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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.
Ladies and gentlemen, there is a new highest jumper officially recorded. We consider anything official where you measure the thing you're touching and you measure your standing reach on camera, And I never thought I would see a legitimate 52 inch jump, maybe higher, maybe fifty two five on the actual jump. His name is Dylan McCarthy. Look him up on Instagram. He is five nine and he touched twelve one.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:For a
Speaker 1:rep, I was struggling last session to touch twelve one and I'm four inches taller with long arms.
Speaker 2:So So I do Yeah. I do have the video of him measuring it because I think that a lot of people are gonna be, you know, skeptical or whatever, but there he there's some confusion. And I was I was gonna share the video, but it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1:By the way, I do wanna make this point because a lot of people there's a lot of people that will have crazy tests over the years. And if I don't acknowledge someone's test, it's because I didn't see them measure the the measuring device or and their reach on camera. But I will that's why I mean, I've mentioned multiple times Dak, you know, beating me fair and square and him being a freaking monster and it's because his his reach in and the thing he touched was validated, like, on camera.
Speaker 2:Mhmm. And there's so many times when people have fudged it over the years. We won't name names, but I'm sure if you guys are watching this, you you probably have some idea. But it's been a chronic issue in 2020. We saw it.
Speaker 2:We, you know, we we've seen it a handful of times from a specific coach that just does not yeah. It just doesn't wanna doesn't wanna reach the way that they're reaching in flight, and that's a big problem. I mean, if we really wanted to standardize it, we'd do it on the tippy toes, honestly. But for the sake of it, we'll just the the reach one is a is a big because you can you can fudge, like, six inches, dude. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, legitimately six inches. You know?
Speaker 1:Well, it's not just the not just the reach, but it's also measuring the device.
Speaker 2:Oh, the vertex. Yeah. The the vert trainer too. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Because I never thought when I first tested 50, I didn't know that they could be off. I don't know why. Didn't nobody really talked about it at the time. Mhmm. But it might have been off by probably an inch.
Speaker 1:I did choose the straightest vert Vertex they had at at Duncamp at the time.
Speaker 2:But you did it again?
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I did it again. I measured it when I did it. But if, yeah, if you're if you're not measuring what you're touching, it's just like rim heights.
Speaker 1:There's some hoops that are nine nine, some that are are 10 feet the same view.
Speaker 2:Way, way flimsier. Like, you're talking about something that's, like, not bolted to the ground or a wall. Like, you know, it's literally a piece of plastic or, like, aluminum that is 10 or 12 feet in the air. You know? It's, like, a lot of room for variance there.
Speaker 2:So we always we always try to measure it. And the Vert Trainer has done a really good job of being pretty reliable as is because there's so there first, there is a I can show
Speaker 1:the video on here if you want. I have it
Speaker 2:on the phone. You have his video? Yeah. So oh, this is perfect, actually. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So you can see they've got a ladder, tape measure's level. They've Dylan is trying to flatten out the tape measure as much as possible. And there you go. One forty five. So right where it rounds and touches the ground, and then his brother is at the top measuring it.
Speaker 2:So the thing is when you look at it, it's maybe like a quarter of an inch off, but he also touched a quarter inch of the bell. So it's like it's about as, you know, as legit as you're gonna get 52. Fine. You wanna call it 5175, that's fine, but it's it's 52. Like Like, the bottom of the bell
Speaker 1:would have been fifty one seven five, and he touched above the bell.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Exactly. So it's like
Speaker 1:Like, high jump. Like, if this is an Olympic sport, fifty one seven five, but the actual jump itself was 52.
Speaker 2:Yeah. It's it's a I mean, the other thing too is it's hard to get the tape measure perfectly flat. These are kinda semantics. They kinda matter. They kinda don't.
Speaker 2:But either way, 52 inch vertical in my in my book and just a crazy freakish performance, which I never thought a 52 was possible. I'm not gonna lie. I I didn't even think a 50 was possible for a while. I thought Dak probably would at some point, and I hope Dylan cherishes this record because Dylan, Dak is he's more talented than you. Okay?
