Today is gonna be one of the most important topics you'll ever hear if you want to jump higher and get healthier as a jumping athlete. My name is Azera Vera. I have the former world record vertical jump trying to break it again, at 50.5. Now it's 51. Trying to get a fifty one five.

And this right here is John Evans. He is my coach, and together, we have a business called thpstrength.com. Today, we're gonna be talking about doing something called a needs analysis, which is, in my opinion, what separates people getting results versus not getting results on a program. It doesn't matter how good your program is. If you can't do this for yourself or have someone do it for you, which we're gonna talk about why that's important.

I'm saying coaches need coaches. We always like to say. We're gonna talk about that, some stories behind it. And if you want to have this process done for you every single day when you first sign up or if you ask the coaches to do it at any moment in time, go to thbstrength.com. We're currently running a sale six months three six months free when you buy the year plans.

Half as cheap as if you go month to month. It's also in the pinned comment below. So having said that, I guess, John, if you wanna talk about the struggle you were going through yesterday Yeah. And I guess the last few weeks and Yeah.

Kind of. So the this one, I I we can start with the story. So, basically, I've been in a little bit of a training not not training rut. I I wouldn't call it that, but, okay, if you look up on the Internet who the best jumps coach is in the entire world, who's the best coach for one footers or who's the best coach for two footers, you're gonna see THB strength pop up. Right?

You're gonna see Isaiah and I pop up. And that makes it very difficult to bounce ideas off of other people and learn because I have to like, I tend to be the source of information for a lot of people. And so, like, for me to learn, I need to spend a lot of time in textbooks. Like like, AI is so like, AI doesn't it can't it can't do what you want it to do. And I've tested this and tried it and I've fed it data, I've fed it textbooks, and it just can't it's I don't

know. And I'm gonna butt in here. The coaches that could help are usually, like, Olympic coaches that gatekeep a lot of information. Or they're dead. Yes.

So

it's like

It makes it tough. It makes it tough to learn.

Yeah. And even then, the coaches that gatekeep, they I don't know if I've I've I've studied their practices and tested it, and I've not had success with it. And so it's pushed me away from wanting to do some of that stuff because I've had more success testing things that and on top of that, people that I know that have tested their stuff many, many times in comparison to many of the systems that I've tested are less their systems have been less effective than my systems. Say that all to say, it makes decision making incredibly, incredibly difficult when you're trying to when I specifically am writing my own program because I'm biased by my experiences, and it can be difficult to decision make because of that internal bias, and it's hard to remove that bias. Very important aspect because I was sitting down trying to write this training program for probably, like, three weeks because I had a hamstring pull, rehabbed it back, went back out, didn't really reactivate it, but this is, an ongoing thing with myself because I think I can handle more than I can actually handle, and that is the bias.

And that's what causes me to have these repetitive flare ups, injuries, whatever else. Cammie Colville sometimes has a similar thing because he tries to do too much too soon, doesn't consult anyone, and then pushes too hard. And I've seen it happen quite a few times with guys who aren't good about communicating. So as a result of that, I've had to, what would I call it, outsource. I needed I needed input from my brain that wasn't me, and the closest person to that is my dear friend, Isaiah Rivera.

So

So I wanna I wanna explain a little bit from my point of view. So I I've been watching John do a lot of testing over the last few days. He he's in the weight room a lot. He's in a lot of force plate testing. He was looking back at when me and Donovan did force plate testing.

We were basically feeding or he was feeding that stuff into AI, feeding it textbooks, seeing if we compare the data. And a lot of it a lot of the recommendations that the AI was giving, we did not like. They're And that's what we mean by, like, to use AI effectively, you have to be an expert in the field that you're trying to use it for, if that makes sense. If you use it to learn, it could be feeding you the wrong information. A lot of the information it gives is based off of the context.

You might be giving it the wrong context or not enough context, and it's just you can go into a bad rabbit hole that's not even the right rabbit hole you're supposed to be in, and you might

not even know You don't even know it's the wrong rabbit hole.

Because the way a lot of these, like, like, large language models, you know, information, it's very confident. And you'll think it's the truth when it might not be. So that wasn't working. Mind you, I'm just seeing I'm, like, like, in the background just observing.

