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Strength Training for Basketball & Football: Relative & Absolute Strength
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Mar 27, 2025
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
You guys have probably heard track coaches say that an athlete is strong enough, they don't need
0:04
to work on getting any stronger, and that they should develop other qualities. In today's episode
0:09
we're actually going to deep dive this as it pertains to one foot and two foot jumping. My
0:15
name is John Evans. This is Isaiah Rivera. He's the highest jumper in the world. And yeah, we're gonna dive into this. So Isaiah, what do you think is strong enough if you are a basketball player
0:27
football player and let's go basketball, football. What do you think is strong enough for each of those sports
0:34
The goal being what? To be the best. To be the best basketball player
0:38
Basketball player, the best, to be your best self in those respective sports
0:45
No limit. No limit, soldiers. Are we talking relative strength or absolute strength
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I want you to interpret it as you see fit. I think that there is no limit to relative strength in basketball
1:04
The stronger you are relative to your body weight, the better it will benefit you in every facet of the sport
1:13
However, I think absolute strength would have its drawbacks because you're just arbitrarily getting bigger and bigger and bigger
1:21
and if you do that, you'll become really slow. In football, I think it's position dependent
1:28
I think if you're a lineman, just get big as hell. You get massive and strong, both things
1:36
I think if you're something like a linebacker or something like that, it's essentially a momentum-based sport
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So relative strength plays a huge role in there. I think you need to be a certain size
1:48
A linebacker would be, what, like 220 or something like that? High IQ answer here. I like it
1:52
And then the receiver positions, the DBs, those guys, I think that's more so how you would train if you're a basketball player
2:03
Just get your relative strength up. And relative strength has a lot of correlation with speed and power
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rate of force development, that type of thing. And then I think for a dunker it's the same thing
2:17
There's no limit to how strong you can get relative to your body weight. Like, I don't think there would be drawbacks
2:23
I think the drawbacks where you would see it is if you're focusing too much on it
2:27
to where you don't focus on the other qualities. Yeah, and I think that's a dangerous trap that you could fall into
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because I've seen guys, and even for you at times, I think it's like tempting to want to just go volume intensity to volume intensity
2:43
or whatever, just increase your squat arbitrarily or increase your power clean arbitrarily
2:47
But for two-foot jumping, I really don't think – you know, Mike would always say this
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He was like, if you want to break through a plateau or something like that, there is no strong enough
2:59
Just get stronger. Get more capable of generating force. And I saw him actually post this yesterday on his Instagram, which was really interesting
3:05
He was talking about youth development, and he was saying if you're between 16 and 18 years old
3:11
you really need to focus on getting your maximal strength as high as possible during that period of time
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and during that, you'll see your power development also increase, which is what we see in research quite a bit
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And then he says... I think I have that research study in my pocket right now. You could probably pull it up
3:29
But he also says that we're really good. He calls it the load-velocity relationship
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a force-velocity relationship. Found it. Look at that. Effect of strength training on EMG of human skeletal muscle... Muscles
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thor thor stenson carlson v taslow they basically did a study this is for
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beginner lifters and just getting stronger improved their rate of force development even
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below 200 milliseconds and then if you this is a second study increased rate of force development
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and neural drive of human skeletal muscle following resistance training by agard simonson
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and they looked at basically the same thing but lifting with intent and it improved again just
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heavy weight training with intent they're not doing plyos and that type of thing i still think
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they were practicing the sport during it and they improved rate of force development below 200
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milliseconds by even more yep and this is in beginner lifters yeah that tracks that tracks
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so he basically says look you're really good at generating force on the ground you put we stood on
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force plates, had someone do a squat, they'd be really good at generating a lot of force
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concentrically, but only slowly. They would like, you have to move very slowly to generate
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a lot of force And he said that not what determines success in field and court sports It your force generating capacity Eccentrically is what determines your success in sport And so yesterday I posted you doing 600 pounds in a well it was 585 in a
5:07
negative in a half squat, which is probably the deepest I've seen you do it. And the slowest I've
5:12
seen you do it maybe outside of one time last year. That's actually, that might've been lower
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than when I did it. I think it was, I think it was lower. And it was also, I mean, you went real
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I haven't watched it in a while. You went really slow last year, but you definitely handled it better this year
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Like last year that we did it, it crushed you. You finished the rep and you were hands on your knees
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Like I feel like I'm going to die. This year was less in that ceiling, I would say, like above your ceiling
