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Isaiah Rivera, pro dunker, and John Evans discuss anything related to maximizing athletic performance, and in particular, jump training. Strength and conditioning, jumping technique, weight room practices, and general fitness and health tips and advice are shared on this podcast.
What's up, guys? Welcome back to the t's be strength podcast. My name is John Evans. This is my best friend and business partner, Isaiah Rivera, and he's out traveling doing can you disclose any
Speaker 2:Dumb man stuff.
Speaker 1:Stuff. He's doing stuff.
Speaker 2:Not competing. We're just
Speaker 1:He's big time. He's big time. He's big timing me. You know? Actually, he didn't big time me.
Speaker 1:He showed up. So yeah. It's a late podcast. You guys have probably noticed a lot of videos, on the channel, and the reason why is because we're trying to share the highlights from from different videos that we've done over the years. There's hundreds and hundreds of videos that there's amazing content in, and maybe some of you guys haven't seen that and you just want the highlights.
Speaker 1:So we've
Speaker 2:There's golden nuggets
Speaker 1:system.
Speaker 2:All throughout our videos that are lost because they're in the
Speaker 1:middle of the
Speaker 2:video that nobody watches.
Speaker 1:We're time traveling. We're time traveling again.
Speaker 2:Title it according to what we talk about. So you can literally just look for a topic you're interested
Speaker 1:in. You could literally just type in basically anything. It's crazy inventory right now. So if there's something you're really interested in, right now, we're just kinda we'll get into that another time. But there's a lot of content out there, so it's gonna keep coming.
Speaker 1:So be on the lookout for that. You're gonna have to look for the podcast a little bit, but I'll I'll try to make the thumbnails a little bit more obvious. That way you guys kinda know, and I'll put it up on transistor. That way you guys can watch it on Apple and Spotify. You know you know we
Speaker 2:can upload the videos to Spotify?
Speaker 1:No. But people
Speaker 2:like, I listen to I watch videos on Spotify, and I it hit me the other day. Was like, why don't we I know. Upload the video file in here?
Speaker 1:We probably could.
Speaker 2:Especially when we do, like,
Speaker 1:really good how to do that. Yeah. Yeah. That would be that would be really good. But today, we're actually gonna be talking about squat depth.
Speaker 1:And the reason why is because, as you know, I have really bad hips, and I've been studying extensively my favorite Russian scientist, who you guys know is Burke. In his book, he talks about how he wanted to use half squats, and he couldn't because the athlete's spines were snapping in half. He also mentions how full squats were, like, one of the best things for his triple jumpers and high jumpers because he was predominantly coaching those two cohorts. And one of the things that I was kind of confused about when looking at a a full squat, not not confused, but something that just kinda crossed my mind is in research, how they dichotomize. Is that the word?
Speaker 1:Categorize, I guess, is maybe a better word. How they categorize squat depth. So it it gets a little bit fuzzy because they'll say, you know, half squat or full squat or quarter squat. And then other times, they'll give the amount of flexion. So for these that you those of you who don't know, all the way open, I believe, is I wanted to double check this so I didn't say it wrong.
Speaker 1:So when you're standing completely upright, you are in a 180 degrees of knee extension. And when you go to 90 degrees, that's implying it's 90 degrees of knee flexion. So when I'm at 90 degrees of knee flexion, I'm actually gonna be in a very different position than other people. And the reason why this can be the case, and there are important implications to this because I think that it's important to understand when you're looking at squat depth and comparing partial ranges of motion and things like that. So if you guys can't see my screen, I'm sharing it right now, but it is me in what looks like 90 degrees in knee flexion.
Speaker 1:But how far is my hip above how far is my hip crease above the top plane of the knee, Isaiah?
Speaker 2:Pretty freaking high.
Speaker 1:Really, really far. Right? And so the reason that this is possible, and I guess where it gets confusing is people think that 90 degrees of the knee is parallel. And then they're that's not the that's not the case. If you're at parallel, you're probably at, like I mean, if I was at parallel, I'm probably at, like, a 100 and, I don't know, a 120 degrees of flexion.
Speaker 1:Right? Whereas Isaiah might not be that far down. And the reason why there's a big discrepancy is because, one, of ankle mobility and, two, your proportions. So what's your anthropometry? If you've got, you know, really long femurs and and really flexible ankles to balance and stay upright, you're gonna be in a lot of knee flexion.
