Can Kiwis Fly? *Vids as Requested* + 5 Wk Success!

[Mark.]

Can Kiwis Fly? The Time I Learnt to Dunk (Hopefully......)

So I have recently jumped on board the training program outlined by "The Jump Manual" in an effort to regain my athleticism of yesteryear's.

Taking a bit of inspiration for Jaosming I have decided I will post a bit of a journal/logbook here. Doing this with my mate so we should keep motivated.

Bit of background:

Age: 27
Height: 183cm, 6'0"
Weight: 70-74kg, 154-163lbs

Was a middle distance runner in high school and had a pretty decent vertical, could dunk in warm ups, usually off a lob or something (struggle to palm the ball). Trained myself to that stage following the Air Alert course which ultimately injured my knees as I developed a bit of muscle imbalance. That coupled with my University experience left me not running nearly as much over the first four years out of high school and 8 months ago weighed in at 88kg (194lbs).

So while not really overweight, I was not the lean runner physique I was used to. Fast forward to now and I have been eating a shot load healthier, cut back on most of the boozing, gotten back into running more often and have worked a lot on strengthening my body over all.

The Goal:

Vertical Jump Increase: 8-12 Inches.

A friend and I have decided to try out the highly rated jump manual with an aim to add roughly 8-12 inches to our verticals. I would like to be dunking by the end of this. Nothing special, just a two hand flush would be fine as I am more interested in all the other gains to be had from an improved vertical along with the improved first step I am expecting to gain.

We executed our first session last night and were quite pleased by the exercises, a lot more variety than Air Alert and not focusing on repetitive impact on the joints. Needless to say there were some achy knees afterwards (didn't help I tried to show my gf how high I could jump, landing in casual slipper like shoes), but today, no lingering pain.

Anyway I am going to record my progress here. The post following this I will give date reports of my jump height etc and throughout the thread will share my thoughts, milestones and pains. I suspect this could be terribly boring, but enjoy if you do read

[Mark.]

Training Log

Date: 06/05/2013 - The Initial Measurements
Standing Reach: 7'10" (irrc) (I know this won't increase. Just for reference)
Standing Vertical: 19.5 Inches
Notes: This one was done at the end of our session, foolishly we forgot to do any measurement of anything before starting. We will measure our heights before the next joint session. Bit shocked by this, wonder how much higher I can get pre workout.

Date: 20/05/2013 - Rim Attempts
Standing Reach: 7'10"
Standing Vertical:~ 26 Inches
Running Vertical:~ 28 Inches
Notes: Just attempts on a Rim, going by my attire must have been a cold day, so that is excuse #1

Date: 13/06/2013 - Jam Time!
Standing Reach: 7'10"
Standing Vertical: DNM
Running Vertical: 30 Inches
Notes: Whoops, forgot about measuring a standing Vert in all my excitement. That will be the next step. Vert could actually be a bit more or less, just an estimation of how much space is needed to get a ball over the rim.

[Arcane]

nice we can have a 3 way dunk contest in 2016

[Mark.]

Haha that is probably how long it would take for me to be able to dunk. We shall see.

[Mark.]

First Impressions (Session One)

After only one session I guess my thoughts are rather limited however I would have to say it is more enjoyable than Air Alert. There is a lot more variety to the exercises and you feel like you are working a range of muscle groups.
Some of the exercises are not as easy to do though in terms of equipment. We did the plyo session last night even then it required some weights and a medicine ball. Was pretty entertaining though when a family came down into the apartment garage to get in their car to find us leaping up in the air touching a medicine ball against a concrete beam!

Was a little disappointed with my Vert, although as mentioned in the opening post I have lost a lot of athleticism over the nine years since high school. I also have to keep in mind that it was post workout so muscles would have been fatigued.

Anyway, first day down. Will likely measure out Verticals every seven days and make log entries at least that frequently.

[Andrew]

nice we can have a 3 way dunk contest in 2016

Four way...at least until I pull a LeBron and withdraw from consideration at the last minute.

Good luck with the program Mark, interested to see how it works out for you.

