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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
I went from barely able to dunk a basketball when I was 16 to later breaking the approach
0:05
vertical jump with a 50.5 inch leap. And today I'm going to break down exactly what my week and
0:13
month of training looks like. To understand why I do what I do, you have to understand what the
0:18
whole point of training even is. First, you have to start with a goal. My goal is to jump higher
0:23
For example, let's say you can currently jump 30 inches. And let's say your goal is to jump
0:28
40 inches. At your current state, your body physiologically can't produce that much force
0:35
that quickly to achieve a 40 inch jump. So we train to induce changes in your body that will
0:41
allow you to do that. This could be making your tendon stiffer. It could mean getting your muscles
0:45
bigger and stronger. It could mean teaching your nervous system to fire more quickly or all of the
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above. These changes are called adaptations and we want our training to induce the right adaptations
0:58
that will cause you to jump higher. And I generally try to follow four laws of adaptation
1:04
that if you follow these four laws, those changes in your body will happen. The first one is the law of progressive overload
1:09
Simply stated, in order to cause changes in your body, you need to subject your body
1:14
to harsher and harsher environments in the way of training. The training literally needs to get harder
1:19
month after month, year after year. The second law of adaptation is the law of accommodation
1:24
To understand this law, let me explain to you some biology. You are an organism
1:28
The stuff around the organism is the environment and the objective of the organism is to survive its environment
1:35
If you subject that organism to a new environment, let's say it's hotter, there's going to be changes that happen in your body that are going to cause you to handle that hot environment
1:45
However, if the environment stays the same, those changes will stop occurring
1:49
There is no point for your body to change physiologically if it doesn't need to because those changes take energy
1:56
Valuable energy that could be spent trying to keep you alive instead the way we combat
2:02
Adaptation is variety. So the training needs to look different week to week month to month year to year
2:08
Third law is the law of specificity The more similar your training looks like to the thing that you're trying to improve the more it's going to transfer
2:15
It can be similar in terms of the joint angles that you hit, how quick the exercise is, how much force is generated in the exercise and how hard you are trying
2:26
And then the final law of adaptation is the law of individuality. Basically, everybody is different. Everybody is going to adapt differently to different stimuli
2:36
So what I'm going to explain has worked really well for me. However, it might work differently for you
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And shameless plug here, I do offer training at THB strength.com. And when you sign up, you fill out this form right here
2:49
You give us a ton of information about you. And we use that information to give you a training cycle that we feel is going to most improve your vertical jump
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We literally have hundreds of training cycles that we have perfected over 10 plus years of training thousands of athletes
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So again go to THB strength and there is currently a discount on the website So go check it out and take advantage of it today So now we know that we need to cause some adaptations baby
3:16
And in order to do that, you need periodized training. Periodization is a fancy word
3:20
That just means we want you to peak your vertical at a specific time of the year
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And I use a fancy type of periodization called long conjugate sequence systems
3:30
Long meaning my training cycles last a few weeks. conjugate meaning I focus on a bunch of different qualities at the same time such as max strength
3:39
the task that I'm trying to improve which is max approach jumping plyos power exercises general
3:45
strength work and I focus on all these at the exact same time with extra emphasis on one or two of
3:50
those qualities and finally sequence means that I focus on a different quality with each passing
3:57
month so now that you have a good base of understanding for training adaptations here
4:03
is my weekly routine i have two high intensity days this is on monday and wednesday i start every
4:08
high intensity day with three to five sets of knee extension isometrics i hold each isometric for 30
4:15
to 45 seconds each isometric is done at around 70 effort this level of effort for this amount of
4:22
time allows uncrimping of your tendon fibers basically gets them from linked together to
4:29
unlinked together and this allows you to load that middle part of the tendon and this load
4:35
stimulates the tenocytes to produce more collagen if you don't know what any of that means you can
4:39
go google each word but basically it allows your tendon to get healthier it warms the tendon up for
4:44
the activities that you're also going to do later that day then i do dynamic flexibility which is
4:50
basically things like leg swings, body weight squats. The whole point of that is to raise my
4:55
body temperature and increase the range of motion without decreasing force output during my workout
5:00
Then I do a barbell warmup. And the whole point of this warmup is to go from general to specific
5:05
The ICUs were super general. The dynamic flexibility was a little more specific. Now we're doing hang cleans, power cleans, squats, and RDLs with an empty barbell
5:14
which is basically as specific as you can get for the lift without actually lifting hard
5:19
At this point, I'm super warmed up and I'm going to start my explosive lift of the day
5:24
This could be a power exercise like an Olympic lift, such as a snatch or a power clean, or
5:29
it can be a loaded plyo like a hex bar jump, a barbell squat jump, medicine ball jumps
5:34
or it could be a legitimate unloaded plyometric like a depth jump, bounding, and double leg hopping
5:39
From there, I move into my main knee extension lift of the day. I like to alternate between half back squats, full range of motion, front squats, full range of motion, belt squats or a single leg lift like a high box step up or a barbell lunge
5:56
From there, I go into my accessory work. Usually I hit the hips next with something like a hip thrust or posterior chain exercise like a Nordic hamstring curl, regular machine hamstring curls, RDLs, banded hip abduction, cable abduction
6:12
And then finally, we hit the lower leg with a calf exercise
6:15
My favorite are seated calf raise or standing calf raises with either a Smith machine an actual standing calf raise machine or one of these bad boys a safety bar then on tuesday or thursday i do a
