load on it a bit.
I’m all for ATG squats. If your not doing them now, do them. Down slow, up FAST.
[quote]eic wrote:
I didn’t know you were friends with KB, Roger? That guy kicks ass. He keeps it simple and is very generous.[/quote]
Oh yeah, Kelly has helped me out more times than I can count over the years (though this particular post was not directed at me). I’d say he was a major player in shaping my current views on training.