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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.
Hello, everybody. Today, we're gonna be talking about a magical exercise, the secret. The the one thing that you need to jump higher. Yeah. I bet you were just, like, just in suspense, just waiting to know what this secret exercise is.
Speaker 2:I'm dying to know what the secret
Speaker 1:exercise is. The front squat. It'll fix everything. It's all you need to do. Five days a week.
Speaker 1:No. I'm playing. But we are talking about the front squad. Yeah. So
Speaker 2:yeah. Alright. Yeah. Let's talk about the front squad. So Isaiah, talk about when you first got your front squad to infinite levels of strength.
Speaker 2:What happened? Because I remember.
Speaker 1:I jumped higher. First time I iced. I jumped higher. First
Speaker 2:time The podcast is done.
Speaker 1:I remember the first PR I remember hitting, that was a big front squat PR. And it was the first year that I did them was two ninety five pounds. I don't know why I never really did front squats before THP but that coincided, that PR coincided with me, I think it was shortly before touching 12
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:For the first time ever. And it was it was right when I was doing a bunch of the contests. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1:It was like the six months before that, around around that time frame. Then the next kind of period of time where I went crazy with front squats were when I lived in 29 Palms, I got into March which was a huge PR because that was my biggest like, three sixty five was a big milestone for my back squat. When I got to three sixty five front squat, it was together with four zero five back squat and then I tested 50 shortly after, I think like two or three weeks after that. The next big PR was three eighty five and that was right before I got 50.5 with a flight time PR. Okay.
Speaker 1:I'm seeing a pattern here.
Speaker 2:I'm seeing a I was gonna say I'm seeing a pattern here.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So I I agree. And it's gotten weaker. My front squat's really bad right now. Big reason is because my ankles got destroyed.
Speaker 1:My mobility sucks with them.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So that's one of the things I was gonna say is one of the benefits to doing front squat is you're able to stay more upright because the weight's out in front of you, so it kinda functions like a counterbalance. As a result, you typically load more of your knee extensors, more so than the hip. Obviously, you still need a lot of loading in the posterior chain. So typically, when we do a lot of front squat, I pair it with posterior chain work, whether it's heavy RDLs or other stuff, what?
Speaker 1:I also have to say when I hit three forty five that month, I hit a 48 inch vert for the first time. Yeah. Yeah. But I do wanna say there was a period of time Where you're spammed front squats.
Speaker 2:And you didn't jump higher?
Speaker 1:It was when I had back pain.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I was like doing a lot of front squat, didn't necessarily jump higher. And then I think the when I hit three ninety yeah. Yeah. That was that was right before I PR ed my flight time.
Speaker 2:Yeah. That's true. Yeah. So I think well, yeah. One of the things that I was kinda saying is we pair it with a lot of the posterior chain work and it usually comes during cycles that we need to offload the spine a little bit from heavy backswatting.
Speaker 2:So typically I'll put it in, pair it with RDLs or heavy pulls or something like that where
Speaker 1:Deadlift was a
Speaker 2:Yeah, deadlift. So like, typically, if you guys don't remember this, when Isaiah first hit a 50.5 inch vertical, he had a period of time where he did really heavy deadlifts and really heavy front squats. That was like a major focus. And the reason why is because his back at the time was still coming Yeah. You couldn't you couldn't really do both.
Speaker 2:And so we started to increase the intensity in the deadlift, but it was very controlled so that we were able to kind of strengthen some of the intra muscular, or sorry, intra abdominal muscles and get him capable of stabilizing his spine while doing hip extension. And deadlift, when used sparingly, I have seen guys jump higher. When you go too far with it, it's like what we were saying yesterday. You can't you can't do it for too long, too much of anything for too long or it'll you'll go the other direction.
Speaker 1:The dead lift in particular is very important to do it with good technique. Well, by good technique, I I would say, like, we have, a standard of technique where it'll transfer to your vertical. As soon as you start rounding out the spine or getting that, like, thoracic flexion that guys do to to deadlift heavy weights, it doesn't transfer as much. Yeah. Think
Speaker 2:it's just like a it's ego lifting. Yeah. Like it's a it's a it's a vanity metric when you Yeah.
Speaker 1:And a comparison that I would give, it's like doing a like when we queue back squats, we always say stay upright, get the knees forward, which is gonna make you weaker. Like people are weaker in that position, but it's just way more specific. And I see the, like, the pulls, any pull like that. Like, keep a flat back. And if you don't, then it's a failed lift.
Speaker 2:And one of the one of the biggest limiters, I think, with the front squat for you was the rack position. Like, what ended up happening is we got now? Yeah. So we you got so strong in the front squat that your legs were not the limiter anymore. So it made more sense to focus more on the back squat or on the belt squat or hack squat or something else where we weren't seeing technique break down as a result of your thoracic spine not being able to stabilize the weight.
Speaker 2:And then on top of that, it does take a lot of ankle mobility to front squat proficiently. Even though sometimes guys have an easier time because the weight's out in front, like myself, can you kinda counterbalance, it's a little bit easier. But it takes a lot more postural strength to be able to stabilize the weight out in front. And sometimes guys struggle with that. They let the elbows kinda hang down, the upper back go around, then they'll start getting mid back upper back problems.
