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If you want me to coach you personally to jump higher click here:
If you want a FREE week of jump training click here:
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
Isaiah and I want to talk about something very serious. We'll call it, I don't know if I would say a parasite or a disease in the jump training space, but it's bad. It's really bad. And there's a lot of evidence in support of it. A lot of people that like it, but we think it's a parasite and it's leaching away our joint health. And that is isometrics
0:22
It is the not only probably the most detrimental thing for our cartilage we found to be the case, despite joint contact area, but also just our mental health
0:36
It is probably and we're not talking about isometrics in the sense of 70 percent of NBC for 45 seconds or more
0:47
we're talking max 100 the full load yeah a full measure if you will as they say in breaking bad
0:57
not a half measure a full measure of of effort intensity neurological
1:04
what do you want to call it like stimulus stimuli and that is the max effort isometrics at your most
1:15
powerful position, which is basically 50% of the length tension relationship, i.e. where you have
1:20
the most cross bridging. And it is, it's rough. So reason being, I did them yesterday for the
1:27
first time and I've had Isaiah do them in the past. And usually I bleed them in in the form of
1:32
waves. Logic behind it, you get great tenant adaptation because you're meeting the strain
1:37
requirements and the stress requirements for adaptation. You're getting long hold, a very high
1:43
force, which means you're going to stimulate the collagen to synthesize more collagen or the
1:50
sorry, the tenocytes to synthesize more collagen, which is great. That's what we want. We want to
1:54
stiffen the tendon. Awesome. However, we talked about this yesterday, but there is a cost benefit
2:00
ysis to most of the things that you do. So whether that's a super maximally eccentric
2:06
whether it is a super maximal, we'll call it a maximal isometric, there is a cost benefit
2:12
ysis. So the benefit of doing this exercise is that you get really high type two fiber
2:18
recruitment. You get great motor recruitment, meaning you just recruit more muscles during it
2:24
as many as you basically can, which is awesome. That's what we want to do when we jump high
2:28
You get the tendon distress and strain and get great tendon adaptation really, really quickly
2:33
And you can strengthen the specific position that you want to jump higher, which is amortization. So in Isaiah's case, this would be like 90 at the knee joint
2:40
roughly 90 degrees of flexion. Um, so it can be a great tool for improving performance or
2:47
and there's limited to minimal fatigue related to damage to the actual muscle fibers. Now
2:53
there's some newer stuff about like calcium ion related fatigue, but traditionally we would think
2:58
of eccentric work causing the most amount of damage. Are you talking about, about, uh
3:03
what is it? Contracting. Yeah. Contracting. Accentation. Coupling. Fatigue. Failure. Yes. and soreness and some other stuff
3:11
I mean, it was traditionally thought that if you did a lot of eccentrics, you would rip the myosin heads off
3:16
and that that would essentially cause damage. And then if you did isometrics
3:20
that wouldn't because you're just attaching, detaching and retaching, reattaching the myosin heads
3:27
and there's no movement. So you're probably not causing damage to the actual myofibrils
3:31
Now there's some stuff related to like calcium ion related fatigue. And that probably does happen a good
3:37
or a great deal during isometric activity. Maybe not as much as eccentrics
3:42
because there's not as much force. But nonetheless, it can still cause less fatigue
3:48
than maybe like a stretch ordening cycle or something of that nature. So it has a benefit there as well
3:52
And coaches have long used them to maintain performance in season for that reason
3:57
specifically for like jumpers, sprinters, where they don't want to induce a lot of fatigue and they want to maintain a lot of output
4:03
So Isaiah, we've done them now. I've used them as a way to get the former adaptations
4:09
not necessarily like in season or anything, but these max effort isometrics
4:13
Tell me a little bit about your experience. I'm sick and tired and something needs to change
4:22
So I, the people need to understand that this, this is a problem
4:28
This is a problem in our society. Listen here. There's been too much information being propagated on social media about
4:35
isometrics being the meta but it's not they're not they're not we have a better solution we're
4:41
