Should You Sprint To Jump Higher?

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What's up everybody? Welcome to the THP Strength Podcast. My name is Isaiah Rivera. I have a 50.5 inch QUANTITY vertical, which is the highest officially recorded vertical on the planet. This is John Evans, 42 inch vertical off one foot, and he also writes all my workouts. And today we are going to be answering the question, do sprints make you jump higher? But before we get into it, I just want to give a quick shout out to our sponsors over at thp strength.com ORG. If you want to get jump higher and get rid of knee pain, go check them out. They are the number one vertical jump trainers on the planet.They happen to be us, by the way. But yeah, if you're interested in that, go check it out. But let's get into it. I think a good place to start is with our anecdotal experiences with sprinting. If you didn't know this, John PERSON's background is actually in track and field.

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There was a comment we had in one of our previous videos, and there was a guy he was like,

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can you relate all of this to high jump?

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And I was like, well, funny enough, John PERSON, that's what. Actually, I can do that quite a bit.

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So yeah, I coached at Duke ORG. Well, I guess in order of chronologically, I started in high school, ended up working with a guy named Mike Young, who coached at LSU ORG for four years when they won eight national championships indoor, outdoor, or seven or something like that. And then I went on to coach for him, went to Duke and coached there for a year where we won ACC's on the women's side for high jump, first and second place while I was there.And yeah, I've had the privilege to speak with a lot of super talented guys, Shelby McEwen PERSON, the, what's the guy's name from Tennessee, Sylvan Mine PERSON? Oh my gosh.

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I don't remember his name.

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Oh, yeah, Ivan Yuck PERSON, I'ma. Daryl, Darryl Sullivan. Yeah. I don't know why it's still in mind. Oh my gosh. I don't remember his name. Oh yeah, Ivan Yuck. I'm

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Darrell. Darrell Sullivan PERSON. Yeah. I don't know why it's on my mind. And currently I'm working

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with a guy named TJ, uh, Shankar, who is, uh, from Kansas State ORG. So I've, I've worked with a lot

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of fast guys. Oh, I was also with Altus ORG and worked with all those guys. I think that's pretty

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important. A lot of world record holders and stuff. So yeah, a ton of experience in track.

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That was my passion, my first passion, even before dunking.

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I would say I would argue, arguably, spent more time studying that.

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So I know a lot about sprinting, a lot about track, and how to get faster. Maybe at one point probably knew more than I know about dunking even. So, yeah, I think that it is an integral part of any speed and power development program. It is a great training tool. It is a form of pliometric and Isaiah has been on and off doing sprints for five or six years on the training that I've given him. Me personally, I've done a ton, I don't even know, I sprinted three times a week,basically since the time I was 15 until I was 26 or 27. So a lot, a lot, a lot of sprinting and sprint volume. And with my personal experience, as I got faster and more explosive, it helped my high jump a lot. But I did not actually see as much of a correlation with my dunking skill as I would have wanted to.I did not dunk nearly as much as what a lot of these other guys did. I spent more time getting faster, getting more explosive in the weight room, seeing all those metrics come up, but I did not see as much of a return on investmentwhen it came to actually dunking as I did when I focused more on dunking. And I think this is maybe one of the reasons why I've started to personally move away from it as a coach. I think that it is a valuable tool. I think it's a great tool and I like it for specifically body composition. But you know what? Actually, I will say this. When I did a lot, a lot of sprintinging it paid off later onthat's what that's the biggest thing i would say it's not something where you have

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what the heck is that uh it's not something where you have a a quick return on investment it's like investing right you you put that time in and it pays dividends in the long term but in the short term it definitely

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does not have as much of a payoff. So again, quick anecdote, 2020, 2021, training to East Bay LOC, I sprinted three times a week and was doing intensive, extensive tempo two times a week. I did that for three months. My vertical went down a lot. And then come October or end of September, after a D-load, I jumped higher than I ever did, right? I have not spurned it as much since that time, mostly because of my hips and time. I just don't have as much time as I used to, and logistically it's more difficult. You know, we're running a business,so it can be difficult. So that said, and Isaiah doesn't, it's for him not as much of a priority at this point in his athletic career either. And so I would still do it if I were trying to peak and hit all-time highs probably, but I can spend my time more wisely and have a better ROI doing other things, right? So focusing on creating good content for you guys is really important to us and to the business. So I have to spend more time doing that. Dunking on a low-rim, going to be way better use of my time.

