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Vertical Jump Programs...

Start doing squats and lunges as soon as possible. Since you aren't active, you will probably be pretty sore after your first time. Also, remember to stretch really well each day, being flexible will add inches to your vertical and will prevent you from getting injured while training.


Also you have inspired me to try this again. I think I'm going to do 2 days of lower body lifting, then 2 days of jumping with a lot of bike riding in between for cardio. Also going to stop being a fatass and eat half as much each meal as I do normally.

Thanks to you Cyrone, I couldn't put on my pants this morning.

Remeasured myself.

6'1.5 without shoes
6'5.5 wingspan
6'3 in shoes
8'2 standing reach
195 lbs (Want to get down to at least 185, 180 if possible)

So I should need about a 28'' vertical to dunk. Wow, when I do the math, it's really sad I can't dunk. I would assume I'm probably at 24'' max vertical now, so I think if I stay consistent with working out, I should be able to dunk in 3 months.

Wow, you're black? No racist intention, just recently read that they tend to have longer wingspan.
 
Haha. You and me both, my friend. You have to tell your librarian to get with the times and get those electronic self checkout stands. Easily the best thing my library has ever gotten. There is a lot of freedom in being able to checkout whatever and how many ever you want without some goober looking on. It used to be so awkward trying to check out anything, even stuff that shouldn't feel too weird like if you were just curious to read the Communist Manifesto or Mein Kampf or something that you weren't really interested in other than just to say you've read at, and everybody is looking at you're a KKK member in training. And even worse, they always happened to be decent looking early 20's girls checking it out for you.

Keep us up to date with with how your jumping skills are progressing.

Haha... Yeah, I totally agree on the upgrading the library, I will tell them. Otherwise I will have to steal some other books I want to checkout.

I will make the updates on this thread, hopefully at the end I will post videos while I'm dunking 360ies and windmills etc in a year or so.
 
This is awesome. I don't post much, but this was too good to pass up. I was going to post in the P90x thread cause I am starting today, but I'll do some here because vertical leap is something I will be measuring and is my true goal of doing this.

Some stats.

5'11.5" with shoes
5'10 without
7'8" standing reach
6'2" wingspan
205 lbs (doing P90x and hoping for 185)

21" standing vertical
24" 2 step vertical (seems low as it mean's I am only reaching 9'8" and at gold's I can get past my first knuckle on the rim)

if I'm doing my math right I need to get to about 34" to get to the 10'6" mark to be dunking a gain of about 10"

Some history

I was able to dunk fairly easily back in high school. My highest measured vert was 37.5" my average was around 35" though (only weighed about 170 at the time and was in great shape). After high school my basketball career was over and went to college got married and gained a lot of weight. My highest was 260lbs before I said holy crap and changed things. over the last 2 years I lost about 60lbs, 35 of it in the last 5 months (did insanity 2.5 times). In that last 5 months I gained about 4" to my vert pretty much just from the weight loss. So I'm hoping the loss plus a little more training I will be able to dunk by the end of the year. After P90x I'm going to do vert specific training to gain more.

Anyway... Good Luck Enes. 17" gain in a year or less is going to be very tough, but I think is doable. So keep at it. You've gotten a lot of good advice so far. Squats, lunges, dead lifts and Plyometrics are the best for vert gain, I believe. Also you should check out this site https://www.jump-science.com/ He has a ton of free videos and stuff on his website you can look at and put together your own program. Or you can buy a pre-laid out program he created for like $11 or something like that.

Keep us up to date with your progress. Anyone that is doing this. I love to here about peoples fitness goals and progress. It keeps me motivated.
 
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Dalamon should get in on this. I know he is 6'4, so he should be on the cusp on being able to dunk, or maybe he can already.
 
@DarkMount,

I'm glad you posted man, amazing post. Also kudos to you for coming to 205 lbs from 260ies, if you were able to do that, I'm pretty sure you can go on to 185lbs and gain that 10 inches.

Plus that 37.5" is very very impressive, actually it's crazy. That kind of leap is almost enough even for me to dunk. May I ask how old are you now and the time when you have 35+ inches VJ?

I'm also thinking making use of P90X and its contents, I just need more digging on this stuff so I could prepare the ultimate program for myself.

One novice question if you could answer for me, and Cyrone Torbin, I'd like to hear your answer as well if you'd like to answer.

These days I'm doing several sets of squats and lunges etc just to see my condition on this kind of exercises, I'm using light weights on squats like 10-15 lbs, and it kills me, Cyrone warned me on soreness but hell, I didn't expect this much, should I go on weighted squats and even increase them? As I understand so far, exercises with min 50-55% of the body weight would be much better for strength gain, should I go on to that immediately or should I prepare my body for such pressure.
 
