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Vertical Jump Technique: Toe-Off & Dunking Physics Analysis
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Apr 9, 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
This jump right here happened on January 28, 2015
0:04
Then this jump right here happened on February 1, 2015. That's a four-day difference between both jumps
0:12
As you can see in the picture, that's at least a six-inch difference in vertical
0:17
And I did that by changing one thing in my jump technique
0:21
My name is Isaiah Rivera and I am a professional dunker with a 50.5-inch vertical
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I've tracked my entire journey right here on my YouTube channel from 24 inches all the way to 50.5 and today
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I'm gonna teach you exactly what I changed in those four days
0:37
Why it made me jump higher and how you can change the same thing in your approach and hopefully jump higher as a result
0:44
Now specifically I changed something in my approach But to understand why changing your approach helps you jump higher
0:51
You have to understand the physics behind jumping. Understanding the physics is gonna allow you
0:56
to make changes in your approach that are gonna lead to a higher vertical jump
1:00
How high you're going to jump is dictated by one thing and one thing only
1:05
and that's your velocity at toe-off. Toe-off is the last frame that your feet are on the ground
1:11
before you're launched into the air, and the higher this velocity is, the higher the jump will be
1:16
This can be shown through math by manipulating a set of equations called the kinematic equations
1:21
Kinematic equations explain motion without the effects of force in projectiles. Our body is a projectile
1:28
Projectile is basically anything that's being launched into the air and that is in freefall essentially
1:34
Anytime we do a technique change or we train for the vertical jump
1:39
we are literally looking to maximize your velocity at toe-off. And in order to do this, we have to generate impulse
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Impulse is a change in momentum and a change in momentum is mass times velocity
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Think of momentum as how much it would hurt to get hit by something. Something has a lot of momentum
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you probably wouldn't wanna get hit by it. Taken to the extreme, something with a very high momentum
2:00
is something that has a very high mass and that is moving very, very fast
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When looking at force plate data, we can see that there is a direct one-to-one correlation
2:09
between the change in momentum and how high a person jumps Impulse can also be defined as the integral between force and time So when you look at a graph that plots force and time the area of that
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force time graph is the impulse. So imagine that graph is being split into a bunch of little slices
2:29
and each of those slices is force times time. You add up each of those slices and that gives you
2:33
the area. So if you want to jump higher, you just make the area under the graph bigger. And there's
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few different ways to do this. Assuming all other variables stay the same, you can increase the peak
2:43
of the graph, so you're generating more force. You can make the peak of the graph happen earlier
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that's increasing your rate of force development, or you can extend the time that the force is being
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generated for, and that'll also increase the impulse. And all these things lead to higher
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jumps. Now there's ways to train that'll help you generate more impulse in different kinds of ways
3:02
But today we are concerned with generating more impulse through technique changes
3:07
Now, back to the jumps that I did, right? I jumped six inches higher in four days
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How did that happen? I changed one thing, and that is that I ran faster
3:18
I literally ran faster on my approach. And that day I was jumping a few inches higher
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Now, that effect was magnified because I was also slightly unloaded from a long period of training that I had
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But when I combined that with running faster on my approach, the difference was insane
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And I actually sustained that change for a long time. And the way that I did it is I literally extended my approach out from farther than I was used to up until that point
3:42
I think I was doing just four step approaches. That day I was doing six to eight step approaches on my jump
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And I literally just thought run as fast as I can. And it led to higher jumps
3:52
Now, when looking at why that led to higher jumps from a physics standpoint, we just look at the three ways to change it, right
3:57
Rate of force development, peak force, or time. Now, when you run faster
4:01
your ground contact times actually decrease. So it wasn't that I was generating force for longer
4:06
So we can remove that variable out of the equation. However, when you run faster
4:09
you're able to generate higher forces. So my rate of force development probably went up
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and then the peak force probably went up as well. But this hasn't always been the case
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There's been times when an athlete I coach will ask me, hey Isaiah I tried to run faster and I actually jumped lower What happened And this is the prime example of running faster doesn work for everybody Because yes in theory in an ideal scenario you can run as fast as you
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want and that'll lead to a higher jump. Remember, we want to maximize that final velocity at toe
4:41
off of a jump. And the way we do this is by running faster. However, sadly, impulse doesn't work that
4:48
simply because when you try to improve one of the variables, the other variables usually go down
