Vertical Jump?

How good is a 31 inch vertical leap? That is standing flat footed and jumping straight up.

I believe that is pretty good. I think Ian King said that he gets excited about an athletes explosiveness when it gets over 33 or 34 so your pretty close. My personal best is 36 but that was at a much lighter bodyweight. Now its probably closer to thirty. I can still dunk but only on a very good day.

According to Harvey Newton’s book (which I believe is called “Explosive Training for Sports”), a 31 inch standing vertical would put one in a pretty elite category. The average for d-1 basketball players is something like 28 inches. For d-1 running backs and safeties, I believe it’s 30 inches. Wide receivers and cornerbacks are 31.5 inches.

Taking about 2 or 3 steps i can probably jump 36 to 38 inches off of the ground, but i’m only 5’8. I’ve dunked on occassion, but not in consistantly. Could it become possible for somebody to gain muscle size in order to gain a higher vertical?

binford if you want a awasome verticle jump program PM Jason Norcross see if he can email you a copy of his new program vertical jump program. On paper this looks awesome! And I even am highly planning on using it on some of my clients that bball. I can’t wait for the thread thats suppose to come w/ this on T-mag:) Jason, great stuff I hope you generate enough response so that your article can go through here.

In Health,

Silas Chen

31 inches is a pretty solid vertical jump. The ranges I found with my JC players at one of the top programs in the state was 25 to 32 inches for a vertical jump.

With that said, most of these guys have never really lifted weights before and I can’t wait to see what kind of progress I can make with them. My goal is to put 6-10 inches on each of their vertical jumps prior to the start of the next season. This is doable for several reasons, but mostly because they all lack strength and muscle mass and with increased levels of both of those qualities, there will be much more room to improve power.

For those of you that deal with vertical jumps of athletes often, are there any opinions on how height and weight would affect the “impressiveness” of the vertical jump (going back to the original question)? Goldberg’s 30 or so inches at his weight and height is more impressive to me than a 5’11’’ 170lb guy with the same vertical, but that’s just personal opinion.

I would assume a lot of it is a wash. With weight, the more muscle you have, the more you have to get off the ground, but the more you have to get it off the ground with (assuming you aren’t a chunky monkey). With height, 30 inches is a smaller percentage of a 6’7’’ guy’s height than a 5’9’’ guy, but the coordination and developmental environments would be much different for the two athletes.

Along the same lines, what kind of body type generally produces the best vertical? Considering proportions, body comp, etc.

Michael Wilson of the Globetrotters has a vertical jump over 50" at 6 foot 5.

Jason Norcross-Good lord you can probably expect huge increase in those verticals. My initial increase in my vertical came after i concentrated on my hams and glutes for 16 weeks. that was the first time i dunked on my own.

Goldberg - what did you do with you hams and glutes? :slight_smile: