 When it comes to plyometrics, you've got to push yourself 100%. It's more about the intensity than it is the exercise. There's not going to be one exercise that works. What is good, guys? We're back with Dunk Tip Tuesday, every single Tuesday a new tip, and today I want to get right into it. What is the best exercise to jump higher? One of the most common questions I get, that's what this episode's all about. That's what these Dunk Tips are all about, answering the common questions I get, trying to give you my experience, my knowledge of the jumping because I've been in your shoes. I was literally, couldn't touch the rim on YouTube before there was Instagram, asking questions as much as I could just to get an answer. So I'm here to do that for you. So leave a comment below with any questions you have. And that's the common question I got last week. A lot of people asked about speed specifically. So that's where I'm going to head on with that. And also, I want to give a shout out to, first of all, Tom Dunks. That boy's flying right now. My boy, Tom, he gave me some good love on the last video. And Joey Phil Brick said, I should grow my hair out again. All right. So that works. And this is also podcast style. So this is going to be on my podcast as well. So let's get right into it. Best exercises to jump higher. I think there's two pillars. Well, I know there's two pillars, speed and strength. And one of the hardest things to do while you're jump training is understanding where you want to go with your training. Because I think if you can figure that out, that is the most important thing you can do. And I want to give you a little insight in how I assess that with the people I coach and the training I do and how I do it for myself. So first things first, really simple. Or a lot of times someone's really strong, but they're not quick. So if they're really strong, they have big muscles, but they don't move very quickly. For example, change of direction is very slow. Another good example of that same person is they can jump high off a standstill jump. But when they run, it's about the same. So they're not using any of that speed. And I want you to understand that knowledge. I want you to understand how to figure these things out for yourself because you're going to be the only one that can feel these things. Trainers are fantastic, but you have to communicate with the trainers. The best trainers can pull the information out of you and ask the right questions. But if you can understand your body yourself, one, you can train on your own. But two, when you work with a trainer, you'll train even better because you can explain what you're feeling and you can diagnose yourself. Plus, you have to be the one jumping. You have to be the one testing your standing vert, testing your running vert, all these different things. Okay, so we're going with the strong, slow guy. Also, another good test is the depth jump. When you step up a box and you land on the floor and how quickly you get off the floor, it might be very slow for you to do that. Okay, and now that will be showing you that you have a lot of strength. Now you need to hit a speed phase, which would be plyometrics. And I'll get into that after I talk about the other guy. So the other guy is super fast, super bouncy, but doesn't have the strength. And real quick, last week I talked about how to go from touching rim to dunking. And that's where I think everybody should start, which is basically the speed phase. I talked about what you should do when I'm gonna go even more in depth today. But that's where I think everybody should start because it's more about the jump training, jump technique than before you need to get to these phases. So the speed phase where you're trying to increase your speed and strength phase is kind of after you just did the full jump phase. That's kind of how I always structure my training and how I've seen so much success. So start with last week's episode, come to this one. That's why I do this as well. So you guys have a fricking library of things you wanna do. Double checking this is recording. Okay, so the fast guy, that's not strong. All those other things reversed. So say you're running vert is really good, but your standstill is not that great. And if you do a depth jump, you're super quick, but you're just not getting off the ground that high. So you're doing a depth jump, which is you're standing on a platform, you step off and you step off and you get off the ground really quick or you change of direction really quick, right? But you're just not getting up in the air. That means you might be really, really fast, really explosive, but you need more strength. And I would highly recommend you do the full jump phase where you jump forever, meaning like a few months, maxing out how much you have in the tank before you hit that strength phase. And a lot of times you need to get older as well. You don't really need to do a strength phase till later on. You could do body weight type things. But if you're like how I was, once I hit my 40 inch vert, I was pushing against it and I wouldn't, I was plateauing forever. I've been jumping for a couple of years with no weights. It's pretty evident