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So what happens when athletes will try to run faster is now they're generating force for less
4:59
time. They're also too weak to handle those forces. So the peak forces go down. In order to handle
5:05
a very fast approach, you have to have very stiff tendons. That way the approach speed enables you
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to stretch the tendon and store more energy in the tendon. And your muscles have to be centrically
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strong enough to handle that speed and stretch that tendon. Now, in my case, I was able to run
5:22
faster and it worked. Why did that happen? Remember, I had spent the last few months jumping a lot
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and training really hard. My tendons probably got stiffer from weight training. I also was doing
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four-step approaches every single day at the same speed in the same way, and my muscles and tendons
5:40
were very, very adapted to jumping. As a matter of fact, I was probably operating at less than
5:46
optimal capacity. When you look at the total peak forces that I was generating, it was probably a lot
5:51
less than the max potential that I was able to handle. So when that one day happened and I was
5:56
like, you know what, let's try running faster. It worked because I had months of jump technique
6:00
under my belt. I was practicing short approaches and I was a way better athlete in every way
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By the way, if you want to become one, a better athlete, and two, if you want me to personally
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look at your jump technique and try to optimize your technique so you can jump as high as your
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body will allow you to in that moment. Sign up for my coaching at thpstrength.com. Right now
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it's 20% off the first month if you use the code SPRING. And when you sign up, there is a group
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call that happens every single week, and I can yze your jumps on video live. However, if you
6:30
want to do it by yourself, keep watching. And I'm going to put you guys on game real quick. Here is
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my process for using more speed on your approach Step one is you have to be training right You need to be getting your tendon stiffer You need to be getting your muscles stronger You need to be training your nervous system Over months and months and months all these structures are going to become more robust
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and you're going to be able to handle more speed on your approach. So make sure you're training hard consistently and that you're not stopping
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Step two, and this is a short-term actionable step that you can do right now
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I want you to go on a basketball court. First thing you're going to do is you're going to learn a good approach off a minimal amount
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of steps first. I suggest everybody to just practice taking penultimate steps over and over again until it feels comfortable
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Then move to a three-step approach. Keep practicing that. Then a four-step and then a five-step
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Five steps is usually the ideal number of steps for an approach for a dunk
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Sometimes you can get away with six if you're a really, really good athlete. Now, the key here is I want you to practice those approaches slowly
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Keyword, slowly. I know this is counterintuitive because I just told you that I just ran faster and it worked
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Before you can ever do that, you need to build a foundation of good jump technique
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You need to practice a slow approach, either walking into it or a slight jog
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And you need to do that until the technique looks perfect and it is ingrained into your muscle memory
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Once this happens, then you can start putting in a little bit more effort on your approach
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And you're going to find the sweet spot of your maximum controlled velocity
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What does maximum controlled velocity mean? It means the fastest that you can run while still being able to jump your highest
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And everybody has a different approach speed that is ideal. The way you find it is, again, by first working up your approach until you can do a five-step approach
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then slowly building up your speed. And what you're going to find is there's going to be a point where you start jumping lower
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You want to be just under that. Stay at that speed for a few months. Then, every now and then, try to run a little bit faster on your approach and see what happens
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Now, I only suggest testing this when you're feeling fresh and when you're feeling adrenaline
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because your body can lie to you. If you try to test this when you're not feeling good, you might jump lower and you might think
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that that faster approach speed isn't good for you. However, when you are deloaded after a few weeks of training and you're in a high adrenaline
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environment, you're a better athlete. Your nervous system is firing way faster
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The muscle contractions are way stronger and you're able to generate way more speed on
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your approach under these conditions
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