Other other other point of view here. Right? I was using it to specifically take ForcePlay data that I didn't have a platform for. So, like, some people will use Python to code so that you can analyze the data and create graphs, right, like, for force plate data. Like, that's what a lot of people do.

If you just plug in force plate data to, like, Claude or ChatGPT, it'll essentially take all that information and create the graph for you. Like, it'll, you know, reduce the noise. And if you give it the sampling rates, you tell it what you tested it on, you have the you have it at a TXT file. Point being, you get some pretty graphs, really graphs very, very quickly. But the recommendations it gives you based off those graphs are stupid as hell, like, And it wasn't until I was, like, looking at the recommendations, and I was like, this is like I see the logic behind this, but it's just it's bad.

And even when you take the AIs and fight them against each other, it's still bad. And it just came back with basically, like, well, John, you're the expert. You tell us.

Because the AI the AI is probably using our podcast to try to answer questions.

It's like

So so I'm Ridiculous. To say I'm seeing this from my point of view. I'm just observing. And, you know, John, like, we get on a call yesterday and he's like, I'll tell you it's been really frustrating. I basically spent hours on this and got nowhere.

And then I was just like, do you wanna hear my 2¢ on this?

And I said, yes.

Yeah. So when I my 2¢ was basically and I got this from our podcast with Rolf and then from a conversation we had yesterday. One of the conversations we had yesterday is John studied one foot jumpers who have actually gotten better. If you really delve into it, there's not a lot. There's a lot of genetic freaks that get to a certain point, and they just never get better from there.

The guys that did get better, what what did they do to get better is they jumped a lot, and it's very resilient athletes that were able to handle jumping a lot for a long time, which is what we preach. You have to do the thing.

That's not novel. Yeah.

The most specific thing to get better. So I was thinking about that, and then I

was that equation, Isaiah. What happens?

John blows up. His hamstring, specifically, blows up.

But you can't do that.

Don't have to do it. I've seen it probably four or five times now where John will get in the best shape of his life and then boom, hamstring pull, which is normal when it comes to high performance. The higher you push that performance, you're also flirting with injury. And training jump training is is basically how close can you get to that, and and you're just playing a balancing game where you're getting really close but not pushing yourself over the edge where you you get an injury. But pushing close to it is what is what dry is driving performance and adaptation up.

So I thought about that. Okay. My my hypothesis, basically, when we wrote this down, I think if John, in addition, if you plug in max effort jumping once a week, so and I and I defined it as get 10 to 20 truly max effort jumps. When you see John, probably 90% of the sessions he's posted, they're not max effort. Like, he might be running fast or whatever it is, but his good jumps look different.

And one of the things I asked John in the news analysis is what changes in your technique when it's a truly max effort jump, The last stride lengthens. So if you think about the one a one foot jump, there's the penultimate in that really long stride. His gets markedly longer when he's actually doing a good max effort jump. But that's way more stressful than hamstring, hence, the common the recurring hamstring pulls. So I was like, okay.

He needs to do that once a week, in my opinion, in addition to, like, the blocking and tackling of our jump training.

And Isaiah made a great point. He said, what you're asking yourself to do he said this yesterday, actually. Because I basically came to him, and I was like, I need help. I need your input. I don't even think you said you wanted my input.

I was like, Isaiah, I need your input. I just I got to the point. Was like, I need you to tell me what to do because I'm frustrated with this, and then this is what we came to. But he said, what you're essentially doing is you're asking yourself, like, the or what you're trying to do for yourself is, like, asking me to go do a 100% effort jump without paying attention to my IT band whatsoever. Oh, it's gonna blow up.

Like, that's that's the biggest constraint.

Because I I told them I told them and I I always think in terms of constraints when it anything, literally anything in life. And I was like, okay. Another Another name for constraint is a bottleneck. Something think of, a filter. You have a big filter, and then there's water flowing through.

But if it's blocked, whatever that blockage is is what's determining the flow that comes out through the other end. So you can do any everything right in training, but if you're hurt, the output is gonna be limited by that injury, and that's the hamstring. That's the bottleneck in my eyes, for this. And I told him, I was like, there was a a couple of things I said yesterday. One of them was you're too smart, so you can talk yourself out of the right decision, basically.