Speaker 2:Like Josh has that issue as well. It'll be a major focus for Dom in the coming weeks here. We're gonna start really implementing those for him. And that's part of the reason why we started doing it less, was two things. One, he had chronic ankle issues that just kept coming back from stupid stuff playing basketball.
Speaker 2:So it was like, well we can't really load this heavily and we can't do it consistently. And you're starting to get back issues because your ankles are not mobile and you can't hold this rack position with these types of loads. The other reason that we don't do it too, too much is because it sucks and Isaiah doesn't like it that much, which is maybe more of a reason to do it. Yeah. But it's like, you know, doing like, if I give him pause front squats or something like that, is that that's probably one of the most hellacious things, I would say.
Speaker 1:I just hate anything with higher reps.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But front squats especially bad because there's no resting. Like, you've gotta hold that you have to have elbows up. Choked.
Speaker 1:Like, you're getting choked. Like
Speaker 2:Some people like that. Imagine
Speaker 1:a front squat where someone's
Speaker 2:just grabbing your neck. It's like Darth Vader. It's just, like, holding you in place. But it does load the knees relatively more, which I think is is a positive, you know, consequence of it. The downside too, sometimes when guys go really, really deep in that, they start to have butt wink.
Speaker 2:Even though the knees are coming really far forward with you specifically, that's a problem because your low back is a limiter. Especially if you're doing a lot of underbows. I can't push that up too too far, but it's definitely something like I'm considering putting in the next month because we haven't done it as much. Similar to how we were talking about the variety and stuff and having these larger jumps in, I would say bigger deviations in variety moving from one cycle to the next so that there's a more novel training stimuli. And the reason why I think that works is we talked about it the other day is that you're so well trained, you've done so much stuff that you almost need more variety to spur You more on muscle confusion to spur on adaptation.
Speaker 2:So it's not as much the progressive overload because we could hypothetically do front squats for eight weeks and just get that infinitely strong, but I think the variety is where we see a lot of the benefits and then you get a lot less overuse injuries. Like, if I do a progression where I go, you know, pause let's say I did high volumes front squat, then I did pause front squats, then I moved into slow or let's say slow eccentric front squats, then pause front squats, then max effort front squats, then high velo front squats, you're gonna be destroyed. Like, there's gonna be so many overuse injuries
Speaker 1:That
Speaker 2:from doing that.
Speaker 1:That's actually a good exercise that you just brought up, eccentrics. Yeah. We've done them a lot because it's not as rough on the back. Oh, the front squat ones. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Even even when I haven't I think we've done them recently in a front squat.
Speaker 2:I don't know if we have. The problem though with that one is it's just hell. Like, you just putting 500 pounds on your shoulders and lowering it down, I'm just like, you're like, I can barely stand this up. It's crushing my throat and trachea. And like, we went the twenty four hour and did it.
Speaker 2:And people were just like, what in the hell are they doing? You need like two people on the safeties to help. But we've fried your nervous system doing that before. It's like, you know, you've put up some crazy, crazy metrics there. And I think there's a time and place for that, but at your level, your eccentric strength is so high that it's, I don't know if that is really the limiter.
Speaker 2:It's more being able to use the fast eccentric work to preload, generate a lot of tension during amortization, and get out of that position. Like, all the eccentric strength in the world doesn't matter if you can't use it during the amortization phase and get propulsive force out of it. The it's only as good as the propulsive force you can get out of it. And so I think that's why, like, some of the more traditional concentric based lifting is really, really advantageous for you because your yeah. You you you get out of the hole and your eccentric strength is already so fucking ridiculous that it's like it's hard to find something that loads it without destroying your tissue.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Like, think about the leg extensions that we did.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, that was that was
Speaker 1:Those are bad.
Speaker 2:That was bad. Yeah. And same thing with plyos. Like, it's just it's hard.
Speaker 1:Bad, man.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, when you're as strong as you are, it's it's gonna suck. It's gonna suck.
Speaker 1:Every training cycle sucks.
Speaker 2:That said, we're definitely doing front squats next month. Next week. No. Wait. You have a deload next week.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Which is crazy because I don't even feel You feel better.
Speaker 2:Yeah. You guys might not know this, but Isaiah and I have been functioning with chronic allergies and sinus infections. Think I had a sinus infection. I don't know about him.
Speaker 1:I thought I was I thought I was, like, just a sick boy. But it turns out I'm not a sick boy. I actually have a decent immune system.
Speaker 2:His allergies are just horrible. Yeah. So he's now feeling more energetic now that he's unloading we call it unloading his sickness, which maybe we'll do a podcast on another time. But that's pretty much all I have to say about front squat. Anything you wanna add?
Speaker 1:If you guys want us to implement these fun exercises that are not gonna make you wanna off yourself because they're so freaking hard, Go to thpstrength.com. You'll get six free months when you select the year plan. And if you're still wary, like, if you don't trust us fully, sign up for a free diagnosis call.