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My name is Isaiah Rivera and I have the highest officially tested vertical on the planet at 50.5 inches and am the co-founder of THPstrength, a company that focuses on vertical jump training for athletes.
What makes me a little different from most athletes that jump high is that I started with a pretty low vertical and documented my entire journey on this channel. Here is my journey in a nutshell:
14: Started working out to jump higher for basketball
16: Hit my first dunk and shortly after found out about the world of pro dunking
17: Trained like a madman and hit my first between the legs dunk
18: Entered my first professional dunk contest
19: Knee pain almost made me quit dunking
20: Met my coach John Evans, who helped me get rid of knee pain
21: Won my first international dunk contest
22: Tested a 48 inch vertical and started coaching full time
24: Tested a world record 50.5 inch vertical
The reason I make so much free content about jumping higher now is because it’s a resource I wish I would’ve had when I was in high school that would’ve prevented a lot of unnecessary mistakes and injuries.
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0:00
What exactly does it take to get a 50 plus inch vertical
0:04
For a long time, a 50 inch vertical was thought to be impossible to achieve
0:10
There's a really popular video on YouTube. You can literally type, is a 50 inch vertical possible
0:15
And they break down the physics on why they don't think it's possible for humans
0:20
Now, having said that, I myself have reached a 50 inch vertical
0:25
Darius Clark has. And then I believe there's been a few other athletes that have hit that mark
0:31
Potentially, they just never verified it, right? They never tested. Guys like Anthony Height
0:37
Anthony Height is probably the highest I've ever seen a person jump
0:41
So it's a very, very rare feat of athleticism, one of the rarest
0:47
And I'm going to be explaining what traits I think are needed to achieve a 15-inch vertical
0:53
specifically to train up to it, both physically and mentally. And even though I'm talking about achieving a 50-inch vertical
1:00
I think the lessons you can learn from this video, you can apply it to your vertical jump training journey
1:06
whether you have a 24-inch vertical or a mid-30s inch vert or even a vertical in the 40s
1:12
These are things that are going to help you reach your athletic potential. That's the biggest thing I am concerned with
1:18
is how to reach your athletic potential when it comes to vertical jump
1:22
I don't I'm going to be completely honest. I don't care about sports or anything like that
1:28
My thing is maximizing vertical jump. And that's why I love training dunkers, because that's basically their sole goal is to jump higher
1:36
Having said that, let's get into the video. All right. The first thing that I'm going to talk about is obviously genetics
1:44
Genetics is going to predetermine your athletic ceiling, basically. So you got to think of and then the only thing that training does is it allows you to get as close to that ceiling as possible
1:55
Now, the role of genetics varies wildly from person to person. An athlete could have genetics that predisposes them to jumping higher, but they might not be a high responder to training
2:07
I'm going to use myself as an example for this. I had above average genetics when it comes to jumping where I feel like I'm genetically gifted
2:14
so where I have a higher genetic predisposition than most people is my response to a weight room
2:20
stimulus. I can literally breathe the air in a weight room and I'll probably get stronger and
2:25
improve and it transfers really well to my vertical jump. Now genetics affects literally everything
2:30
from limb length to your tendon stiffness to the percentage of your muscles that are type 2b fast
2:38
switch muscle fibers how your nervous system is wired how it wires to your muscles your injury resilience which is a huge genetic factor that I don think is talked about enough because if an athlete is more resilient to injuries they able to jump more so they can jump higher at the end of the day
2:55
Those are all genetic factors that is going to help an athlete jump higher. Who do I think a 50-inch vertical is possible for
3:01
I think if you have above average jumping genetics and then you train for 10 plus years, a 50-inch vertical is possible
3:12
The more genetically predisposed to jumping higher and your response to training volume is, the better that is, the higher the chances are that you're going to hit a 50 inch vertical
3:21
But for the most part, if you have above average genetics for jumping, then you might be able to reach 50 inch vertical and you for sure can get into the high 40s
3:30
How do you know if you have above average genetics? If an athlete is anywhere from like 5'8 to 6 foot, they haven't fully gone through puberty and they're able to dunk on 10 feet, I consider that above average genetics for jumping
3:44
And I would actually say that's well above average. And I feel like it's for that subset of athletes that a 50 plus inch vertical is possible
3:53
Now, if you're not there yet, I think mid 40s to high 40s is definitely doable
3:59
if you're not at that point that I described, but you're close to it. And then an athlete with average or even slightly below average genetics for jumping
4:08
I actually think a 40-inch vertical is possible as well. Now, having said all that, you can't control your genetics
4:15
So you shouldn't worry about it. You should not spend any time thinking about your personal genetics and where you're at
4:22
At the end of the day, and this is going to go into my second point, if you enjoy it, just do it and don't worry about the uncontrollables
4:29
That's a very popular thing in stoicism is ask yourself, is it under my control
4:35
And if it's not, then don't spend even a second worrying or thinking about it
4:39
However, it is really interesting to look at. Genetics is a very fascinating topic, and it's interesting to look at in terms of just other athletes
4:48
When you look at freak athletes, it's cool to look at their body types and their genetic predispositions and see what it was that predisposed them to be elite at their given display of output that they chose