Like, going into a training session, John can basically convince himself to do the jumping or the sprinting or or whatever it is. So, yeah, he's prone to letting his bias of wanting to do a certain exercise or whatever come in. And then the second thing I told him is I was like, it is like me. Right? I can do all the training correctly.

But if my IT band's hurting and I can't full send up an ultimate and get into a lot of compression and lower, If I can't handle that, I'm not gonna jump high. It doesn't matter how good my training is. I could have done an entire training cycle perfect, every set, rep, everything, but if my IT band is preventing me from max effort compression, is is not gonna happen. So I was like, alright. We need to address that.

And then I told him, I was like, I don't think writing the training is how I'm gonna be able to help you best. I think the best way to leverage me is basically having running a needs analysis for John before every single workout, which is actually what John does for me. And I think this can help you guys, this process that we went through, basically.

Remember, the key here is removing your bias. So while we we can tell you what to do, Isaiah knows this. I know this. I do it for everyone. I had a call today with Demetrius, one of the guys that helps us out at work.

He knows this, and you still have to have it done because you're going to innately let what you want to do blend into what you actually need to do. And those are two different places, and it can be very easy to make the wrong choice because you're you what you wanna do is a strong desire, and you've gotta kill that desire. And you need to lean into the desire of you need to change your desire to what you need to do, and so it's important to have someone there to check you. And that's what I was

thinking very well. I'm gonna share this note, but before we get into it, who is this for? If you have any history of injury, you should be doing this. Even if you're currently healthy, you should be doing this. If you don't have a history of injury, you should still learn this because you will run into injuries.

That's I wrote a mental training guide for our THP athletes. That's one of, like, the laws. Eventually, you will get hurt. Nobody's perfect. Nobody is perfect.

Nobody has perfect discipline. Nobody has perfect self control. Eventually, something will happen, and that's just the nature of driving for human performance and adaptation. So we basically ran this, and you can zoom in.

You can zoom in on this day, actually, if you command the

You can apply this. If you have back pain, PFP, tendon pain, whether it's in the knee, Achilles, wherever it is, you should do this for whatever, like, your bottleneck injury is. What and then if it's a previous injury you've had that's not a current injury, I want you to think in terms of what could happen. So right now, John is healthy. His hamstring does not hurt, but I asked him, what is every instance that it has ever pulled?

And hamstrings are a little bit different from tendons where you generally, like tendons, can work through, like, a two out of 10 pain, sometimes, a three out of 10 pain. With muscles, you don't wanna do anything where you're feeling that grabbing sensation. Or if it's super sore, you don't wanna work through that. So I told him, with everything that has ever pulled it. So we got clean from blocks with when the hamstring was already pulled coming in.

By the way, these were every time I've seen it. I've, like, been there. Off backboard two handers, that's always happened. Another one jumping wise, max effort one foot jumping. It's he said it's almost guaranteed to pull it if he comes in feeling tight or sore.

This is where I asked him, okay. What changes on max effort jumps? And then running wise, if it's if he comes in with it feeling tight and then he pushes a 100%, it'll pull. In the first 15 meters, he's never pushed when it's feeling tight, so we don't have data

And on

then I asked him, okay. Not feeling tight. Have you ever pulled it? And there was only one time when he was racing me. So the conclusion from this, okay.

Sprinting is actually pretty safe because if it's not feeling tight or sore coming in, you can generally do it, which is good because we can in my head now, I'm like, okay. How do we address the bottleneck? Okay. We can train the hamstring by doing that. And then where I was inspired by Rolf in these next couple questions, Rolf, if you haven't listened to the podcast, I highly recommend you listen to the last two podcasts with him that we put out.

He coached Soobing Tian. I don't know how to say his last name.

Soobing Tian. He's the fastest accelerator ever.

Yeah. The fastest ever.