gonna go through that at the end of this podcast yeah i know you're telling your dog to shut up
4:45
and it probably sounds like this dog yeah be quite dog can you hear him barking um i can
4:53
whenever you were yelling yes but obviously not when you mute it then no i can't but yeah so i i
5:00
i think with your experience with this talk about the parasite that is isometrics to your joint
5:05
your knee joint i've done them two times dos veces it's two times in spanish oh thank you i
5:12
know what caca better than duolingo baby i don't know about all that all that so i've done them
5:20
two times last year when i did them guess what happened it was leading up to to the 50.5 madness
5:28
or shortly after but i was jumping real high real real real high there's some benefits here
5:33
very hot second time i did them last month i was also jumping real real high
5:40
but my cartilage was eaten away it was grinding i just was grinding that cartilage away baby while i was doing those isometric splits I kind of went better Oh With composition Yeah grinding on the front leg and the back leg
5:59
Just ripping that cartilage apart. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Kind of like if you can imagine taking, like, two erasers
6:08
and just, like, pushing them together as hard as possible until they crumble. Is that, like, kind of what it felt like
6:14
Yeah. They're going, like, with the two erasers. Yeah, like as fast as possible
6:19
Yeah, just rub it. No, I can't. But that's because of the voice isolation. Damn it
6:25
But yeah, it flared up my PFP both times. And leading in, I actually don't remember how I felt leading into the PFP
6:34
I mean, I was going to say the PFP cycle, the PFP destroyer
6:40
Leading in, I don't remember how I felt, but I remember it got very flared up last year when I did it. uh
6:47
the, the conjure Malaysia. Um, and then we didn't move out of the painful positions
6:52
by the way, like I would also consider having him do it at a different position
6:56
but I was like, nah, like that might bother your PFP. So I did tell him to go to different ranges of motion where it didn't hurt
7:02
It's just that it didn't matter. And that was for two reasons. One
7:06
decrease the force so that he doesn't shred it. And two, to increase the contact area between your joints
7:12
Cause you have more area, you have less pressure and that's good for the joint
7:16
But despite that. It hurt. And this year when I did it
7:23
We built up to this. We built up to this with max strength work. This is not like we just jumped into this
7:28
For context. Leading into this month. Felt healthiest. I have felt in terms of
7:37
My cartilage. Like. In a long time. I could do standing jumps
7:43
I could do max effort squats. on the belt squat, which puts my knee at a bad position for PFP
7:50
You still able to do that. Like I was, I was in a really good spot and I went from that to by the end of
7:56
the cycle, well tech, not even the end of the cycle at week three, I couldn't do it anymore
8:01
We had to, we had to stop it. No more, no more isometrics
8:05
What's interesting is it did only take a week and a half to bounce back
8:09
I will say that. So to its credit, we did, maybe we loaded the cartilage and we allowed it to adapt
8:14
I'm sure that's what a lot of the zealots in 2015 would have said. They said, you got to load the tissue to get it to adapt
8:20
But this was beyond the capacity. And I think Isaiah and I at this point have enough experience where it's like we can just feel it
8:28
And we know what the timelines are for recovery. And when it's not bouncing back within like 48 hours, it ain't looking good
8:35
And I can tell when it ain't sweet. And I can tell when I'm at an appropriate level of loading where it feels like the tissue is adapting and I can bounce back in two days and hit the same workout or a harder workout
8:49
But I was taking steps backwards. Like for reference, I'll do squats sometimes and I can work through a little bit of pain and I know I'll feel better the next day versus isometrics
9:01
It was just too much. You know what's so funny about this is that we have advocated for isometrics since 2018
9:11
which I have video evidence of, by the way. Isaiah and I found it the other day on my phone
9:16
Maybe I'll show it to you guys at some point. It was basically like a letter to myself, a love letter to myself in the future
9:22
And it's not like... Yeah, it's like seven years old. I got chills watching. It was pretty cool
9:27
And there was a lot of like old names that if I were to bring up, you guys would be like, oh yeah, I remember that person
9:31
Well, I mean, like if you've been in space for a while. Now the community is, it's different
9:36