Speaker 1:And so that that's actually where I'd say you shine, right, is that your ankles are more flexible than most people with your limb lengths. I would confidently say that. And the reason why it's important is is two things. One, when you are in more flexion, you are changing the amount of cross bridging between myosin and actin. So you have less cross bridging, which means that you are weaker in that position along with the second thing working against you, which is the fact that you are creating a very large external moment arm.
Speaker 1:And that means that you need to generate a lot of force internally at the muscle in a very compromised position physiologically to to overcome the weight. So why this is relevant to me. Right? Well, in one foot jumping, we don't how much do we flex our knee? You think, like, 20 degrees?
Speaker 1:We go from it's basically, like, a 180 degrees to maybe you flex thirty, forty degrees tops. Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And so we know that specificity indicates that the more specific the knee joint angle that whatever exercise you're doing, the more carry over it's gonna have. So if Isaiah is doing a full squat, that's actually gonna be relatively nonspecific for him from a joint angle perspective. But if you and even the cross bridging is probably not crazy specific. But if you look at the amount of knee flexion he's in, right, like, you're only looking at the hip crease relative to the top plane of the knee, you probably don't look like you're very deep at all. But if you look at the actual amount of knee flexion, I would say you're probably I mean, do you know exactly?
Speaker 1:We could probably pull up a screenshot
Speaker 2:real quick. Yeah. That's go look at a video.
Speaker 1:But it's it's more than 90 degrees. It's far more than 90 degrees. Right? You're in a
Speaker 2:Yeah. As soon as you mentioned the topic for this video, I started thinking about my squatting. Because when I've looked at my half squats and put the like, quote, unquote, half squat, you look at my knee, and it's actually in quite a bit of flexion.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It's a lot. And that's because lot of times are so long and your tibia is long.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And a lot of times, the extra depth is, like like I've, like, bent more at the hip to go, like,
Speaker 1:four Like, the bars lowering and, like, you're flexing Yeah.
Speaker 2:But the knees are kinda just staying at the same angle. So, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about. And the taller the athlete, usually, the more knee flexion I guess, yeah, like, the bigger the the longer their legs are, the more knee flexion they're getting at, like
Speaker 1:Well, I think you probably have, like, there's probably more knee flexion, but you're not gonna have more knee translation. So that what happens is a couple things. One, you get the wrapping effect, which is what the sensation is when you bounce out of the bottom. Basically, your calf is sitting on your thigh, and there's some other aspects to it that off the top of my head, I'd I'd have to
Speaker 2:crazy style.
Speaker 1:Nounce the crazy style. Yeah. So, yeah, that's gonna be one one implication. Right? That makes it a little easier and why some people are actually better at deep squatting than squatting in parallel.
Speaker 1:I would say you almost fall into that category. Right? Like, can bounce out of the bottom. Now you're a different breed. You're a different breed now.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You
Speaker 1:don't you don't bounce on a crazy
Speaker 2:Mibiscus is not like it.
Speaker 1:I would say it is riskier. And you asked me this the other day. You were like, can you work on it? I think you can. I just don't know if it's necessarily worth it, and I think that the risk far outweighs the reward because the more flexion you put yourself in, the more you're cranking on the meniscus.
Speaker 1:And unless you have like, some Olli lifters, like, they're when they're down, they're down, but it's like their thighs are so fat that, like, they have the wrapping effect. They're, like, a half squat, and they could just, like, bounce out of the bottom and get a ton more force. And I guess the, you know, the other implication I was gonna say is, so you're in more knee flexion at the bottom, but then again, the other thing working against you is you're now at a worse length tension relationship, but you have the benefit of the wrapping effect and kind of the stored elastic energy that you're getting out of of bouncing out of the bottom. And how this, I guess, relates to long term periodization is, one, we know that you need to go general specific. So if you're in a scenario like myself where maybe you you don't have great hip mobility, you need to find a way to squat as reasonably deep as you can without putting yourself in, a a painful position.
Speaker 1:And then especially as a one foot jumper, I think that's probably less concerning, you know, in in terms of the long term progression, especially if you're gonna do, you know, verks kinda progressions. I think you can work around it. In the past, people would say, like, oh, quarter squats or damn back, always you say. It's all it's a spine exercise. But the belt pretty much alleviates that.