5:03
Now, the second thing that is very, very important if you want to achieve a 50 inch vertical is subjecting your body to a wide variety of sports and movements from a young age
5:15
Now, this is a form of periodization, and it's specifically it's called long term athletic development
5:21
You can look up LTAD for short, and you can actually look up LTAD research on Google Scholar
5:27
Just type it in and you can read all about it. But the athletes that jump the highest run the fastest basically just subjected their body to a huge variety of sports and movements I use myself as an example I grew up outside you know playing tag hide and seek all that stuff
5:45
jumping on playgrounds, jumping off of stuff. I played baseball, basketball, football
5:50
I wrestled, played volleyball a little bit, messed around with track and field
5:54
I even did parkour. I just loved to move. That's actually what this tattoo stands for right here
5:59
It stands for movement. It's an Aztec symbol that stands for movement. I just love to move and to be an athlete. This gave me a really solid foundation to be athletic later on, pick up motor skills, be more coordinated as an athlete
6:14
I learned how to learn in terms of physical movements. And I think it's so underrated, the role of just playing a ton of sports and being a kid, the role that that plays and how you can jump later on
6:28
The third thing, and this becomes more and more important, I think the less genetically gifted you are
6:34
But when you combine this point with being genetically gifted, the results can be insane
6:40
And that's just intelligence and specifically a drive to learn a natural curiosity, the desire to want to know why being able to ask why to everything
6:51
When you when you undergo the exact same circumstance again, can you do something different
6:57
Can you use that information to do a different action? That's what learning is
7:02
I've always been a student of jump training. Always. I always loved learning about it, and it just stemmed from the question, why
7:10
Every time I would see something on the internet about jump training, any kind of piece of information, I would ask why
7:17
And then where did the information come from? And literally just following that trail, why, and where did the information come from, you can learn so much
7:27
And the more you know, the better your decision making is going to be when obstacles inevitably pop up
7:34
I also think it's the reason I was able to get a 50.5 inch vertical because I literally was I just loved to learn
7:42
And if you combine that desire to learn and willingness to learn and willingness to apply that information with a good coach, the results are insane
7:52
So intelligence, curiosity, huge part of reaching, I think, the limit in any sport, your athletic potential
8:01
When I say reach your athletic potential, I mean it. You can come up with tons of examples of athletes that jump high or run fast that don't have the traits that I describe
8:14
but they haven't reached their potential, their genetic limit. They're not even close to it
8:19
And each of these factors that I talk about every time you take one of those out that is it decreases the likelihood of reaching that genetic potential All right The last three points are passion discipline and mental resilience
8:33
And the reason I bring them all up at the same time is because I think they're all interwoven with each other
8:39
I read this book called Good to Great, and it talks about companies that went from being just average companies to being excellent companies and sustaining that level of performance for 15 plus years
8:52
And something that they mentioned that was very important was two things
8:57
Having the potential to be the best in the world at something. And number two, being passionate about that thing
9:05
And when you combine those two, success is basically inevitable. With the first point, having the potential to be the best in the world at something, that's where the genetics and your upbringing comes in
9:14
But the passion is what allows you to enjoy what you do and stick to it for a long enough time that you achieve insane results
9:24
And to me, passion literally just means how much do you like doing the thing
9:29
Discipline is being able to stick to something. That's how I define it
9:33
Just being able to stick to something no matter what. Discipline is the older, more refined brother of motivation
9:40
Motivation is temporary. Discipline sticks. It's a lot stickier. And the way you build discipline is really easy
9:46
You just build a habit. Habit formation is how you build discipline
9:50
So now if you combine discipline with passion, you're basically set. And the last thing is mental resilience
9:58
And the reason I put mental resilience in is because it is inevitable that you're going to run into obstacles in your jump training journey
10:06
And really anything in life, but that's why I love jump training. It's because it's like an ogy to life
10:11
If you can improve your vertical jump and deal with the obstacles, it transfers so well to other things in life
10:19
But inevitably, injuries are going to come into play. You're going to have periods of time where you're jumping low
10:24
And if you have the mental resilience to be able to keep going and not be affected mentally by those things, then, again, success is basically guaranteed
10:35
So those are my six factors that I think are needed to achieve a 50.5 inch vertical
10:41
But most importantly, that's not going to be possible for ninety nine point nine nine percent of the human population
10:47
But if you take those six lessons and apply it into your personal training, you can reach your own genetic limit, whatever that is
10:55
And the only way to find out what it is, is to train. And if you want me to train you to try to hit that genetic potential, go to THP strength dot com
11:04
Use the code THP for 10 percent off your first month. And let's get you started on that on that vertical jump training journey
11:09
Aside from that, everybody like the video helps the channel tremendously and I'll catch you guys in the next video. Peace out
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