It's different people. There's, yeah, there's more specifically with me. There's less relationships than there were in the past in some ways by choice on my end
9:49
And yeah, it's just different. But nonetheless, the isometrics we used to do and still do are 70% in the warmup
9:57
And those are an appropriate load. They are not above the capacity
10:01
Actually, you know what? before I even get into this, there is a load capacity for every tissue. Every material has
10:09
a stress strain curve, meaning there are basically no materials that are perfectly
10:16
elastic. What that means is you apply one Newton of force and you get one Newton of force back
10:22
right? That doesn't exist. Even the ground will give you like, and it's a collision between two
10:28
objects you need two perfectly elastic objects which i don't i don't think that that exists on
10:36
the planet i'd have to i'd have to ask chat gpt because that's the one that's my mentor he might
10:41
know what that is uh isaiah you're gonna do that for me well yeah why don't you ask chat i use i
10:46
use the google ai i don't think the google ai is better bro don't don't don't disrespect
10:51
chat gpt like that but i'm not saying you should like reference chat gpt for everything in life
10:57
but if you have a question like this i think it i think it would probably find the answer fairly
11:02
quickly is there a perfectly are you finding this right now i'm actually chat gpt oh okay okay
11:09
perfect um that's the object exists on earth no a perfectly elastic object does not exist
11:14
or anywhere else in the physical universe as far as we know in physics perfect elasticity refers to
11:21
an idealized material that when deformed aka compressed stretched or bent returns to its
11:26
original shape without any loss of energy this means that the material would have no internal
11:30
friction or other mechanisms like heat dissipation that convert mechanical energy into other forms of
11:36
energy like thermal energy fact check me bro fact check me every time there some examples rubber relatively elastic but loses some energy as heat steel can be quite elastic but will eventually yield and deform permanently under high enough stress So that the stress strain curve you were talking about
11:55
And then there's something called super elastic materials, like certain alloys that can recover large strains
12:00
but they still aren't perfectly elastic in the strictest sense. I want to look those up, super elastic materials
12:07
Yeah, well, let's do that after the podcast. But nonetheless, there is, and specifically in the human body, we are not super alloys
12:15
We are not these super elastic materials, right? We are bone. We are tendon
12:21
We are muscle. Yeah, unless you're T-dub. Then you're just this human bouncy ball
12:25
But, or Donovan. And I mean, don't get me wrong. We have elastic properties, but we are not perfectly, you know, these, we can't apply
12:33
infinite amounts of strain and allow it to cause, like it said with steel, there's
12:39
a point where it will damage it and it will never return to its previous shape. Fortunately
12:44
we're bioplastic, meaning like we can adapt until we die. But if you exceed the capacity of some of
12:49
that tissue, it don't come back. You don't tear your Achilles and it just magically heals itself
12:55
That doesn't happen, right? If you get a full rupture, you're going underneath a knife, okay? Otherwise, that's going to stay torn. Or if you wear away that cartilage to oblivion
13:03
all the way down to the bone, that's what you need. Hello, osteoarthritis
13:08
Osteoarthritis, baby. That's in our future, for sure. That book that we were reading, me and John bought this book where it had evidence, research, and all this stuff about all common injuries
13:22
And the end game of most injuries that are jumping related is osteoarthritis
13:27
So, yeah, keep stretching and squatting through that pinching your hips. Osteoarthritis
13:32
Keep squatting through that PFP and jumping through that PFP. osteoarthritis. Yep. And we basically realized like, ah, shoot, this is probably not going to
13:41
be a good end for all of us. We've accepted our fates and we know how to prolong it. And it's
13:45
mostly related to symptoms. That's the other part of it too. Like if you manage the symptoms
13:50
you're going to be fine generally. Right. But if you just ignore the symptoms, specifically pinching, pain, a lot of pain, stabbing pain, yeah, stabbing pain, feels like
14:00
a knife is in the joint. You're probably doing something wrong. And we want to encourage you to
14:04
not do that despite what your pt may say hopefully your pt doesn't say that but i would encourage you
14:11
to not do that and uh or your or your fellow online fitness guru who's going to advocate for
14:16