Rest until your legs feel better. You should only be doing lower body lifting twice a week. You probably want to keep it to once a week until you start getting use to it.
 
Rest until your legs feel better. You should only be doing lower body lifting twice a week. You probably want to keep it to once a week until you start getting use to it.

Twice? I was thinking four per week, so that would be overtraining I guess.

How about the weights subject?
 
Here is a BBC documentary I watched yesterday on youtube, it's about general exercise, nothing worthwhile on athleticism or vertical jump but there are some really interesting points, especially from the scientist with the weird british accent. If you have high body fat level or diabetic problems, it may give you a few ideas.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tyQSzx0ofto
 
^^ I actually was a part of weight study, and as a side study I did this thing about burning calories and sitting. Basically they hooked me up to all this stuff and had me sit in a chair and measured how many calories I burned. Then they had me tap my foot at various speeds. They were trying to find out if tapping your foot/shaking your legs while you sit in a chair would have a significant effect on calories burned while sitting.
 
^^ I actually was a part of weight study, and as a side study I did this thing about burning calories and sitting. Basically they hooked me up to all this stuff and had me sit in a chair and measured how many calories I burned. Then they had me tap my foot at various speeds. They were trying to find out if tapping your foot/shaking your legs while you sit in a chair would have a significant effect on calories burned while sitting.

So what did they find out?
 
@DarkMount,

May I ask how old are you now and the time when you have 35+ inches VJ?

One novice question if you could answer for me, and Cyrone Torbin, I'd like to hear your answer as well if you'd like to answer.

These days I'm doing several sets of squats and lunges etc just to see my condition on this kind of exercises, I'm using light weights on squats like 10-15 lbs, and it kills me, Cyrone warned me on soreness but hell, I didn't expect this much, should I go on weighted squats and even increase them? As I understand so far, exercises with min 50-55% of the body weight would be much better for strength gain, should I go on to that immediately or should I prepare my body for such pressure.

Wow, sorry for the late reply. Been really busy at work.

I was about 17-18 when my vert was the highest (35" average) I am now 32 and figure I only have a few years of dunking left when I do get there. So I have to act fast.

Cyrone covered most of this already, but...

I got most my leap from plyometrics back in the day, so I'm no expert in weights, but always rest your legs at least one day before doing it again. If you vary the type of workout every time you do legs you can rest them even longer. I'm actually ok with doing leg weights 3 days a week. Sometimes I will flip from my normal workout and do legs M W F and do upper body T Th. But make sure you rest. Push yourself, but within reason. If your legs can't handle it. Take a break.

Add weight every time you go to the gym. It will help you really push yourself.
 
Wow, sorry for the late reply. Been really busy at work.

I was about 17-18 when my vert was the highest (35" average) I am now 32 and figure I only have a few years of dunking left when I do get there. So I have to act fast.

Cyrone covered most of this already, but...

I got most my leap from plyometrics back in the day, so I'm no expert in weights, but always rest your legs at least one day before doing it again. If you vary the type of workout every time you do legs you can rest them even longer. I'm actually ok with doing leg weights 3 days a week. Sometimes I will flip from my normal workout and do legs M W F and do upper body T Th. But make sure you rest. Push yourself, but within reason. If your legs can't handle it. Take a break.

Add weight every time you go to the gym. It will help you really push yourself.


In my opinion, if you haven't any serious knee or back problems, you have the years to dunk even in your 40ies. Most professional athletes can't compete at their late 30ies but it's because the competition is just another thing. One can however can be in a very good shape and dunk for instance even in the 40ies, because all he has to do is regular exercises and a simple well nutrition. For example from my neighborhood, childhood friend of my father was a professional soccer player, he retired about 15 years ago and now almost 50 years old, but he's in tremendous shape and everytime they play their monthly astroturf field games, he absolutely dominates everyone on the pitch including the 20 year old good players.

Thanks for the advices especially about the resting. As a novice guy on the exercise subject, from the learning journey of my last two weeks about exercise and general fitness, I now understood how the nutrition and resting the body is important as much as the exercise itself is.
 
Vert Measuring video.

Nothing special. Just my first attempt before I got going on the program. Actually got a bit higher then I expected. If I can reach this high I am probably closer to about 10'2" on my max vert. So that might actually make my max vert around 30" still. Am I wrong on this? Standing reach of 7'8".

I'm going to try to do one of these every week or two to measure my progress.

Anyway, just thought I would share.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C9IdbpR71aE
 
I have the worst knees on here and I can still jump higher than anyone on here. The best jump program there is is called genetics.
 
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