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It was almost below, submaximal, I would say, where that was truly, truly maximal
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which is a really good sign. And then also we did it with volume. So we had a fair bit of volume prior to that, and then also that was one single top rep
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So I don't think, you know, when the question is like how strong is strong enough
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what type of strength are you talking about? Because strength is a term that people use to describe just the maximal concentric capacity of the muscle
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That's not necessarily what we care about. We care about eccentric capacity of the muscle and isometric capacity of the muscle
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And Mike also mentions that, too, in this brief short on Instagram
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He's like, I care more about eccentric and isometric strength. And I agree
6:28
I think that that is largely the determinant of success in athletes
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I think that we, for years, have been pigeonholed into just concentric strength
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But the other two types of muscle contractions are more important for athleticism
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You know what's really interesting is right now I'm probably jumping my best ever
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especially if you look at me like if I'm deloaded and fresh. And concentrically, I'm not at my strongest ever
6:57
No, that's generally how it is for you. It's like when your eccentric strength is really high, but you're light
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I feel like that's when you jump. And you have reasonable concentric strength
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Like you still need concentric strength, but when that eccentric qualities are really, really high
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Like I'm within probably 95% of my concentric max, like all-time max
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And there's still benefits to having really high concentric force development, whether it's fast or slow
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For those of you that don't know, eccentric is on the down phase, lengthening the muscle. Isometric is the same length, the muscle is the same length
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Concentric is when the muscle is shortening, typically on the up phase of, like, say a squat. Yeah
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And I think that's the benefit of using long conjugate sequence systems
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Yep. Like, this training cycle, you have me doing basically two eccentric days
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and then, like, a concentric dominant day on Saturday, which that day sucks, by the way, after jumping the previous day
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And then if you think about having jump sessions, that's technically an eccentric day
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It is fast eccentric. That is why I have it in there still, is it's really important to do that
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And as you read, it's really important to practice your sports skill at max intent if you want to improve
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Same thing with speed training or throwing or any other power development
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or power exercise or highly high-velocity, explosive athletic movement. So what are – we probably got like five minutes, by the way
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I think it's five minutes. So what would you say are, off the top of your head
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all the different types of strength? I think that – well, that's a very complex question
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but I like to think of it in terms of just force generating capacity of the muscle
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whether it's eccentrically or it is literally just the muscles ability to
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generate force. I don't view it in terms of types of strength. It's just
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Hey, how well does your muscle generate force at a given angle? And can it do it fast
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Can it do it slow? Can it do it over long intervals? Can it do it over short intervals
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That's how I do it. So it's basically, okay. Okay. So I don't, I don't view it and can it do it in the negative direction
9:03
the positive direction and the same, angle like that's how i view it so that's how many hold on we're gonna do some some multiplication
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here some multiplication we have actually joint angle is crazy because there's technically infinite
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no there is but let's let's call it then there's you let's call it quarter quarters well like the
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position the main position is that we hit okay so quarter half i'd say it's quarter third half
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anything less than half so four four and then we have positive negative zero work yep so that's
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three then we have fast fast no speed but that's isometric so that's the same thing we won't count
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that so we have slow pretty fast really fast plyo like shock loading yeah that's like four
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you could call yeah um and then you have i mean i don know if a permutation are you doing a permutation Is that what this is Yeah Like just all all the combinations Um and then I mean direction also like if you just talking about the knee I guess
10:06
we're just talking about like flexion extension. Yeah. So we covered, yeah
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And then you have high load, low load, medium load, medium load
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Yeah. You could change the loads. So we do range of motion, velocity, joint angle, load
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Yeah, I'd say that's pretty much it. There might be something else. That's 144 variations of strength or force, I guess