Speaker 1:You know, you can load as much weight as you want, and you can just max out force. It's like, of course, you're not gonna get some of the benefits that you have of, like, you know, being at end ranges and loading. You know, there's some it's a pretty potent hypertrophy stimulus. You know, that's you're you're not really gonna be able to do that, but you can still get hypertrophy because intramuscular tension is one of the larger like, a bigger determinant. So you just put more weight on the belt and you can you can squat more.
Speaker 1:So how this plays out? I guess one thing is the more the knee moves in front, okay, irrespective of how deep you are, you need to generate more force in the muscle. And so if you're squatting and your knee is as far forward as it can possibly go or you go up on the toe even, you know, let's say you're doing a sissy squat or something like that, you know, you're putting yourself at a huge mechanical disadvantage in in that position. The the moment arm is really, really big at the knee, but you're not loading the hip. And we need both of those, which is why I like a high bar deep back squat.
Speaker 1:And then or I like to you know, when guys are on the belt, I like the pulley to be right in the middle of their foot so that they're loading, you know, balance between the hip and the knee because we don't necessarily wanna just be like, imagine if you didn't have an ass and you just had all quads. Like Yeah. You'd look ridiculous, and you probably wouldn't jump as high if you developed, like, your other triple extensors. So, yeah, I think in terms of long term periodization of what you would do, you know, you start at those deeper ranges, you get really specific, which we don't do too much because the risk is relatively high in terms of your PFP and your cartilage. And then, you know, it's it can be more provocative, I think, on your on your knee sometimes, like, at the tendon.
Speaker 1:Is that the would you say that's the case for half squats? I mean, barbell deep on your toes is by far the worst, you said.
Speaker 2:On the tendon?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Half like, if you went heavy enough, I think it I don't think it would matter. I think it could still be
Speaker 2:No. I I mean, I'm thinking about when I've done, like, 500. Usually, back is probab but you but back isn't that bad. It's not that bad.
Speaker 1:No. I'm saying I don't think about the belt, like, on the belt.
Speaker 2:Oh, PFP.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It would be You know what's funny? I was you get it do you get it above the knee? Like, a knife sensation? I was having that today, brother.
Speaker 1:I was like Yeah. Not like you. I kinda pushed through it honestly because I'm I only have, like, how many more sessions? I think I have, like, six more sessions or something. So I'm not too worried about it.
Speaker 1:But, you know, at the end of the day, you you kinda have to ask yourself, like, what's the goal here? What are we trying to do? You know? What what's the goal of your back squatting? Because if your if your goal is to get good at deep back squatting, to get good at back deep squatting, that doesn't necessarily mean anything.
Speaker 1:You know, you kinda have to take a a little bit of a deeper look into it. Like, what are we doing here? While we're building volume, why are we building volume? Well, there's I'm not a biochemist, but there's physiological adaptations that take place when you have high time under tension, when you've got, a lot of reps, when you're doing full range of motion and you're at end range, there's you know, we maybe you have or, like, gearing. You have muscular gearing taking place or maybe the the muscle fascicle or not fascicle, the penation angle is is changing as a result of hypertrophy.
Speaker 1:Maybe you're you're using that as a general stimulus so that when you get specific, you can you can build off of it. Right? Because, hypothetically, a half squat, you you should be able to lift more weight and it is more specific. It's more specific angle. And it's more physiologically specific because you're in that specific angle.
Speaker 1:And maybe and then maybe it's like, you know, there's tons of ways that you can increase specificity. So in my case, I've been squatting deeper, if you guys have watched my story. Isaiah, have you seen my story today? You didn't see it.
Speaker 2:I've seen story. These days.
Speaker 1:That's fair. That's true. I didn't send it to you either, but it was good. It was good. And, you know, it's like, I'm using that as a building block for the power work to come.
Speaker 1:You know? And it's not necessarily like it's arbitrary. I'm I'm trying to increase force production. I'm trying to add physiological fatigue. I'm trying to add neural fatigue.
Speaker 1:I'm trying to add metabolic fatigue. I'm trying to increase the size of my type two fibers. You can do all of those things in the half squat or a quarter squat even. You know? You can achieve those goals.
Speaker 1:But, yeah, I think that that was just, like, something on my mind that I was like, I kinda wanna offer it to talk about this because it's been relevant to me. Do you have anything you wanna add to this?
