 Let's discuss using the squat to train your vertical jump So if you want to jump higher You don't need to squat all the way down. What you need is to develop forces and quickly What you need is to seek power development, right? That's force over time or force developed times time, whatever So one thing let's let's consider an example So pretend you have a professional basketball player your training. There's seven foot tall way above this camera and They have really long leverage, right? They don't necessarily need to load their legs for hypertrophy, right? They want relative strength not absolute strength They want to be strong relative to their body weight not absolutely huge so For this they don't necessarily need the leg fatigue that comes along with squatting what they can do then instead is Train the force development the power development So there's two points that I really want to make here one is the joint leverages So I don't need the squat really low if I'm just seeking power development in a vertical jump, right? There's no rule even if you're Maybe you've you had a coach who is really into powerlifting and you're a sissy if you don't squat deep enough, right? That rule does not matter and that's that's one of my One of my I guess Slogans is you don't have to squat deep, right? Sometimes it's a really good challenge Sometimes it's good for you to push yourself, but You don't have to squat deep. I have hip pain and it gets worse if I squat deep I don't have to squat deep. I have people who are you know they have heart disease or whatever and They don't have the mobility that never worked out in their life. They don't have the mobility to squat deep so if they squat deep they lose their their center of balance they shift forward and Then they put extra stress on their knees put extra stress on their back and then they don't like squatting So those people don't need squat deep either now we come back to the basketball player. Why would they need to squat deep? They don't need to fully fatigue their muscles They don't need leg hypertrophy at least in season or whatever what they need is to maintain their force development now So we're talking about this position right when I take a vertical jump I don't squat all the way down and then come back up when I do a counter movement jump My counter movement is not a full squat and then up. It's a little half squat and then I come up So why do we do that? We do that because it's the most optimal position for our bodies so if you take this the the joint leverage here everything is pretty much optimized and then I can jump up and I develop the most force I put the least amount of Mechanical disadvantage on my body and I can utilize my muscles to their maximal effect But I still get this stretching component of my muscles. So I get this extra neural drive the stretch shortening cycle so if I'm doing a squat with my with my basketball athlete I Can let them half squat or quarter squat and that can be a full squat for them Right, they can get training here. They can learn how to develop force here just in this little pattern Even if it looks shallow, they're still going to get a lot out of it and arguably they'll get more out of it because they're Isometric the turnaround point at the bottom of their squat is right around where their vertical jump is So we talked about leverages that's that's the first main point that's the easiest thing to change second thing There are a couple different variations of squatting that are useful here if you've heard of Accommodating resistance or variable resistance using bands and chains on the bar that changes the Acceleration path of the bar. So if I squat with no extra stuff, just just wait, right and I come up like this I have to slow down once I get to the top so I don't jar my knees and lose my balance It's especially important when things get heavier, right? What's beautiful about a Band pulling you down or a band pulling the bar up and getting less pull at the top or about chains Getting heavier as you come to the top is those Implements slow you down and they allow you to accelerate through the rest of the lift Okay, you can keep pushing really hard and not get that jarring motion because the extra weight is slowing you down So you get this maximal intent this extra push towards force development and It gives you extra time to develop that force so that you can increase the acceleration of the bar and therefore your power output Now last little variation. So we're still talking about the the kinetics of the squat, right? The the acceleration How is the bar going if I do just straight weight? I have to slow the bar down that doesn't look like a vertical jump because I don't slow down when I do a vertical jump I try to speed up the whole way I want maximal speed as soon as I'm leaving the ground because then I can get higher So let's talk about two different two different types of Squatting or two different types of movements. We have Non-ballistic and we have ballistic So a non-ballistic movement in this sense is a squat just like this ready Just like this if you think about a med ball throw or a vertical jump Where I don't have this slowing down component to the movement I just keep accelerating and I let go or I just keep accelerating and I let go Those are called ballistic movements and the reason they are different is they don't have this slowing down component So you can emphasize how fast you're moving you emphasize the speed and the power development And so I can now take whatever heavy squats that I've done Maybe in my new found joint angles because I watched this video from Lance Goyki I can take these new angles and I can take this force development and then I can put that in a challenge that force development by Time and by speed And I can take you know, you can do even med ball stuff will help you because it starts from the hip Right and the upper body just whips around You can take that and use that to even increase your vertical jump. So what might this look like well with Nervous system development generally you're looking to do faster things first while you're fresher if you do You know 700 box squats in a workout. You're not developing your speed Even though you're jumping at no point are you developing either landing mechanics or fast takeoff or anything like that, right? So you need to limit the amount of times that you do stuff And you need to do it as fast as possible and then you need to rest for much longer than you think you need to rest So I might just do five box jumps or something like that to get this this Overspeed component going on After I do that, what's the next slowest thing I can do I could if I'm experienced with squatting I could try squatting with bands Resisting me down or even pulling me up and you take this and I push up And I try to drive quickly through it and I can still use a lot of weight this way I can still overload the body, but it's starting to slow me down, but it's also using more weight So I create more force. So this this band of resistance this variable resistance is then Allowing me to access more force than I would get in a box jumper and just a vertical jump, right? and Then after that that's when I can start to lay on layer on some of the more foundational strength and endurance stuff that's where I can just use straight weight and I can rep out a little bit more maybe again in my newfound positions and I can find out What is going to work really well for me and how am I going to load these joints? What does it feel like to load these muscles in this way? One last thing so we talked about moving fast to fast dish to slow ish and What I want to say is sometimes like that's generally the rule But sometimes you can break that rule and use what we call post activation Potentiation so basically you take something pretty heavy You kind of get this Let me explain it first. So you take something really heavy and that turns your nervous system on it tells you how to Contract everything really quickly tells your nervous system to tell your muscles to contract Then what you do is you go over to something much lighter like maybe a really light squat jump or even a just General vertical jump or box jump and now that you've Potentiated the nervous system and it's ready to turn on It will contract faster for you and it will teach your body how to move a little bit quicker Even though you don't have that extra load on your body So this post activation Potentiation can work really well. You can rest a decent amount You can do straight weight and you can squat and then you could rest You know three to five minutes let that nervous system recover and then you try your vertical jump The other thing I was going to say is with the bands you get this Intra rep this during the rep you get post activation Potentiation So when I come down let's say the band is resisting me at the top So I unrack the bar and the band weight is pulling me down as much as it's ever going to and then When I get to the bottom it's pulling me down less And so now it's easier to move against and now I can move a little bit quicker And my body is ready for this weight, but it's getting this weight and then I can push much quicker so To recap I don't remember what we all talked about we're gonna come down like this not quite as far especially if I'm just training the vertical jump especially if I'm a tall athletes and I'm gonna start training Speed start training think about things in the terms of force and power rather than just strength Okay, bar weight doesn't matter here. What matters is force development So you can use some velocity-based training measures like tying a little string to a bar And or trying to push band with an accelerometer to the bar and seeing how fast you move to give you some sort of objective measure of force and power Or you can just eyeball it you can say if I'm squatting and I'm really slowing down. Is that what I want or Am I limiting my force development because sometimes force has a time component as well Force is is dependent upon your acceleration, right? So if I slow down a lot I might not actually be at my peak force even if my weight is higher So it's the weight and how fast it's moving Powerlifters are generally pretty good at finding maximal force towards maximal loads But general people people who may have just come in off the street or athletes are not as good at that And what you'll see is when it gets really heavy, they slow down really really quickly. They can't deal with it Well, they don't have the tissues shaped and formed the way that they need to be so Consider that consider joint angles consider moving fast movements first and then slower movements And if you have any questions about anything just leave them in the comments below