Mind you, he was well, he was the assistant coach with Randy. So Randy's the head coach. We're also

the assistant coach. And Roth told us that he he never has any hamstring injuries, but something that's like kinda contrary to what you normally hear because you see a lot of content out there about bulletproofing your hamstrings and how you need to train the hamstring and you'll prevent muscle pulls. Ross does, like, almost no direct hamstring work because guys are sprinting. They're stressing out the hamstrings all the time. They're training the hamstring, so he doesn't wanna he sees it as, like, overloading it.

I've seen this so many times too. More and more and more. I've I've agreed. I strongly agree

with this. Yeah. So when I so then this is our next question. Okay. When you I asked them, when you pull it, are you usually doing hamstring work?

And the answer was yes. And it's like the typical hamstring stuff that we have in in THP. And what happens is the the usually, there's, the mechanism mechanism of injury. He'll do a lot of hamstring work in the weight room. It'll get sore and tight feeling, and then he'll come in feeling like that into a session or a running session, whether it's tempo or or max sprints, max Vivo, and that's when it'll pull.

Mind you, one other thing I wanna say, most of the programs don't even have close to the volumes that I do or the intensities. And most of them don't if I push hamstring volume up, I almost never have high volumes of sprinting or it's accessory, like, as like, if you can, but oftentimes, it's at the end or not even in there. So this is, like, something I know and I've taken out over the years, but this was, like I've made this change over the years where I was, yeah. I've taken out a shitload of hamstring work because of this Yeah. In a lot of the if if someone's gonna be sprinting and has hamstring issues.

And you have to

be smart with it. Like, two days ago three three days ago. Today whenever my first workout of the week was. So this was

Sunday.

Saturday. Sunday. Saturday was when I did my list.

Oh, Saturday. Saturday. You're right. You're right. You're right.

I did RDLs. I've been out for probably two and a half weeks because of an injury, ankle injuries, probably for another podcast. Yeah.

Is a freak accident. I subluxed

a ligament in my ankle. It was insane. Tendon. Yeah. Tendon.

Or tendon. Yeah. So this is my first workout back where I was hitting legs and I was doing RDLs. That was detrained. Already didn't feel anything during the workout.

The next day, like, stupid sore. Stupid, stupid sore. Feeling a little bit of grabbing. And yesterday, your the normal the typical person that doesn't understand their body well would see there's hamstring work in the workout, and then they would do the hamstring work. Not understanding the grabbing sensation is your body telling you it's close to pulling.

Yesterday, I took them out completely. Today, I feel great. Like, today, I feel like I could run, and I would be completely fine. If I would've ran yesterday, I would've pulled it. Yeah.

Like, no without a doubt, would've pulled my hand easy if I

And this is what happens to me. And we Isaiah and I had this conversation, and I was like, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So we got all this data on what pulls it, what feels safe, what doesn't. And then we basically came up with a plan. You can read it.

Yeah. This last section right here.

You can always pause it if you choose and read this, but

Yeah.

It's not what I'm doing isn't necessarily the point.

Yeah. And it's basically we're gonna do long conjugate sequence systems. We're gonna bleed in over the course of a month the hamstring work, which for us isn't strength training. It'll be the running and the jumping. We're gonna do plyos in place of the of the of low rimming initially.

If his hamstring's ever sore or tight, we're gonna do the plyos and skip the low rimming. We're gonna try to lower him once a week, cut the intensity because one of the mechanisms of injury we saw is if the session's longer than thirty minutes and if it's intense, the risk goes up. So we're gonna keep it probably twenty minutes, low effort initially. Do plyos as well so he's getting that stimulus, that elastic work, and ramping up that nervous system. And then we're just gonna bleed in the running.

So I told him, this is the last part of the need analysis is, okay. What I've also observed when your hamstring is healthy, hip issues, knee issues, and Achilles issues can come in. Because it it happens to me too. I feel like Superman and I start training hard and then some other thing comes in. So I was like, okay.

The biggest risk having the running in is probably your Achilles initially. So I asked him, I was like, what volume and this is what we're gonna ask every before every workout, because what I'm about to do gonna make me feel better or worse tomorrow. So I asked him that question, but for running. What volumes this week with running do you think you can handle? And I want you to be safe.