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That's how I think about it. I don't necessarily think about it in terms of like, you know
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I got to do like starting strength or I want to do strength speed. I'm like, no, I'm developing my ability to generate force at this given angle
10:45
yeah whether it's eccentrically concentrically and then you would look at your sport skill so
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let's say one foot jumping one foot jumping we know is probably at a quarter squat angle
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really fast eccentric or high load fast eccentric exactly um a lot of momentum going into it so
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that's the other thing too that we didn't even i mean it kind of relates but is inertia because
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inertia is also going to play a role like for example when you are dropping really fast in a
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squat if you you can only get to a certain velocity because the acceleration due to gravity
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so if you want to increase that velocity at a half squat then you need to use mnemonics you use air
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to basically accelerate the bar faster than what gravity could down to a quarter squat yeah 1080
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could do it or the kaiser could do it but or a blend which are these are machines by the way if
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you want to look so like for example if i'm doing rhythm quarter squats i can only if i'm only
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dropping six inches or let's say a foot that means gravity only has if i am in free fall the bar only
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has a foot worth of time to accelerate that's the peak negative vertical velocity the bar will be at
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versus if you add a like you're pushing it downward and you're you know applying a net
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force to it it's able to generate more momentum so that you're able to have more force to work
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against whenever you do start yielding and i think that that also is important maybe it's
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somewhat related to like super fast eccentrics but you could take that into consideration when
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you're looking at most athletic movements because you're not doing them from zero you know zero
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meter or uh degrees per second at the job you know you're going to see some sort of acceleration
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so i think that uh that's another consideration that maybe would be like means and methods
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so I don't think that it's necessarily like how strong is strong enough if your question is how
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strong is strong enough concentrically for a given athlete like I'm looking at it wrong
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yeah I don't I think that you're it's a very myopic if I were to sum it up microscopic view
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if I were to sum it up it's like concentric strength one of the easiest things to improve
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that can give you the most bang for your buck early on in your jump training career but as you
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get more advanced you have to address other things yeah and and don't there's tons of ways to do that
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too yeah and don't get too obsessed but it's always you can keep getting stronger as long as
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it's not to the detriment of a bunch 144 143 other qualities yes that is a great way to think about
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it if you're getting if you're getting strong at one quality to the detriment of 143 others
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then you are seriously missing the plot you need to address all of those in a systematic way to
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improve over time and i've seen this i've seen it with people all the time they'll just do one
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they'll do that one of 144 qualities for four weeks or eight weeks and then they'll be like oh
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now i'll work on this other concentric other yeah and then you do two out of 144 and now by the last
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one you're just doing like three or four of those 144 different potential options and that's and
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And that's not even like we technically parsed it down. We really just went like slow, medium, fast, really fast
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Like we didn't even really get into all the different ways to generate force. So I don't view it in terms of strength training
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I view it in terms of – and the other thing we didn't even talk about is time
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Like that's slow technically, but you can modify time as well other ways. Yeah
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Like you could do an eccentric into an isometric, into an eccentric, into an isometric, and then two up
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Like there's tons of different variations. what you were saying to the next progression, what you want to do
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like pause at each point in the eccentric so that you get more time and you
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could technically increase the eccentric velocity by doing that. Cause you could drop fast
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pause, drop fast, pause, drop fast, pause. And that would be, you get the time component and you also get the high velocity component
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So I know semi, I mean there like other ways that you can do it So I think that talking to me dirty Duddy Yeah I know I could And that why when we look at strength and conditioning I again I don view it as a very like black and white dogmatic way of viewing things of like
15:07
oh, it's just starting strength. That's what we're doing. And it's just speed strength because your body doesn't necessarily go