stretching to extreme ranges where that may occur at any joint the ankle knee hip doesn't matter so
14:24
don't do that or osteoarthritis will set in and you'll be bone on bone grinding away
14:29
not only your cartilage no lubrication there whatsoever just bone on bone just imagine two
14:36
chicken wings trying to start a fire with two chicken wings that's what it's going to be like
14:40
you like that isaiah yeah not fun so um what is our what is our solution for this because we've
14:50
long used i've used pauses i think things like that i have i have thoughts i know you have
14:55
share your thoughts i think if you're oh hello mellow he has made an appearance oh my goodness
14:59
he's so cute though do i think like put the mic up to his face is he gonna try to eat it
15:05
you can't hear him i think i think your settings have to be changed oh i did hear him i lied
15:11
no i i think if you're healthy uh then it's then they're worth doing um just be very careful
15:20
listen to your body and stop doing it if something starts hurting i think if it does hurt you might
15:27
be able to find a position that isn't provocative um which is a solution i i told john that could be
15:33
that could be a potential thing for me is just go into a deep squat right like i can
15:38
i can go all the way down and push from there but you run into the problem of it's not at that ideal
15:45
ideal last squat position yeah like you're losing the the amortization benefits potentially the
15:50
strength the joint specific strength specificity benefits which is kind of the point so it is kind
15:56
of the point i mean along with the tenon stuff that's kind of the point so i do agree i think
16:01
that's a fair change doing the sub maximally we're close to maximal but not maximal less time
16:08
could be potentially another one we're doing like to warming up like yeah or doing like a long one
16:14
where it's like increasing waves of intensity across the thing is the warm-up because i think
16:18
maybe i could have done them if i had done a ton of warm-up sets like regular squats because we
16:25
were doing i think two by 10 was the warm-up for it and then build up like start at like 50
16:31
effort isometrics but the workouts were already damn near three hours yeah it's like i can't
16:37
and that that's the that's the other challenge with it is like what am i going to do have you
16:41
train for 10 hours like what are we gonna do like i'm not yeah why not your red laser your
16:45
cartilage before we go and do the workout no i'm not doing that shit we don't have time for that
16:49
we have real lives we're not like pro track and build athletes that can just lay like lay around
16:54
all day in the sun and then wake up and do our three sprints every hour and a half um so you
17:00
know i think that it's the cost benefit ysis in my opinion is heavily weighing in favor of not
17:07
doing them anymore. Um, and that, that might be a shock to you guys, but Hey, look, anecdote
17:13
evidence, all that stuff is valuable. And anecdote is it's airing on the side of, we, we don't
17:20
we don't need to be doing this anymore. So that's my, that's my lens. Um, I think that
17:27
I think that uh moving forward my solution is eccentrics varying eccentrics because you get all of those benefits And maybe you have a brief isometric period at the bottom Right So it like you lower down you lower down and then you try to hold for one
17:45
miniscule of a second before you set that weight down. It's crazy. Like when you're
17:50
using a truly supra maximal weight and you try to slow down the very last part of it, it's
17:58
woo wee. Yeah. It's intense. And I've noticed that I feel it more in my tendon, the cartilage
18:03
like i did six weeks of eccentric like if you're healthy if you're good good good good health yeah
18:09
and i think the reason why is yeah imagine this that chicken wing ogy it's just like a brief
18:15
second where you're pushing them together really hard versus just pushing them together progressively
18:20
harder that whole time where it's like you're pushing it hard but you're rolling across
18:24
you know the joint and it's like you're spreading that time that that force is is being applied over
18:30
a very small interval. So generally, and even then you get lubrication out of the synovial fluid
18:37
out of the cartilage, which I think really, really helps a lot. It helps like lubricate it
18:41
It helps load the tendon. And then you also get with the eccentric work, you get crazy increases
18:48
in type two fiber activity. When you're at maximum eccentric work, your type two fibers are lit up
18:54
They are lit up on maximum eccentrics. And that's just the size principle and rate coding because
18:59
you're getting such high neural activity between the brain and the muscle, the excitation contraction