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And more fun. And more fun. Yeah.

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Working on my strength and things like that, better, especially for Q foot. And so I've been able to maintain my vertical fairly well without it. And if I wanted to get to, again, all-time highs, I probably would put it back in my, in my training for periods of of time at least so good

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with your experience. I've been sprinting I think my earliest memory of sprinting is when I was 14 13 14 I did her she track meet around the the 100 meter thing in like 13.9 seconds. 13.9. 13.92.

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Really?

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Yeah, when I was 13.92.

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I won the softball throw. Oh, really? They had a softball throw in the Hershey ORG meets.

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And then I forgot what I high jumped at that time. It was probably like 5'1.

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That's not bad, actually, at 13.

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That's pretty good.

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Most people are in the fours at that point.

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Yeah.

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So that was my earliest memory of sprinting.

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We did it in high school when I was first starting to dunk. We would do it for conditioning class. Never measured my times, though. And then I basically stopped sprinting from my senior year of high school up until I was about 21 when I started working with John again. So it was like four years that I didn't sprint. And then I essentially sprinted three times a week for the next three years straight probably with our training.Things that I noticed, I did. I think it was a huge part of getting me in shape early on. I think before, I wasn't necessarily out of shape compared to normal athletes, but when you compare my fitness now to before I started working with John PERSON, my body composition improved drastically. I got a lot fitter, both, you know, just my body composition and cardiovascularly.

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That's still kind of a weakness of yours.

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Yeah, I just became a much better athlete overall. I think I started probably, I was probably sprinting in the high 12s. I think we did after load management.

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I had a video popped up on my feed the other day.

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Really? Yeah. Yeah, I think I was five years ago. You know that? Really? At that UCF ORG track that I did with you guys? That's crazy.

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That's wild. After a year of train, no, after five months of actually sprinting, like the first five months I started sprinting, I tested 12-1, 100 meter QUANTITY dash.

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And then I actually got significantly faster over the next year.

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Like significantly faster. Went to North Carolina GPE. You and John PERSON were sprinting against each other. He was beating me. A lot. And John PERSON went from way faster than meto I was able to catch them. I think the competitive aspect for you definitely pushed your intensity and intent up quite a bit.

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Like Michael Jordan PERSON.

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Michael Jordan PERSON.

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And we didn't really think about it too much. We were on grass a lot and just competing. It was fun. I mean, don't get me wrong. It's always fun to do that. But I would usually gap them upright.And then there was one day where we were on concrete uphill. We were at the park at White Oak FAC. It was like very slight incline. Like very, very slim corner.

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Yeah, very low grade, which I like for hill sprints a lot. I don't like to see velocity drop too much. So, you know, the first one blows me off the line, and I was like, what the fuck? Like that was just a bad rep. And, you know, I kind of was like, oh, you know, it's not a big deal. I might have even, he started first.That's what it was.

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He, we went on his start and he just like out ram me. And I was like, okay, it's not a big deal. You know, I'll get him on the next one was he we went on his start and he just like out ram me and i was like okay it's not a big deal you know i'll get him on the next one so we went on

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my start so i went and he just freaking bolted off the line smoked my ass and then upright is usually where i would start to gap him and he just kept going it was just like i i can't compete and that was when i was like okay okay, now you're fast. Like, I'm not crazy fast, but there was a time where I was low 11s, high tens, and the hundred. And at the time, I was sprinting a lot and doing a lot of plios and I was pretty lean. And, you know, there's all things that are going to help you run faster.And Isaiah, he was, he was rolling.

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And he was having issues with his TFL at the time and his posterior tib. And was that what it was? Actually, TFL at the time and his posterior tib. And was that what it was? Actually, TFL hadn't started yet.

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It was posterity though.

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Postal, yeah. I had to spring my ankle, yeah.

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And so we were sprinting a lot because we couldn't jump too too much at the time, but we still needed a power stimulus. So we were doing it a lot. But his vertical, I think, was 47 or 48 at the time. I think initially.

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It was 46. And then after that summer, was 47 or 48 at the time. I think initially... It was 46.

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And then after that summer, I hit 48 for the first time. I crossed the 12 foot mark. Yeah. I guess we always get confused because of the random testing in Utah GPE.