I needed to get stronger because your muscles are producing force when they jump. It's just force off the ground, which is just a combination of speed and strength to create power. It's just a formula. So your muscles are only a certain size and they only have so much power in them. So at some point they have to get stronger and you even have to grow them as a shorter dunk or you have to grow muscles. So they have more surface area to have more strength within them. If a muscle is the size of my fist, right? And you're just packing in as much strength as you can. There's only so much strength that size of a muscle can have. And then when you grow it, now it has more potential for more strength. That's just something I learned from the World's Fittest Book. Shout out to Ross Edgeley. Fantastic book. Again, guys, I'm going to make a whole other YouTube channel. Most likely read, understand your body, understand your muscles, understand what you're doing with the stimulus and what you're causing when you lift weights. There's so much more to lifting weights than just throwing weight in the air and when you're doing squats and which muscles you're pushing with and things like that. All right. So anyway, I'm going to address the question of speed. When it comes to speed, plow metrics are going to be your best friend. Sprints, your sport specific activity, meaning like sprinting or jumping. But when it comes to plow metrics, you've got to push yourself 100%. It's more about the intensity than it is the exercise. There's not going to be one exercise that works. I've said this a million times. You guys have asked this question a million times, which is the best plow metric. They all do different things. If there was only one, everybody would be doing that one. Why do people do different ones? Because they need to get the different angles. They need to hit the different muscles in different ways. Different, different, different. There's a lot of difference between doing a lateral movement side to side to doing a depth jump to doing a box jump. There's all different benefits. That's the key. There's benefits to each one. So my key is do it with intensity. Do a few sets. You don't need to do 50 reps. But if you do 10 reps and you're exploding your hardest, that's better. It's quality over quantity when it comes to the intensity. But you still need to do a lot of reps. That's where you need to feel your body. The trainer's going to help you with that. But also for yourself, when you're doing these plow metrics, jump until you feel that you're jumping lower. And that doesn't mean stop right there. But if you're doing a set and you're barely getting off the ground because you're exhausted, those aren't going to really help you. It's just like burning out your muscle. Easy bicep curl, you're burning it out, burning it out. Once it starts burning like crazy, that's when the work is started. But there's a sweet spot. And I've talked about that in my podcast in the past. The stimulus sweet spot is what I want you guys to learn about yourself. And if you can do that over and over again, hit that sweet spot between where you caused enough stimulus for your body to respond, but you didn't overdo it to train. And don't be so careful. Don't worry about overtraining, especially when you're early. Just don't get injured. You don't want to push yourself and jump and play a game when you're exhausted. But when you're pushing yourself doing plow metrics, safe exercises, push yourself hard, always push harder. And then you learn your limits. You're only going to know your limits when you push them. That's the only way to know where your limits are as if you test them. So that's this week. Plow metrics, do the different variations from a platform to flat ground to sprints to side to side movements to unilateral movements, which means one leg at a time to both legs at a time. Play with them, feel them, work on them. That's how you increase your speed and every single rep explode as hard as you can. If you're doing side to side movements and you're just trying to get as many as you can, that's not going to help. You want to go as fast as you can, as hard as you can, right? When you're trying to lift heavier weight to get stronger, you have to push your hardest to lift that heavy weight. You're not just going to get stronger by doing lighter weight. They are supplemental, I know. But like at some point to get actually stronger, you have to lift higher weights. Same thing is true with speed. Pardon. When you're doing speed, when you want to get faster, you have to push yourself a little bit harder and as fast as you possibly can to break through. That is this week's Dunk Tip. Thanks for watching. I hope you guys are enjoying this. Please leave a comment. And it's really helpful for me when you guys do. So I see the cumulative response. This was a great episode. Hope you guys enjoyed. Excited to show you my journey as I continue to jump. I had a great jump day last week. Dunk day was amazing. I had some fun, almost destroyed a year. And so this channel is all about my journey and your journey. So let's grow, let's jump, let's dunk, let's go. Let's have it. Let's have it. Good time. Toodaloo!