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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
John, I heard that hex bar jumps are better than power cleans
0:05
Who is out there purveying this false information to the masses as if it were true
0:13
Who told you that? Where did you hear that? All the strength coaches. All the strength coaches said that
0:18
All of them? Everyone was saying that. Especially the ones. Where's their data
0:24
Show me the facts. Show me the truth. I don't have to show you the truth
0:30
it's so hard. Power cleans are so hard to learn. And that's your whole rationale
0:36
Yeah. They're so hard to learn. They're too hard to learn. Yeah. I'm going to pull up a video right now of me teaching someone to power clean
0:44
245 the first day they did it. Okay. Let's watch it. All right
0:49
All right. We're back. We had to find the video. So here's a video
0:53
We did time skip like hit. And here's a video of Shane McFarlane
0:58
Shout out Shane McFarlane. was 242, literally one of the first days he ever power cleaned. And I got him to do 242 that day
1:08
Mind you, this guy was pretty strong, pretty fast, and had very limited experience with this lift
1:14
And he was able to get, look, knees back, shins vertical. We got a double knee bend
1:21
right? Full extension, drops underneath, perfect catch position. Look at that. 242 one day that took one one day he ended up at memphis what you're saying is if you're saying
1:38
it's too hard to teach you're just a bad teacher yeah probably like we we coach a lot of athletes
1:46
online and don't get me wrong i get a lot of questions about it but it doesn't mean that you
1:52
shouldn't work on it and i've seen people say to me literally there's no way i could ever possibly
1:57
do this and then a year later like they have horrible shoulder mobility and a year
2:00
later they're doing it perfectly fine i have a story go ahead go jimmy hong jimmy jimmy uh wong
2:06
jimmy wong what the heck is i think it's jimmy jimmy ho i'm sorry that we have a jimmy hong but
2:14
jimmy ho literally this was him he was like yeah i can't do this i suck blah blah blah blah blah
2:19
i don't have the shoulder mobility and now he's like repping 245 power plane and i'm like yes you can you just get more mobile be patient you will be able to do this
2:28
and especially if you're a vertical jumps coach where you have some for four years like that's
2:32
not a good excuse also coach wake forest university strength coach don't know who he's with now but
2:38
he was with ryan something or another anyways he teaches olies to all of his football guys and all
2:45
of them are incredibly proficient and very strong and very athletic as a result and now he's
2:49
one of the best strength coaches in the country. Rant over. My story, it's dunk camp
2:55
this last summer. We had a station. We didn't have this station before
3:00
We had a station where I was teaching guys how to power clean with just the bar
3:05
And there was a trend. It was like a one-to-one direct correlation
3:10
The guys who had the best technique were also the guys who jumped the highest, who were
3:16
also the guys who were on THP. would you if you're at if you're a thp athlete and you're on for at least like a year
3:24
you probably have nasty power clean technique and you probably jump pretty freaking high
3:29
let's actually talk about do you have the video of austin yesterday or maybe it's on my computer
3:36
i think i think i actually have the footage of it but i can you want to time skip again
3:40
let's time skip yeah so we're back we time skipped again and i found austin
3:45
catching a clean. And we're going to go over why this lift is infinitely better than a hex bar jump
3:51
Okay. And mind you, Austin has dog shit mobility, but we're not going to talk about his back. Big
3:57
thing you need to understand is if your back maintains the same position, it's not angulating
4:00
It's not the worst thing in the world. And Austin's really strong in this position. So as a result
4:05
we're okay with him pulling from the floor. I do have these pads, which I tell him he can pull from
4:09
but he doesn't like to. But anyways, so we're going to look at this, right? So we got the knees
4:13
push back we've got a great long hamstring here but we're gonna go to the pole look at that
4:18
power bro look at his face i never see people trying on hex bar jumps that hard when you hex
4:26
bar jump are you ever in this position ever look at his calves bro look at his calves look at this
4:34
jabroni all right anyways so i'm gonna grab my mic now look at this we got full extension to full
4:42
flexion has to be fast incredibly fast which he does incredibly well And then look look watch this The bar is in free fall here He is turning it over to catch it It on the way down You can see that the
4:54
bar is on the way down. Now he gets the elbows around and he has kind of shitty mobility
5:00
still able to get in a good position while holding onto the bar. Mind you, this is someone that benches a lot of weight and does a lot of upper body training. Now watch the bar flex