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Yeah. I never know what happened when. Because we didn't measure the vertex. We have no idea. Probably leaning an inch or two. But anyways, yeah, pretty much we saw his vertical climb up a lot early on from it, partially because of the just normal stimulus. I also want to say later when I tested, so I continued sprinting throughout that whole time.And then the year I tested 50.5, like, so I tested 50.5, the year before that sprinted a ton moved to 29 palms I was by myself and then that was actually probably the highest

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intensity and highest volume that I ever sprinted I tested I tested 50. I tested 50.5

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after sprinting a lot I sprinted a ton highest volume ever for like I would say

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four months and then I didn't sprint for six months And then I tested 50.5 for the first time.

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So you did what I did?

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Yeah, yeah, yeah.

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But that was, like, definitely the fastest I've ever been.

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We were doing, John was having me do, like, 120-meter sprints,

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and I was, like, in literally 120-degree weather outside. So that was definitely, like, the most in- in shape I've been as far as sprinting. I would say I was, knowing I ran 12-1, not in very good sprint shape, I probably was somewhere in the 11s.

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I think that's my all-time best. I think you probably were capable when you were your fastest of low 11s, maybe in the high tens, maybe on a really good day in spikes, but we never,we're never on the track doing max v work

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and measuring it so it's really hard to say you know with that that for guys like you know us that you know without training or in the 11s to get under 11 is difficult because okay with a moderate amount of training you know we're in the 11s we would have to really focus on max v to probably drop into the 10s yeah because that's where we would struggle and then and speed endurance for you and then from there, I have not sprinted, actually.

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Yeah. So a big reason why was your, your PFP, your back, there was just a lot of issues that kind of came up as we...

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And training quality. Yeah, the quality would drop a lot in the weight room.

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And I think moving into the following year before you tore your TFL, you know, it was kind of bothering it. And I was like, all right, well, I want to try to focus on other things. And I was like, do you really want to do it? And he was like, all right, well, I'm not going to program it.But I can increase the quality and the volume in other areas.

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And we felt like that was making more of a difference than.

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We were turning the big stones.

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Yeah.

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And it's a similar thing to what

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you were saying or it's like we have a business to run could could i get the luxury of training an

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extra hour and a could i yeah it's like could i get half a percent better from it maybe but is it worth

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i don't like sprinting is the other thing i hate sprinting uh i'm just like i'm cool training

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yeah training without it yeah that's definitely true.

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And I mean, you like to do what you like to do,

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and usually that's the stuff that you're going to have higher quality with. So in the grand scheme of things of what I, you know, in terms of experience, just based on our two anecdotes and what I've seen in the past, it's very important as a base for having a very high vertical. But at the end of the day, if you're six years in, you know, or something like that or seven or eight years in, you've been sprinting a lot.You got a lot of sprint volume in. You know how to run, et cetera. You probably can get away with not doing it as much anymore. And that's just the nature of long-term athletic development. You start very general and you get more specific over time. So unless you're like, you know, 10, what, probably five to 10 years into your jump training

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journey, you probably should still be sprinting.

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And even then, you still might benefit from it.

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It's just that it's going to take a disproportionate amount of time. And if you're a THP athlete, you might be wondering why sprinting isn't in your training. We found that it was messing a lot. With retention.

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With retention. Yeah. Guys would just not train. They're like, oh, I have to go to the track.

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I'm just not going to do it. Or I just won't train altogether. If I can't do everything, then I might as well do none of it. And then it goes from skipping a workout or skipping sprints to skipping the workout to

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not training at all. And so we were like, well, if you want to do the sprints, ask.

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And it was a complaint. The complaint of our workouts was that they're too

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hard and they take too long. So we started like in the 80-20 rule. Yeah, yeah. But if that's,

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if that's you, if that's you, if that's you, we can put you on an older training. Like, if you want a sprint, we can put you on an older training cycle that has the sprinting in there. But it does add, you know, most gyms don't have a section of 100 meters where you can run.

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So you usually have to go to the field.

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You got to warm up, you know, for 20 minutes. The sprint workout takes another 30 minutes. And then you drive there and then you drive to the gym. It's literally hour to hour and a half extra. I love it.

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It's good if you're like in high score of college.

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There's no reason why you shouldn't be doing it at that point.

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But if you have a full-time job, it's going to be really hard to like regularly sprint all out.

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Unless you really enjoy it and you don't have a wife or kids or a girlfriend. You probably can still, with a full-time job without any of those response or a dog.

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And you got access to a local track near you, you'd be fine.