Speaker 2:And if he he's he could probably test fifty two five. Espinosa is another freak athlete too. He might, you know, in the future, probably probably do that. So for now, we'll take you know, the THPSt will take the crown. I don't think it'll be on our head for long, but we're gonna we're gonna do
Speaker 1:our best. Dude. He's too young. There's no Yeah. I mean, there's
Speaker 2:more in the tank.
Speaker 1:There's more in
Speaker 2:the tank. I I haven't even talked about I haven't even talked about the specifics because I was gonna make a YouTube video, but I'm just gonna go ahead and and just lay this out for you. Okay? He did the same training that he's been doing his entire life for the first three months with me, but I periodized it. So I figured out everything he was doing.
Speaker 2:It was a shitload of stuff, and I basically said, okay. I'm gonna take this information. I'm gonna perfect it so it's a good periodized plan, and his vertical didn't budge. Like, it was stuck at 49 using the same system that he was using. Even with good purization, and it makes sense.
Speaker 2:Like, the specificity was pretty low. There were a lot of issues in it with the training. And then I basically said, okay. We tested this multiple times. You've now tested a few times with it.
Speaker 2:You're around 47, 48, you know, on the look
Speaker 1:up I'm gonna look up when he tested a 49 too because I think he was at 49 for a while before It
Speaker 2:was before it was before I started coaching him. I don't know how long. But and there's a lot of details here to, like, what he was doing and why it wasn't necessarily even bad that I could get into the science of. But in short, we just intensified. We intensified and we got more specific.
Speaker 2:And longitudinally or across his entire career, that's you're gonna do better if you're doing more intense, more specific training. I don't care what you're doing. Track and field He tested in September 2024. Oh. So it took So I started coaching him on
Speaker 1:November, December, January, February. So five months before he worked with you, he tested 49. He was stuck at 49.
Speaker 2:Then And I did three months doing it.
Speaker 1:We're at eight so we're at eight months of doing the same trainings plateaued.
Speaker 2:And then get ready for this. So I changed his cycle in June. Alright? Changed it in June. He tested 50.
Speaker 2:How long did it take him to to test 50? Probably two months or something. Might have even been one before he broke into 50. Really? Because he broke he broke 50.
Speaker 2:Yeah. He broke into fifty first, and then he hit 52.
Speaker 1:Was the 50 after he
Speaker 2:visited us? He was on the he was doing, like, periodized training for, like, a month or two.
Speaker 1:I cannot find his
Speaker 2:Like, he tested it on Oh,
Speaker 1:I found it. I found it. His 50 was November 18. Oh, so that was
Speaker 2:couple months ago.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So the June, July, August, September, October, no. Five months to to test 50.
Speaker 2:So then he so, basically, he for perspective, he dropped down to, like, 47, 48 using this periodized plan that I wrote and perfected. Then he got, like, sick and a handful of stuff probably because it was overtraining syndrome, honestly, because he was training too much. So we switched. I was like, look, dude. We gotta this isn't working.
Speaker 2:Okay? I you've you've gotta we can't just keep hammering volume. At some point, you've gotta increase intensity. And by intensity, I mean, like, you're doing heavy cleans. You're doing heavy squats.
Speaker 2:You're not doing a ton
Speaker 1:of reps.
Speaker 2:You're doing translating human performance.
Speaker 1:Which we've always wondered what would happen if you take a really naturally talented guy and just put them on a THPStall Mhmm. Training. Because, like, we always say, like, what if they get worse? Like Yeah. What if you gotta do that jump in 49 just from, you know, forty nine fifty?
Speaker 1:What would happen if you put him on THPS?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And Dylan, you know, he had a crazy level of performance. And, like, Dylan's not, like, insanely fast, or he wasn't like like, his backswat was strong, but he couldn't he couldn't belt swap one thirty five when he was here. It was weird as hell.
Speaker 2:But then he put three fifteen on the bar. I like, okay. You're pretty strong. But, like, it was stressful on his joints. Like, he wasn't used to putting that much weight on the bar, but his legs were like a hydraulic press.
Speaker 2:So and his clean sucked. Like, was probably, like it was horrible. It was maybe one thirty five, one fifty five. It was really bad. So we taught him how to clean.