5:08
look at that look at it hit him you will not have this happen with a hex bar jump it's not
5:15
going to happen it's not even close look at this eccentric strength through the freaking roof if
5:23
you were not he's actively pushing like he's actively pushing he's trying to break the bar
5:28
look watch it hit his shoulders watch look watch his hair see his hair jump like that that's from
5:35
the bar hitting him that's how hard and with how much force it's hitting him look doom look it is
5:42
hammering his shoulders right on the ac joint in a very strong position we've got an incredibly
5:47
specific knee joint angle so he is breaking or is hitting him in the most specific position
5:54
possible look at this that's a freaking two-foot jump and if it's not a two-foot jump you're gonna
5:59
get crazy neurological crazy neural drive both rate coding specifically you're going to get crazy
6:06
high eccentric rate of force development here look at this boom look at his hair that's because the
6:11
bar is burying him and it is so much momentum downward at such a high load he is not strong
6:17
enough to stop it and he has to he has to let let go of the bar right so austin has been doing
6:24
cleans for how long would you say five years maybe five years or so and he still has a dog
6:31
mobility but yet he is perfectly fine doing this exercise with his dog shit mobility
6:35
he can do this more effectively than he can do all right we're good i'm go baby we are in the
6:43
abyss he can do that exercise more effectively than he can quarter squat and full squat do you
6:49
agree with that yeah i would say that is the probably the single most driver of him if you've
6:55
been watching austin over the last couple weeks what have you noticed isaiah i mean the comments
7:00
my channel has definitely noticed every video i've posted i i'm one comment specifically is austin
7:06
the work is not going unnoticed exactly over the last two months he has jumped higher off two feet
7:13
and off one foot probably the highest he's jumped off either planet in two years and what has
7:19
happened to his power clean and he hasn't been squatting heavy he hasn't he hasn't been doing
7:25
basically anything else heavy he's literally been mainly cleaning pause cleans heavy clean pulls off
7:31
the floor regular cleans and cleans and pushing hard like just pushing the intent yeah yeah he
7:38
there's no strength work in his program right now it's just cleans and what has happened to
7:43
his vertical both one and two foot as a result going crazy and was it what's happened to his clean
7:47
gone up he has gone from when we started mind you he was doing jumping
7:54
i don't even know if he was at two he was probably at 240 he was doing just jumping exclusively so
8:01
the argument of you can just do strength work and do jumping that's basically what he's doing he was doing feel-good lifting and jumping that's it before yeah and he wasn't jumping higher his
8:10
hips felt like shit and now and his clean was he couldn't even do like 225 like barely i don't
8:17
even think so we hit two cycles and the cycles are largely he's really not pushing on anything
8:22
except cleans i would say right maybe some calf work and posterior chain work when it's in there
8:27
but not like too crazy and doing a little bit upper body training and his vertical has skyrocketed
8:34
The only thing that changed is he started pushing on only his knee extension work is still basically just feel good lifting
8:42
And his vertical has feel good lifting. We mean 20 total reps going slow at around 50 to 70 percent of his max
8:53
Yep. So I think that alone is like fairly good proof for it being an effective stimulus
8:59
And this is someone that's been training for years. So we know that he's a very, it's a controlled ecosystem
9:05
He's changed one variable. All the other variables were the same. We had him doing just strength and just jumping
9:11
And then we switched to basically just oldies and jumping, maybe some other accessory work
9:16
as well to keep him healthy. But that's the only loading he's really seeing. And we're seeing a great, great response
9:21
And Isaiah, same way. Isaiah, you are always doing strength work all the time
9:26
And you're clean. We hit a ton of volume. We did a ton of pauses
9:30
We did a lot of you know obviously high intense catches on that eccentric loading that we talking about And it been incredibly effective for you Your basement has gone up considerably Week three what was your flight time
9:42
Week three of loading. On a one-hander, 0.975. Yeah, and on a high check, 0.94 or something
9:50
which is like your all-time best is 0.97 something, 0.98 something on a high check
9:54
And on that high check, we're still in the 0.94s, three weeks of intense
9:58
And that wasn't even my – like that wasn't a good jump
10:01
on the day I probably could have hit 9.5 or 9.6 on week 3 of loading
10:07
while sick and I'm sick as well not anymore yeah we had an argument