[shadowgrin]

What was your vert during your 'prime'?

[JaoSming]

Needs video

[Mark.]

Andrew, Thanks, I am optimistic about it, but not going to get my hopes up too much.

shadowgrin, Not too sure unfortunately. I guess I could work it out to an extent. Haven't grown since then, so standing reach 7'10", could just dunk, so I assume that would require me getting my hand to about 10'6"-11'0" but that is with a run-up, off one leg etc where as we are taking our measurements from a standing jump.

Currently a 19.5 inch vert is getting me to 9'6" ish so I guess I am somewhere 5-10 inches short of where I was at. So a conservative guess would be 25-28 inch I guess.

Just off the top of my head and very rough.

JaoSming, Haha I will work on it. All I will be able to show right now is failed attempts, still would be entertaining though.

More Thoughts:

Last night (1 day after first session) had a game. Didn't notice any soreness in knees etc which was good. Didn't really test out jumping ability though. Went for a run this morning and knees are feeling a little stiff, have a game this evening as well so will be interesting how I end up after that. Should be ok as long as I ease into a warm up. Been doubling up on and off for a while now so reasonably confident body will hold out.

Tomorrow is the next major session so will only be doing that and nothing in the morning then I think the weekend is rest days, so only a run chucked in there I think so by day seven I should be well rested for a re-measure of the height.

Next Monday's session we are planning on doing on an Astro turf which will be a nice change from the concrete floor of the carpark we did it in this week.

[JaoSming]

JaoSming, Haha I will work on it. All I will be able to show right now is failed attempts, still would be entertaining though.

well, progression as well

[Fresh8]

Good luck Mark!

[Mark.]

Sit, Cheers mate.

6 Week Update?

Well I have not been as diligent in updating this as I said I would but no need to fear I have kept going with the program and have had some pleasing results.

I am guess it has been 6 real weeks maybe 5 proper training weeks since I started. I say "proper" as we quickly realised we needed to change the days around etc to suit both other sporting commitments and also to allow us decent rests leading up to our actual games, so we had a couple of weeks where we did two plyo in a row to realign the days.

So Monday plyo, Thursday Weights became Thursday Plyo, Sunday Weights with a week of Monday Plyo, Thursday Plyo (etc) bridging the change.

Set-backs

All in all there thankfully hasn't been anything serious yet *touch-wood*.

We have been lucky enough to have access to the Gym at the girls high school where I coach. So trying to be all money efficient etc I cancelled my gym membership planning on using the school's facilities. Mistake. So far it has been great for use of the courts, but in terms of weights equipment..... 1 barbell with limited weight to add has been less than ideal.

So we ended up doing two lots of weight training there, but quickly realised we couldn't do some of the exercises properly or the ones we could weren't really pushing us properly. So the cancelled gym membership has been reactivated.

Progress

Unfortunately I have been too lazy to purchase some chalk, so we haven't had many measure-ins so far. Game wise I have definitely experienced an increase in leaping for rebounds and pleasingly, lateral quickness, which has allowed me to disrupt the passing lanes more.

We did video ourselves testing our jump height on the hoops in the gym on the 20th May so about two weeks into the program. Few Viedos:

Two Foot Standing Vert

phpBB [video]

One footed with Run-up

phpBB [video]

So going by my standing reach of 7'10" and grabbing the rim easy enough I would saw that gives me a 26-28ish inch standing jump Vert at that stage.

So nearly a month on from there now. Was at the School last Thursday about to start plyo, though we had been shooting round for quite a bit. Decided it was time to actually try a few dunks....

First 5 or so attempts were complete fails with a mix of self lobs (seemed to recall this was the easiest way for me to dunk years ago) and gentle glide ins not really doing the trick resulting in some spine jarring rim rejections. Then seemed to recall that when I was learning to dunk in the past the key bit of advice that got me over the top was "Just attack it hard" or something along those lines. So changed my approach a little and Walah!!