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general day the purpose of a general day is to increase work capacity it serves as active recovery
6:34
your body composition basically you get less fat because you're doing more work and improves your
6:38
hormone profile basically you release more testosterone which you benefit from in the high
6:43
intensity days. And those days are pretty simple. I start the day with a shoulder rehab circuit
6:49
If you sign up for THPStrength.com, I actually have a document that breaks down a shoulder rehab
6:55
month of training, but it's things like internal rotation isometric to the straight bar, external
7:00
rotation isometric to the straight bar, banded internal and external rotation, shoulder flexibility
7:06
things, and things of that nature. Then I do a pushing lift, then a pulling lift, and a shoulder
7:11
exercise. Next comes the fun day and that is Saturday and that is my jump day. Again I do
7:17
isometrics as a warm-up, my dynamic flexibility circuits, then I actually add sprint development
7:22
drills which are things like high knees, butt kicks, A skips, B skips and then I start low
7:26
effort jumps. I work my way from 10% effort all the way up to 100% effort. How quickly I do this
7:32
depends on how healthy I feel. The more banged up I feel the slower I'm going to warm up my jumps
7:37
and the healthier I feel, the more quickly I'm going to progress
7:40
from 10 to 100% effort. And then I do a bunch of 100% full approach jumps
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This can be as short as 30 minutes and it can be as long as three hours
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I recommend stopping as soon as you see a pretty big decrease in the quality of your jumps
7:56
Then on Saturday is what I call a feel-good lift day. I go in, I do my ISOs
8:02
I don't do an explosive lift that day and instead I do heavy, slow resistance training
8:06
My favorite way of doing this is with this bad boy. I warm up to about 70% of my max and I do two to three sets of six to eight reps going very slow on squats
8:16
So three to five seconds on the descent and then three to five seconds on the way up
8:20
Then I finish with two sets of 10 of a posterior chain lift and two sets of 10 of a lower leg lift
8:26
And I keep it very light. The whole point is to get some blood flow in your legs and help with recovery and make your tendons feel really good
8:33
Sunday I take completely off except I do three to five sets of knee extension isometrics again
8:39
30 to 45 seconds each at 70% effort and I do this three times for a total of 10 to 15 sets
8:45
during the whole day and I do each grouping of isos six hours apart so that's what my week looks
8:50
like but you're probably wondering what about exercises what about sets and reps how do I
8:55
progress them let me explain to understand what sets and reps to do you have to understand two
8:59
terms and they are intensity and volume. I'm going to give you a very basic way of looking at it
9:04
Look at intensity as how heavy you're going on a lift and think of volume as sets times reps
9:09
Or the course of a training month, they should be inverted, meaning you should never have both
9:14
high intensity or high volume or you're going to get hurt. What you want to do is in the beginning
9:18
of the month, you should have high volume. Then the volume should decrease over the training month
9:23
and the intensity should go up. Here a very basic set and rep scheme with inverse intensity of volume that you can use I want you to follow this set and rep scheme for every single exercise For the month of training that we going to do let choose the power clean as our power exercise Let choose the back squat as our
9:42
knee extension exercise, the hip thrust as our posterior chain exercise, and a standing calf
9:47
raise as your lower leg exercise. And you're going to start by doing five sets of six reps
9:53
for every single exercise in week one. As far as your upper body days
9:58
choose bench press, weighted pull-ups, and lateral shoulder raises as your exercises
10:04
And again, start with five sets of six reps in week one. Your last two sets should be done at 75% of your max
10:11
If you don't know what your max is, I want you to just guess. Or go to a one rep max calculator website
10:17
Here are a few options that you can use. And type in how many reps you could do
10:22
at a given weight for each exercise. and it'll give you an estimate of what your one rep max is
10:26
So again, for every exercise, do five sets of six. The last two sets should be done at 75% of your max
10:31
The first four sets just build up to that 75%. So you might start at 40%, then 50, then 60
10:39
then 70, and then 75% on your fifth set. Now, what I want you to do is each week
10:44
I want you to add a set, take away a rep. This is gonna decrease the total volume
10:52
but now you're going to go heavier. So in week two, I want you to do seven sets of five reps
10:59
with the last two sets being at 80% of your max. And then same thing in week three
11:04
you're going to add a set, take away reps. You're going to do seven sets of four reps with your last
11:09
two sets at 85%. So now we have successfully increased the intensity week to week to week
11:16
and decreased the volume week to week to week. At this point, your vertical is going to go down
11:21
you're going to be feeling horrible. This is because your fatigue is going to be building
11:26
When fatigue builds, your performance drops. However, that doesn't mean you're getting worse
11:32
You're actually getting better. You're becoming a more fit athlete. Your fitness is increasing
11:37
but fatigue is masking that fitness. This is shown in the fitness fatigue model
11:42
which looks like this. As you can see here, as you train, your fitness goes up. You're becoming
11:46
physiologically a better organism that is better suited to its environment, which for us
11:51
is training with the adaptation being jumping higher. However, you can see that performance is going down
11:56
and that's because fatigue is building. So how do we take away the fatigue and keep fitness high
12:00
which will create a higher performance? It's by something called a D-Lil. In week four, what we're gonna do
12:05
is we're gonna cut the sets and reps in half while keeping intensity high. Keeping intensity high is gonna maintain your fitness levels
12:12
and keeping the volume low is gonna dissipate the fatigue, which is going to lead to an all-time PR jump
12:19
on the last day. Also, in that fourth week, I want you to completely skip your general days
12:25
Skip the upper body days on Tuesday and Thursday. If you follow this and you stay consistent and you don't miss a single workout
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and if your training age is low, meaning you've been training for less than a couple of years
12:36
you will jump higher by doing this. You're welcome. Like the video if you found this useful
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