19:05
coupling is maximized and the calcium ion channels are maximized. They have to be
19:11
We spread them open. You just spread them open. The activity is increased dramatically. So you're
19:18
able to get these really, really high. And there's other reasons why we're stronger eccentrically
19:23
But the other thing too is like tendons don't care about what type of activity it is
19:30
It doesn't care if you're doing isometric. It doesn't care if you do an eccentric. It doesn't care if you're doing concentric
19:35
What it cares about is time and intensity. That's what it cares about
19:39
How long are you doing it and at what effort? And so when you're doing an eccentric, the forces are so high that the tendon is going to deform
19:47
It's going to deform, especially like as you get to these different leverages
19:51
and you start to shift the weight away from the bone and towards the actual muscle doing work
19:55
on the, on the tendon, like the outputs are going to go up intramuscularly such that the tendon will
20:01
stretch, especially when you get to those ideal length tension relationships, meaning where you're
20:05
really, really strong, like you're typically strong at 50% of the length of a muscle. It's
20:09
because this is the most cross bridging at that point. And that's good. So what we could do is
20:14
potentially build out that progression a little bit longer, play around with maybe like a one
20:19
second hold at each one you know so you go down like a little bit hold down a little bit hold
20:24
down a little bit hold and i think that's better and i think that some coaches out there like i
20:29
know natera is big on run specific isometrics and they'll do time and then they'll do long holds
20:35
and then they'll do more intense waves but like kind of longer and then they'll go progressively
20:40
more intense and then they'll do rfd ones i think that stuff's great if you can survive it it's just
20:45
that the cartilage in our experience we did a lot of prep we do isometrics every day every day we do
20:51
them and it still was not sufficient so that's my lens on it um i i closed my case i'll revisit
20:58
you're not programming isometrics anymore not for you not for the mega i think if your squat
21:06
if you're not very strong you don't have problems yet you can do them but if you're having problems
21:11
and you're one of our athletes and you haven't programmed and it's maximal i'm talking 100
21:15
pin squat and there are not many cases where i program that maybe two cycles ever right and i
21:21
maybe maybe i think yeah two literally two cycles yeah so if you're on one you probably have been
21:28
with us for a long time you're probably listening to this podcast you can let us know how you feel if you have a different response let us know and i'll be curious to see what the feedback is but
21:35
Probably not for most of those for most athletes. It's just not fruitful
21:42
It's not fruitful. Alright. Stand on that. If you want us to write your programming
21:50
go to tspstrength.com. If you would like these forward thinkers to write your workouts
21:56
these forward thinking intelligent individuals. These chaps. Yeah, these young chaps. Go to tspstrength.com
22:04
there's probably there's like a 20 discount probably i don't even know anymore what is it
22:09
there is there is 20 for the new for the january month the new year so thank you guys
22:16
get motivated actually we're we're past what the day of when people quit are we past that day
22:22
yeah dude international quitters day when was that for the seventh i think it was
22:28
Sottyar's birthday. So if you're not an international quitter, let me check
22:32
We should change what the sale says to international quitters day sale
22:39
International quitters week. We're in the international quitters week. The second Friday of the year
22:45
The second Friday of the year. So that is... Let's see. Well, it's a little bit different
22:53
because that would have been... The first Friday was the third. The 10th
22:57
Last Friday. national quitters day so if you if you woke up and worked out this week congratulations you're
23:05
better than 90 of the human population yeah yeah that's true that's a good point um but thank you
23:11
guys for listening we will see you guys tomorrow on the podcast because we do this every day because
23:16
we're we're committed um and we're not quitters we're not international quitters we're not quitters
23:20
and isaiah and i are going to start podcasting more in person so if you want to see more in-person
23:24
podcasts, make sure you tell us in the comment section. And yeah, we'll see you guys tomorrow
23:29
Bye. Bye
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