Jump Manual - Week 11 Recap of "40 at 40"

Week 11 of this phase of Jump Manual training went pretty well. I got in all my workouts and am starting to see some progress again particularly with plyometrics. I can tell because I track how high I'm touching for depth jumps and did better than the previous couple of weeks.

Improving my vertical jump during this basketball season proved to be much harder than I anticipated and believe I fell for one of the most common vertical jump training mistakes -- overtraining! I'm always trying to push myself ("no pain, no gain") and yet that is not the best approach for vertical jump training. The body has to rest and your muscles actually get stronger during recovery. No recovery = no additional strength!

Had I not played on 2 city league teams, I think I would have seen more increase with my vertical jump during these last few months. But, basketball is the reason I do this! I want to continue to compete at a high level and this training has made that possible. So, no regrets!

Basketball season is over and now I'm going to train smarter. Not harder! And, for me I think it will make a huge difference.

Thanks for reading and I hope your training is going well!

Testing my vertical

I've been regularly attending coaching sessions with Jacob Hiller (creator of Jump Manual) to get feedback on my training. It has been really helpful and one of the biggest reasons I am a huge fan of Jacob and the Jump Manual.

As a result of the coaching combined with my own knowledge and experience, I'm going to make several changes to my workouts during this next round of training which starts on Monday. One of these changes is I will be testing my vertical every single day. Jacob has been really pushing me to do this and so I have been trying to figure out the best way to test, measure, and track my vertical.

Probably the best way to do this would be using a Vertec like you see in the NFL and NBA combines. But, those are like $600! And even if I had an extra $600, I'm pretty sure my wife would not be down with me spending that kind of money on something like that. Sometimes you have to improvise and so today I made my own vertec! Well...sort of.

Here's a little video that shows my $8 version...