Speaker 2:We taught him, this is what I want you to do. This is how I want you to move for your squats. This is how I want you to do it, and his mobility is crazy. So I knew he had a lot of the requisite qualities that you have to see in an athlete that is going to break a world record. So for example, when I first started coaching you, I saw your movement quality and I said, yeah.
Speaker 2:I can load this. I can get him really, really good because and I I see it pretty pretty commonly. When guys have really good movement quality, it's way easier to build in training load. You guys What
Speaker 1:do you mean by movement quality? Like, how would you define that?
Speaker 2:Specifically how you squat how you squat and your hips. I can tell based on someone's hips and ankle mobility if I'm gonna be able to if they're gonna reap all of the benefits of the training that I write because the intramuscular loading will be higher. Meaning and it's why I tried to, like, change Josh's squat, but there there comes a point where, like, anatomy is anatomy, and you can't you you can work around it as best you can, but it's harder to make someone better who like, you want to to first fix the movement quality. Right? That's the first thing you need to do.
Speaker 2:Teach them how to deep squat, teach them how to hinge, teach them how to clean. Like, make sure they understand the fundamentals of moving, and you had that. I didn't have to teach you how to deep squat. I didn't have to teach you I mean, I had to perfect your clean a little bit, but, like, for the most part, your movement quality was Yeah.
Speaker 1:I could I could squat, and I could hinge.
Speaker 2:Yes. So perform. Yeah. Your back was flat. Your shoulders were in the right position.
Speaker 2:You and when you have that, you can you know, it's like a it's like a skyscraper. If you don't have a good foundation for that skyscraper, it's only gonna be built so high before the wind and the rain and the storm's coming, and it gets knocked over. So if you've got a really, really good foundation that you're building on, then it's way easier to build that skyscraper up to the top, to the highest level, you know, to the highest floor in the world. And so having that base foundation of of a good good movement patterns is really important. And and even more so, if you can have really good sprint technique and you have good plyo technique and you move well in those, then it even makes it easier.
Speaker 2:Like Dude,
Speaker 1:you're getting me thinking because now I'm thinking about, like, just all Your mic
Speaker 2:is about to fall off. Yeah.
Speaker 1:We're we're gonna just talk like this. I noticed a lot of, like, elite two foot jumpers. Not noticed. Like, I'm just, like, thinking about it, and I'm just like, alright. Me, you got Kilgannon, Lee Peck, Miller, Jay Clark, all these guys, like, they have good like, they can squat.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Piotrack, like, Grubowski, like, all these dudes just, like, just have really good squat.
Speaker 2:But there's there's a specific type of, like, squat when it comes to, like, limb lengths and stuff that is also idealized. And it makes because there's, like, two ends of it. There's people that have really bad movement quality, but they're so genetically freaky that it doesn't matter. Like, their ankles are so wound up that they'll still jump high. It just makes it harder to load them in squats.
Speaker 1:I think CJ. CJ is a good example.
Speaker 2:CJ is another one. And then there's the other side of the continuum where it's like someone like Nate. Like, Hoop and Nate will also have the potential to probably test 50 someday. I can just I can tell because his movement quality is so freaking robust. And so Dylan was like that.
Speaker 2:I when I saw him move, I was like, yeah. This is gonna be easy. Like, you're gonna get so much better so quickly when you start really training, but I still slow cooked it because I wanted to see what is gonna happen if he just perfects what he's currently doing. You know? I I want the data.
Speaker 2:I wanna know, is is this the best vertical jump program in the world? And I just don't know it. You know? And it get it flies in the face of everything I know about vertical jump training and training science. Turns out it doesn't, and he got worse in that first three month period.
Speaker 2:Not worse, but he didn't get better, you know, and and didn't improve. And he was sick all the time because it was overtraining syndrome. So then I said, look. Let's let's pivot. You know?
Speaker 2:You can still do some of the stuff you're still doing, you know, and and we'll kind of blend things. But then eventually, I was like, okay. Stop doing all that shit and just do what's on the piece of paper and just do it well. Do what's on the piece of paper and do it perfectly. Do it to the best of your ability.
