Christian Thibaudeau,
I am working with a high school basketball team to train them to jump higher. I thought that I had seen an article on jump training, but I cannot locate it on the site. What are your suggestions to train these boys to jump higher? Also, what would be a good regimen for in-season and off-season training?
Thanks,
TW
[quote]Tigertorey wrote:
Christian Thibaudeau,
I am working with a high school basketball team to train them to jump higher. I thought that I had seen an article on jump training, but I cannot locate it on the site. What are your suggestions to train these boys to jump higher? Also, what would be a good regimen for in-season and off-season training?
Thanks,
TW[/quote]
Well, I cannot give you a program… after all it’s YOUR job, not mine, to train them 
And writing down individualized program is outside the scope of a Q&A forum.
That having been said, with high school kids, depending on their age and training experience, it might be as simple as just getting them stronger on the basic exercises. A lot of coaches are too eager to use “cutting edge” training methods that are super specific… when their athletes do not even have a decent strength base yet. For example, in the soviet litterature about plyometrics (they invented plyometric training, we bastardized it) an athlete must be able to full squat 1.5 to 2.0x their body weight before beginning plyometric training.
One thing I can tell you is that I find that one of the most abused thing is doing jump/plyometric exercises during in-season training… these kids are already jumping hundreds of times during their practices and games… additional jump training during the season will not do anything and could even lead to overuse injuries.
Very good advice from CT as usual.
Guess the link I posted got deleted. But it was a calculator for vertical jump. It pretty much demonstrated CT’s advice about increase in general strength in this case squat would carryover to the jumps. It’s simple enough to find with a google search though. Just type in vertical jump calc.
On a side note I have been training to compete in Olympic lifting an have been front squatting a lot. I’ve noticed my vertical has increased although I have not been training specifically for that. Goodluck with you and your athletes
CT’s advice is excellent.
at the hs level, you also have to consider that they have not all reached the same level of physical maturity.
how you push 1 kid, may be too much for another, or too little for another. if you overtrain a kid that cant handle it, he will end up injured.
i had a kid that was pretty big and strong. they over pushed him on the basketball team. killed his knees.
he threw the shot for me from a stand throw, and was still powerful enough to place in some meets.
i kept telling him that all those drills they were putting him through were too much, sadly, he continued.
needless to say, he ended up with surgeries, and guess what? he cannot play basketball anymore.
dont take this the wrong way, but, as a coach of youngsters, our responsibilities go way beyond just winning.
CT and everyone, thank you for the excellent advice as always!