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oh, I know the difference between zero meters per second and then 0 to 0.5 meters per second of average velocity or peak velocity
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like everything in between that, I don't understand until we're at strength
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And then everything between 0.5 and 1 meters per second average until 1 and 2
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that strength speed, I don't understand anything from there. And there's no difference between those velocities from this point to this point
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Like your body isn't going to just make these dogmatic hard cuts in the adaptations
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Your body's going to be like, oh, okay, this is a little bit faster. Half much faster, it doesn't matter
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It just matters that it's faster and that it's more force or it's less force
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And how you're generating that force. It's like, yeah, if you fall, if we want to categorize it
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you might get more or less adaptation, but it doesn't necessarily do that cleanly
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I was watching Dan Beck posted something about the force velocity curve, and he made a good point
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And it was like, when you're looking at the force velocity curve, when they measure that in a study, it's at maximum tension
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And if you're ever doing a movement without maximum effort, like you're not on the force velocity curve
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Oh, you're below the curve somewhere. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, there's so much nuance
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And then you could even get into the musculotendinous unit, right? how we talk about the muscle might be acting in a slow concentric way
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Yeah, and that is like a whole different. When you look at collisions with the ground, that's where it gets really complex
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But it's more ammunition to remember that it's important to do all the different qualities
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Check the checkbox. Yeah, and it's really important to understand that what changes is the order in which you address those
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and the time spent on each of those qualities as you develop a deeper understanding of what helps you or doesn't
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Like in his case, it's easy to fall into the trap. Or if a lot of you guys are watching this as two foot jumpers
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it's easy to fall into the trap of like, oh, all I need to do is concentric strength. That's it. Because that's what makes
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oh, I just need to squat and power clean. Get my concentric strength up and get my concentric strength up
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or concentric slow power up kind of. If you fall into that trap
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you're going to be an Olympic weightlifter. And there's basically no, like you're not
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and maybe you jump. So you work on really fast eccentric work and then you only do slow concentric work
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Like you're just polarizing on both ends. You're missing a ton of opportunity to adapt
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And to be fair, it can work. It can work. It's just you're not going to reach his level
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That's the argument I would make. Like it could work. And if you're a genetic freak, you might jump higher
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But I would say relative to your percent of genetic potential, like he's going to reach 100% of his genetic potential by the time he dies, hopefully
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Whereas if you just took that approach, you might reach 80% of your genetic potential
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You can't view it in terms of absolute vertical. You have to view it of how much of my potential did I reach of my biological capacity, my adaptive reserve
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How much of that did I fill up? Did I get to 100 percent of it or 99.9 percent
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Or did I leave 40 or 50 percent of my adaptive reserve because I decided to just take this polarizing approach, which for me is why I'm not beholding to any one system or one exercise or one, you know, dogmatic approach to it
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It's like we need to do everything. I mean, there's things right now that I would like to do next year for him
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And the problem is that there are long-term consequences sometimes to that
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Like if I decided to blow you up to 220 pounds just for funsies to see what happens
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it might take him six months to lose that weight. And your athletic prime is maybe only until you're 32 or 33
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So there's consequences to it. But, yeah, I don't – that's kind of my lens on it
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So we do have to go, though. We have a group call. If you're a THB strength athlete, there's a group call at 11 EST every Tuesday
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You can talk to us. You can talk to us in real time. So we're going to hop on that call
19:08
And if you're not on THB, you probably should sign up because obviously we're pretty knowledgeable about helping people jump higher
19:17
Right now you can get 20% off. It's about $33 a day
19:23
Wait, $33 a day? Wait, $33 a day? bucks a day three bucks a day i was like dog 33 a day so like a good old friend austin says
19:32
that's lunch that's half a lunch that's not even a lunch dude a lunch is 15 i would know and he
19:38
buys one every freaking day yeah so that's like a fifth of a lunch yeah so stop eating out that's
19:43
a bag of chips dude that is literally a bag of eating out and start cooking your own meals
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and get on thp and transform your vertical all right see you folks
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