10:12
he's like I'm getting better and I'm like no you're not like you need to answer that
10:16
I'm hitting some of my highest flight times ever and my literally my highest
10:23
power clean numbers ever and it was because of always I haven't done a single hex bar jump
10:28
yep I measured the wattages on some of these lifts as well. And the lower body intent that you were able to get from these
10:38
poles and the output you're able to get from these poles. Like I feel so bouncy after doing them
10:45
You can ask Isaiah, I did a clean pole the other day and I was just bouncing up and down
10:49
after doing the clean pole. And it was like, wow, there's potentiate the ever living shit out of me
10:54
So I think, I mean, you know, there's this, this debate has gone on and on. Will Rattel also did
10:58
a video about this on the catch. Dan and I had a very long conversation about it, which you guys
11:03
are welcome to listen to as well, but I'm still heavily in favor of the lift. I think it improves
11:07
coordination a ton. Fabian Delrid has been doing them a lot in our training as well. That's all
11:13
this is probably another guy bring up a lot because it's pretty novel and new training him
11:17
And he's a super advanced athlete and he consistently jumps the highest when he is
11:22
cleaning a lot and cleaning heavy and his vertical and his high jumps go up when his clean is going
11:27
up and it's not solely the the result of just strength work or just jumping because when he's
11:34
just doing strength work it's not he doesn't see the same response right like when his clean is
11:40
going up and getting more intense that's whenever you know he could gain a ton of muscle like we're
11:44
talking just you know sets of five really heavy gain a ton of muscle 10 to 15 pounds and you know
11:50
you'd assume his cross-sectional area went up largely due to the strength work your olies were
11:55
not that intense or that intentful, not going to jump high. But when his oldies go up, specifically
12:01
his hang power clean, and he's improving that aspect and maintaining everything else, he's
12:06
jumping better and higher. And so I think it just follows the age old advice and volume has to go
12:11
down. Intensity has to go up. Specificity has to go up. And I think oldies are a great way to follow
12:17
all of all of those variables. I mean, technically you could just jump and that would be the most
12:23
intense exercise that you do right that has the highest power output that has the highest impulse
12:27
or whatever but i don't think there's an overload there and yeah you can do it weighted and maybe
12:32
there's other implications there but in my opinion i think there's a place for x bar jumps and things
12:37
like that don't get me wrong but if you're just catching on it it's just not the same it's truly
12:41
just not the same i've never seen someone jump with a hex bar jump and fail on the catch landing
12:46
but i just witnessed the only way to do it i just missed i just witnessed austin eccentrically
12:52
incapable of stopping the bar the only way to do that on a hex bar jump would be like
12:56
get 225 and then step off like a 50 inch box a 50 inch box is crazy i don't even know you
13:05
wouldn't be able to the thing that's cool you're gonna land in a quarter squat you're not gonna
13:08
land in the same position like when the bar hits his shoulders he's inflection he's leveragely
13:13
compromised no what was cool about power cleans you can bail safely like you can have you can fail
13:19
on it eccentrically and still you won't get hurt. You still get a great stimulus from it
13:25
I've tweaked my... Unless you're me and you're a and you're not even getting..
13:32
I was getting scared. It was like, eh, 335 on a catch. I'm not doing that
13:39
I'm scared of the eccentric forces. I was like, soft. You're soft. You could have done 335
13:45
I honestly think I can. You're like, it feels so heavy. and i'm like the first time you did 300 do you know what you said to me bro that feels so heavy
13:54
yeah now the the the downside to cleans specifically when you're maxing a clean out is
14:02
you can catch them high you can catch them high you can catch them high and then it gets to a
14:06
certain weight where all of a sudden you're doing 300 at a half squat when you haven't even half
14:11
squatted anything you haven't even that is the downside which usually i'll just tell guys hey
14:16
drop the power output on the pool, catch a little deeper and do some pulses or whatever at that
14:20
Or I just tell guys to build up slowly Like the problem with you is you jump 50 pounds per jump you go 135 225 275 which most people can make that i forgot 185 with some respect on my name put some respect oh
14:34
sorry my bad you'll go 135 185 225 275 and then you'll jump right to 315 and or you did 300
14:42
yesterday i think when you when you you have one no no i went straight to 315 i went straight to 215
14:48
No, you didn't. You did 300. You did? Straight to 215. You had no..