Speaker 2:So Dylan doesn't really film training content. Like, he really doesn't film himself training, but he'll send me videos from time to time. And his clean got progressively better. His front squat got progressively better. His back squat got progressively better.
Speaker 2:And there's still a lot of room to eke out performance gains. Like, his front squat is not good. Like, it is ugly. So I think once he continues to learn these movement qualities and stuff and really pushes up his metrics and and all of these other aspects, he's gonna jump even higher. Like, I I honestly think he'd probably hit 53 in his lifetime.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Maybe higher. No doubt. Bro, I I hit 50 when I was 23.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Unofficially unmeasured vertex 50.
Speaker 1:23 or 22?
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:Twenty twenty two. How long ago was that? I don't even remember. Yeah. 23.
Speaker 1:I was 23 years old.
Speaker 2:You you played such an you played such an integral role in this, though, because I was able to test so many different things with you and figure out so many different unexplored injuries that I didn't even know existed with jumpers. You literally created, like like, I was, like, the first path of, like, stupidity. Yeah. And you're like and then yours is, like, not stupid, but just the result of good training. You know what I mean?
Speaker 2:And just, like, okay. Stuff's gonna pop up. And then it's like, now you have this
Speaker 1:Now there's a
Speaker 2:It's like, there's this perfect iteration that we've clearly defined and we know is, like, super important for long term athletic development. And Nate is like Nate is gonna be he's literally got probably the the best heels.
Speaker 1:He is on his heels. Like
Speaker 2:Literally. Like, Nate Nate probably has the best opportunity.
Speaker 1:I was thinking about this. Well, I it was while I was at the dentist. I'm sitting there, like, as the whole time, I'm thinking about, like, Dylan and and jump training and all that. And I was thinking, I was like, damn. If I would've known this stuff at 16 till, like even if I was, like, 12 and I knew, okay.
Speaker 1:Start jump training early, build the the resilience in your tendons, all that stuff, get all the reps in, and then do those right amount like, the right type of training on, like, 15, 16. And, like, I think I would have been around, like, around 50, around 19, 20 years old.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I think so too.
Speaker 1:What what would have happened. And then I started coaching
Speaker 2:you at 20, I think, and you were already so banged up. Like, people don't know how banged up I got Isaiah. I inherited like, when you see the freak track and field athletes, they get inherited by a coach, and then they, like, magically jump higher way later in their career. I'm like, dude, that's awesome. So, like, I usually inherit athletes.
Speaker 2:I don't it is very rare for me to inherit an athlete who is healthy and talented. That almost never happens. I always get them kind of broken in some regards. And then, like, not always, but but it definitely happens. Then I have to fix them first, correct a lot of the problems that they had because of, like, development.
Speaker 2:And that again, that's not always the case. But in your case, it is definitely true. Like, you were your knees were so bad. They were horrible. Probably the worst I've ever seen, on par with the worst I've ever seen.
Speaker 2:You know, you couldn't do a bodyweight squat without immense amounts of pain. You couldn't front squat the bar without, like, a six or seven. Like, it was bad. So, you know, like, if you didn't have a lot of that stuff and we were able to change the jump volumes and get the quality higher and then you didn't take a year off lifting and all that different stuff, I definitely think that's that's true. And then on top of that, the the IT band stuff, like, you know, that like, PFP stuff, all that stuff is, like, stuff we learned over the years that we addressed as it popped up.
Speaker 2:You know? And it it's not like the training really would probably would have changed, but we probably would have known faster how to fix it for sure. Yeah. And it makes coaching way easier. And the thing is too, that system's improving over time.
Speaker 2:Like, what Ben has done with Mason is truly astounding. Like, it actually is so impressive what he's done with Mason.
Speaker 1:Who's Ben? Who's Ben and who's Mason?
Speaker 2:Ben Moxness and Mason Baker. So I had, like, a pretty good blueprint of what I needed to do. And then Ben was like, okay. I have my DPT. Let me further perfect the system.
Speaker 1:Ben's a coach, by the way.
Speaker 2:He's a coach at the coach. Yeah. He's a coach here. That's why we hired him.