Attempt number 14

phpBB [video]

Pretty happy with that, and a little surprised as I feel like it won't take much to get two hands and then maybe two feet (although always been a better 1 foot leaper). Only 5 weeks in and considerable gains so far so really pleased with the training.
In terms of vert I guess to get the ball over the rim you need to be able to reach to at least 10'4" maybe more, but keep it conservative for now. so 10'4" less my 7'10" standing reach gives a 30' running vert. Hoping to improve even further on that.

To be realistic, I think our initial measurements were rather flawed, firstly it was post plyo workout and secondly using a felt tip marker on a concrete wall is probably not that accurate. But nonetheless satisfying improvements so far.

From here/Tweaks

Obviously this is still early days. The program has no exact timeline on it other than stating after 14 weeks to contact him to discuss how to modify your program from there.

So far we haven't even been utilizing the program to it's full capabilities. There are instructions for exercises on off days which I hardly even follow, I am to focus on adding these more over the next few weeks. Also due to the failed attempts at doing our weights sessions at the school, we haven't really progressed our weight loads so will be looking to up those in the coming weeks.

I have been working on my "All Inclusive Sporting Schedule" which will include all workout details as well as sports games and other types of training that I look to do during the week so will post that once I have completed it.

[Mark.]

Also something else: New Uniforms for one of my teams courtesy of Ben (Arcane)

[JaoSming]

Congrats on the dunk & progress

[Mark.]

JaoSming, Thanks mate! That was actually my third successful attempt, but the first videoing, was tempted to get more but figured I shouldn't over do it considering I still had to do the actual training for that day!

[Arcane]

nice dunk man and of course great unis

[Mark.]

Arcane, Cheers dude. Yeap unis are swell. Will have to rep mine in the dunk contest

[Arcane]

Arcane, Cheers dude. Yeap unis are swell. Will have to rep mine in the dunk contest

Haha good man

[Andrew]

As the others have said, good stuff on your progress so far!

[Mark.]

Andrew, Thanks Andrew, have deffo felt the reward of it all so far.

[hova-]

Wow, great. You're acutally way smaller than me (I'm 1,93m) but can dunk better (I manage to do a dunk every 20 attempts, mostly just failing to get the ball into the basket properly). I am also working out more now at university, but havent done any exercises that explicitely are for getting more vertical.

Your vid is motivating me to do more than just upper body strenght though, as I think that with 1,93m I should be able to dunk it easily. Do you know any internet site with the excercises you're doing?

[bowdown]

Nice. That dunk looked legit.

[Mark.]

hova-, Hey man, thanks! I have to say the training is really paying off and is actually helping my knee strength as well (I know, crazy eh!) so I am very happy.
Like you I was just doing general conditioning/strengthening stuff which I think was good, but this program actually seems to be maintaining all of that as well as increasing vert. Will PM you some info of the program I am using, still haven't finished my personal workout schedule yet though.

bowdown, Thanks man! More to come



Update: Just recently took a rest week (well rest week and half) and seems to have been pretty effective. Quickly have discovered that dunking is a very large part technique, don't need nearly as long a run up as in that video and can two hand dunk now and am working on two footed dunks.

The benefits to the rest of my game are really paying off too, get up a lot higher for rebounds now and contesting shots is a lot better. Now just need to work on my first dribble skills to beat my marker on the perimeter.

More videos etc to come.

[Andrew]

Sounds like the results have been great so far. I might be getting back into my local comp sometime in the near future, so I'm thinking I might have to give The Jump Manual a look.

[Mark.]

Andrew, Yeah I deffo recommend it. Just a solid mix of training that IMO isn't as susceptible to injuries.

THAT BEING SAID...... Picked up my first training injury the other day doing dead lifts. Usually we use the safety bars so you don't have to lower the bar as low (ie to the ground) but this time we decided to go all the way down. Felt fine on the night but the next day was rather tight in the back, so couldn't do much for the next few days. Rest and a decent Sauna seemed to fix it over a couple of days though. Back into it tomorrow night.

Any tips for dead lifts? My mate does them fine, but then he is quite a bit shorter than me so doesn't have as far to go to put the weights on the ground. I may just stick to the Smith Machine for them.