Speaker 2:I'm trying to think of an actionable takeaway
Speaker 1:from Start start deep. Start deep if you can. Start at high reps, and I would say build into exercises. You need to surf the force velocity curve, but you need to surf the the force. And you can only get certain forces at certain contraction types.
Speaker 1:So, for example, you cannot exceed your eccentric force generating capacity in a muscle fiber in an isometric condition or a concentric condition at max force. But guess what? If you're doing a submaximal isometric, then it it falls lower than a maximal concentric. Or if you're doing a submaximal eccentric, that's far lower than your force generating capacity in that exercise. So you could theoretically start with slow squats and then go to sub maximal isometrics and then go to you could probably then pair isometrics with high volume concentric work because they they're similar, you know, similar spots on the force velocity curve.
Speaker 1:And then you could then you can climb up into peak max isometric strength, and then you could work in or you could actually, what you'd probably do is go max concentric, then you would bleed into the max isometric, then you could bleed into super maximal eccentric, and then you are at the tail ends in ballistic exercises, you know, where you're at the top of the eccentric, VLO, top of the eccentric forces. You're at the highest know, I mean, really, you're gonna have to go from slow to fast. You you can't just teleport your way to 360 degrees of extension per second. Right? You've gotta go from zero to three sixty.
Speaker 1:And, you know, then you're you're at the tail ends of of that, and specificity is at its absolute highest at that time. So, you know, you can you can use those tools. And then when things are really specific in that side of things, that's whenever you actually need to go the other direction with the squatting and need to get more general. So, like, go back to the high volume squatting. Go back to the pauses at submaximal loads.
Speaker 1:Go back to the slow lowers. Like, those are the times when you need to be less specific, you know, the full range of motion squats. That's why we keep full range of motion squats in year round. Yeah. I think it's just like a fundamental fundamental building block and keeps people healthy.
Speaker 1:That's why slow squats are in there a lot of the year because they're sub maximal, and there's, a lot of benefits to to health and keeping guys healthy. You know? It's general. It's general. It's very general, and it lets guys do the specific stuff.
Speaker 1:So, yeah, I'd say that any other key takeaways here for squat depth?
Speaker 2:No. I mean, those are that's you covered the big stuff.
Speaker 1:Yep. And then the range of motions follow the same trend. So go deeper to more shallow across the year. And then when it's really specific, you need to be at ranges that are not specific in the weight room. That's when you need the most general work.
Speaker 2:To survive the specificity.
Speaker 1:Yeah. To survive the specificity. And that's when dunking is I mean, that's kind of what you're doing now. Right? You're about to move into the really specific time of year.
Speaker 1:We're not we're not doing anything fancy in the weight room. If you guys watch the sessions, they're they're not I don't wanna say boring because it's important. It's it's like, we're not reinventing the wheel right now. We're actually doing stuff that's really easy. The stuff that's specific and sexy and is gonna make them jump higher is the dunk sessions, you know, the the the jumping that you're that you're doing or even the spring to some extent.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Chocolate throws, stuff like that. Like, that's the specific work. But at the end of the day, it's we've gotta do a lot of general work and stay healthy and and drop all of the physiological stress from the weight room so we can put those adaptive reserves to something else. I'd say that's a that's a pretty good takeaway.
Speaker 1:Right? Mhmm. Pretty good key takeaway. So, yeah, this this podcast was on squatting and progressing it and depth and all those things. If you guys wanna know how we do that specifically, there's a ton of free content that we put out for you guys, so definitely check that out.
Speaker 1:You can look at Ethan Prosetti's programming that I did for him. I'm also gonna put up Cody Pierce's at at some point in the near future here, assuming it's still saved to the the the cloud on StreamYard. And if you're interested in coaching, Isaiah, where do they go?
Speaker 2:Tsbstrength.com. Link in the description or the big comment. If you wanna sign up for a vertical jump deficit call, you'll get on a call with one of our team members. They will find the biggest thing stopping you from making progress, and it's free. And then if you want to, you can put a deposit down to try the six week program that they're gonna help build for you to fix that weakness.
Speaker 2:And if you do every workout, you get a deposit back, making it essentially free. Again, thpstrength.com. Link in the description or the pinned comment.
Speaker 1:We'll see you guys next time. Ciao.
Speaker 2:Peace out.