14:53
When you put it that way, I also do 95. And look at how you caught 315
14:59
Yeah. As you get more powerful, you don't need to drop, and you're just like, this
15:04
I'm not going to drop. No, when you put it that way... I also do multiple reps, though, at the lower weights
15:09
And you don't. Yeah, and you pull it and catch straight up and down. What is it? 5'4
15:14
That's 9. 3 is 12 reps. to 14. It's like 15 reps
15:18
with no meaningfully centric forces on the catch. Yeah. Because you catch straight
15:22
up and down. Like in the best position possible. No, when you put it that way, it's like, how many
15:26
jumps during jump day, how many jumps does it take for me to get to max effort
15:32
Yeah. Probably similar. Probably around It depends. 20 to 30. Probably 20 to 30 jumps around
15:40
there before I'm trying really hard. On a clean, I did. I got
15:44
to max effort within you know the first first those 15 reps don't even really count i'm not
15:53
it's like the same forces essentially yeah do you know what dan would always say
15:57
about cleans because people like why do you need them and he'd be like what are you going to do
16:02
you're going to add 15 block 15 more block starts into your day and he's like it's a way you can
16:07
add non-specific volume that still addresses power output and i was like great point can't
16:13
really disagree with that. Um, you know, and, and I guess, yeah, you could hex bar jump and
16:18
there's still benefits to doing that exercise. I think the clean is probably a little bit more
16:23
posterior chain dominant. Everyone's going to pick a different strategy that naturally works
16:26
for them on a fast counter movement. Like if you look at high jumpers, they do it all the time
16:30
You'll have some guys that hinge. You'll have some guys that kind of hold the bar against their thigh
16:35
And then they literally like bend the elbow a little bit and they get a stretch shortening
16:39
cycle out of their elbow. It's kind of unique. Some guys will do that. Some guys will kind of
16:44
like get it in the trap where they'll like kind of shrug into it and drop and they'll get like an
16:48
upper body stimulus that way from it. But either way, I think that it's kind of good because you're
16:53
going to default to your natural strengths, which obviously happened because that's how you're built
16:58
And obviously you're going to use those strengths when you actually go jump off one foot. So I think
17:02
that's kind of a benefit to it. Whereas the hex bar jump, the benefit is that you can manipulate
17:06
things a little bit more easily because the bar is not in the way. So like if I do an RDL to a jump
17:11
that's similar to a clean. Now, if I do like a squat jump with it, okay, that's going to be more
17:15
like a barbell squat jump or, you know, I mean, here's the other thing too, is like, I don't even
17:19
like the hex bar jump as much as I like a barbell squat jump. And people are like, oh, it's easier
17:23
on your spine. And I'm like, your shoulders are still connected to like your shoulder girdle, which is connected to guess what your spine. Um, so it's still going to load, but the mass is maybe
17:32
more centrally located relative to the axis. So there's not like much of a moment arm, which is
17:38
good. It means it won't hurt your back as much, but I still really like like squat jumps. And I
17:42
think that you get that concentric or eccentric to concentric yielding and breaking, which is really
17:48
good. It's easy to change the depth. You know, I just, I kind of like it more. I don't really use
17:54
hex bar jumps that often. And you know what? The people that do use hex bar jumps often
17:58
they don't jump that high to me like i can't think of one person that exclusively does hex
18:02
bar jumps and not always that jumps that high i really can't and i'm not trying to be an asshole
18:07
i just really by the way because people are going to bring up people what i consider high 46 and
18:13
above i would say like okay i'm saying like truly i'm talking freakishly high i'm saying 48
18:20
to 51 yeah where that's their only driving thing yeah so please don't bring up an nba player that
18:26
has a 44 inch vertical 45 like there was a kid there was a comment yesterday was like this kid
18:30
said he never touched a weight and he jumps 44 inches and i'm like that's good but like for us
18:34
that's not even you're not touching dom with that like that's a bad day for dom yeah that's a horrible
18:39
day for you and a horrible day for tony and a horrible day for donovan like those would be
18:43
genuinely really walk up that's walk up bounce that's disgusting for you guys good for you
18:50
all right that's a good place to stop we've we've vented about our qualms with
18:56
this this argument that it goes on and on and if you want to lift heavy ass weight and you're not
19:03
when it comes to training go to thp strength.com and sign up yeah we'll see you guys tomorrow
19:08
thanks for watching see you guys and recording
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