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You could do it. And it is different if you like it.

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Yeah.

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Yeah. If that's actually something you love doing, then of course, like gonna make time for it yep but yeah I think uh we could go

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into all the physiological aspects of it I feel like in short it's a very good neural stimulus it's an amazing fast short ground contact time activity with really high ground reaction forces horizontally during acceleration and vertically during upright. It's obviously amazing for body composition. I found it to be very effective at working at very high stiffness rates, and it tends to be more specific for one foot. So that, you know, that's a very short, clear, concise reason why it works.In terms of specificity, though, I would say it's probably less specific for two foot. It's maybe less specific than for one foot it's

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specific but it comes at a cost that's what i would say there's also a lot of value it's more specific

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for one foot than two foot there's a lot of value in it during a rehab program as well like because a lot

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of times if you're lower force but higher rfd if you're on load management uh training can get

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really monotonous,

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and then you can also get out of shape pretty easily

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because you can't load the quads as much,

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and you're not doing as much elastic work.

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But it can be a good bridge.

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Like, if you have problems in knee flexion with things being provocative, upright springing is one of the best ways to maintain elasticity. You get in shape. It's fun. You're moving.

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And it can keep you healthy.

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There are injuries that happen from...

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That's another reason which I was going to say.

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From sprinting, like, you'll be more likely to, you know, pull a muscle.

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Hamstring tendonopathy is also, like, really common with it.

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Achilles issues are really common. But specifically for, like, Pateler tendon rehab. Sometimes PFP, upright sprinting is like really good to have in there. I think so too. That's,

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that's a big reason why I took it out actually was during one foot jumping. I was using my hamstring a lot and I was having a lot of hamstring issues on my jump days because I was loading my hamstring so much outside of the jump session, right?

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So I was getting sprint volume in. I'm getting RDLs. I'm getting Nordics PRODUCT, all this stuff. And I kept tweaking my handstrings. Which is specific, but yeah. It's like injuries are also specific.Yeah, exactly. If you have an injury and it's an overuse injury, it's probably because you're doing too much on it, which I was. I was sprinting. So I, cutting that out, helping get healthy and stay healthy, which when I was trying to East Bay LOC, I was trying to windmill off one. That was the number one determinant.It was actually a good point. Like, I don't even remember the last time you had hamstring.

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No, I don't have any issues anymore.

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Whereas before, it used to be like, every week.

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I used to be scared watching John PERSON jump.

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It's just like a ticking time bomb.

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It's not a matter of if. It's a matter when. And I didn't, I think last year I didn't, since

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22, I didn't pull it and I pulled out the spring. So I've learned that about hamstrings is like, you know, if you're a jumper and you have that as a previous injury and it's an existing issue or preexisting issue, it's probably not worth doing. You mean, you can have it in there and you can build into it. And again, as you get older, then again, it comes at even more of a cost, right? It's more taxing. It takes longer to recover and injuries. They build up. So the number one thing that determines you're going to hurt yourself, have you hurt yourself there before. I have a bunch of

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times. So mostly when I was speed jumping, I was learning how to speed jump, pull my hamstring a ton of times. That made it difficult to stay healthy power jumping now, because I pulled it at that point, I think, every other week for like two years because I was just trying to learn to speed jump, and I didn't really give a shit about my body. I was like, I'm never going to break the world record. I'm never going to, at that point, I was like, probably never going to windmill even,you know, whatever, and probably never eats bad. I just want to learn. I want to be a high jumper. So I, you know, use myself in an experiment, suffer the consequences of it. And now I'm like, oh, wow, I probably could have been a lot further along So I, you know, use myself in the experiment, suffered the consequences of it. And now I'm like, oh, wow, I probably could have been a lot further along had I not made thosemistakes. But now I also know that I can't do that as much anymore. So I think for, again,

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a lot of you guys. That's what we're here for the, we'll make the mistakes for you. We'll make the mistakes that you don't have to. Yeah. But again, for a lot of you guys, you're really going to benefit from it unless, again, you have six to 10 years of sprinting experience. You probably should be doing it. Now, if you're in that group of people that have gotten hurt or whatever else, not worth doing.

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Yeah, I feel like it's a pretty good place to end it.

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Yeah, it's a good rundown. If you're watching on YouTube ORG, please like the video. And if you're listening on a podcast platform, give us a fivestar review please and you know where to get training baby thp strength com we'll catch you guys the next video peace out