Speaker 1:Podcast every Saturday and Sunday. Go check him out.
Speaker 2:So we basically took, like, that and he's just, like, perfected it even further. And it's what he did is he basically took my the protocol for getting them healthy was pretty similar, but then the hard part that I was struggling with was getting them figuring out what what loads they could handle safely and still train. And Ben was able to figure out a way really, just by changing the frequency. The load the loads were exactly the same. The sessions were pretty much exactly the same.
Speaker 2:It just was more spaced out, and then guys were able to work through a lot of cartilage issues because they had enough time for their cartilage to it was, like, resilient enough to handle the sessions so they didn't piss it off, and then they could bounce back between sessions as well. So it's like a double whammy that was really, really effective for guys. So, yeah, going going back to Dylan, Dylan kinda has the benefit of all of this different stuff, but I wanna get into the actual testing of how he did it. So he comes in. We go through this, you know, six month cycle, and he tells me, hey.
Speaker 2:I'm planning on testing my vertical soon. I'm like, alright. Let's do it. Let's unload. So I put him on, you know, good old fashioned John Evans special.
Speaker 2:It's a great d load, one of my best. And he, you know, is like, oh, I'm I'm gonna have, like, an outdoor session or whatever this week. I don't have ideal conditions or whatever, and then comes back the following week and just text me. He I think he called me, and I was busy, and then he texted me. He's like, I just tested 52.
Speaker 2:And I was like, what? Or 51 and a half. So then he realizes he actually raised the vertex, not lowered it because he can't do math, and he was actually 52. So he had measured, like, you know, the everything prior and stuff like that. And then I was like, look.
Speaker 2:You need to go back, set up everything the exact same way. There's a level on the vert trainer. There is you know, it it has the poles all set up so you can change, you know, so there's no lean and you know that the top is what it says it is, and Andy's done a good job, like, accounting for that. So goes back, remeasures it. That's what you guys saw on on film.
Speaker 2:And his reach is as legit as it can get. Like, he was here. I pulled his arm out of socket. I think he's five ten, and his reach is seven nine, which makes sense. Right?
Speaker 2:Like, five ten, seven nine. I'm six foot. Mine's seven eleven. Like, I have long arms. Don't have as long like, that that tracks.
Speaker 1:Oh, he's like that same height and reach, I think.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it it, like, makes it makes sense. And if you watch the video of him reaching, he's like you could tell he's like like, his rib cage is dislocating to to try to touch the bell. So a super legit test. The flight times are pretty well corroborated with it too.
Speaker 2:And, you know, flight times aren't perfect because you can change the way you land, but you at least wanna see it in, like, the nine sixes, nine sevens if someone's jumping truly high. You're gonna see the flight times corroborate that. I've seen Isaiah get over a second by fudging it on, like, a 46 inch jump. So, like, you can fudge it. You can definitely fudge it, and you see it a lot.
Speaker 2:But, yeah, it was super legit. He went from doing what he was doing and then switched over to the training, and I think it's a testament to what you and I have, over the years, evolved the training to, which is like, we will make the best better, and that's the hardest thing you can possibly do. It is the hardest thing you can do. If you if a coach inherited Usain Bolt at nine fifty eight, did everything he was doing for six months or three months and he ran slower and was like, look. We're we're gonna switch the system, and then he ran faster, you'd be like, shit.
Speaker 2:What are they doing? Like, that's essentially what happened with Su. Like, that's why people are so invested with Sue Bingxian, I think is how you say it, because he was injured. You know? They inherited him, and they ran faster.
Speaker 2:And that's why, like, that's why I'm so invested in it too. I just wanna know what the best way to make people better is. So, yeah, kudos to Dylan. Huge accolade. There's a lot of differences between each of you guys.
Speaker 2:We I again, I think his verticals ceiling is crazy high, but how high it is, I don't I don't know how high he'll go. I'm glad that we have the world record holder again for for now.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:They're coming. They're coming. Anything else
Speaker 1:you wanna add? When I get the same training, go to thbstrength.com. Link is in the bio or the pinned comment. Get six free months when you
Speaker 2:get the year plan. I'll see you guys next
Speaker 1:time. These are