Like, give yourself some room. And, yeah, we went on team builder. He updated to the volumes he he knows he can stay healthy with, and then we're just gonna bleed in the running week to week to week. And then I think once we're sprinting a 100% effort, I think we can start building in some high intensity jumps from there.

So why is this how does this relate to you guys? Okay? What is the relevance of this? Is is really Isaiah always goes in, and how does this help me jump higher? Because not being hurt is the number one thing that you need to pay attention to when you do a needs analysis.

It is it determines everything else is what injuries have you had, what injuries do you have, and what injuries are you trying not to get. Right? What's your history? What do you have to be aware of, and how do you dictate that? Anytime you do any training program, I don't care if it was CrossFit.

I don't care if it's running. I don't care if it's for pickleball, whatever it is. The first thing you need to do is say, okay. What injuries do I have? And then what am I trying to get better at?

And what can I do that is gonna make me better and not hurt me? Right? Those are the first two things that you have to ask yourself, and then everything else falls in line. That's why anytime you sign up for one of our training programs, the first one of the first questions we ask, what do you have any of these injuries, or what injuries do you have? Because if you have back pain, I sure as hell can't put you on a progression where you're doing, you know, a training like Isaiah.

Or if you have knee pain, like chronic terrible tendon pain, then it does I don't care if you wanna do long conjugate sequence systems. You can't. You're not gonna be able to do that. Maybe you can in other areas, but you really can't do it. You know?

You have to that is Isaiah's reading a book. It's called the one thing. That is the one thing you have to pay attention to first. Right? It is the most important thing, and it will determine what you're gonna be doing most of the time.

So for me, my number one constraint

Yeah. The question specifically is, what is the one thing such that by doing it, everything else becomes easier or unnecessary? So and and you can apply this to anything. So for us, it's like exercising. Right?

Let's say you're trying to jump higher, ask yourself it. It's called the focusing question. And the answer to that is where you should put your main focus. So for John, it's like, what's the one thing that makes basically any jump program irrelevant or makes it easier to train and it is the hamstring? Like, assuming Mhmm.

John, if you had a completely bulletproof hamstring, I I use the word Nukeproof. If you had a nukeproof hamstring, Like, could literally do anything to it and it wouldn't pull, what would your training look like? You're asking me, like, actually, what it would look like? That's probably insane. Like, it'd probably look

Yeah. I mean I mean, at that point, the constraint would change for, like, my you know, the constraint would change for my achilles the constraint would be my Achilles and my patella and my cartilage for sure. Like, that would be the constraint. But, yeah, I mean, I would I'd be well, now I've kinda taken care of the Achilles constraint. So I'd be able to sprint three days a week hard upright, specifically.

Definitely be able to do tempo. Yeah. I mean, it it it turns into, like it it then shifts into the Achilles Mhmm. Probably. But, like, I would be able to jump every single week at a 100% effort, like, with Especially if you load there.

Constraints. Yeah. Like, if low if I did load management if I did load management with it, I think I could re like, when I was thinking about the load management thing, there were two things that came because I asked myself that question. What if my hamstring was a 100% healthy? Like, what would I do?

Or I got to that point of where I was like, well, the hamstring would be the limiter. Was load manage, jump twice a week, you know, do drops probably one of those days, and then, like, do some sort of power work the days after, you know, and and then address strength and and, like, keep my Achilles tendon, like, healthy, keep the patella healthy, drop volumes. It'd be way easier because I could I could load manage and play around with the volumes of jumping and build up the tendon pretty quickly. Like, it would be easy.

If you think about it, there's always a bottleneck. The goal is actually to make training the bottleneck. Exactly. It should it should be to have one of the training variables be the bottleneck, like, elasticity or max strength. They're like coordination.

Like, bottleneck should not able fun bottlenecks. That's like Yeah. That's the fun part of training. The goal is to and then not have any of the injuries be one of the bottlenecks.

And that's like with Isaiah, we've gotten good about knowing what you can and can't do. So I can still get you better at what you need to. And sometimes it's hard, don't get me wrong, but I'm way better at doing it for other people than I am for doing it, like, doing it for myself. Like, with you, it's it's second nature. You know what I mean?

I'm just like, oh, boom. I can do this. Like, it's easy. Dom, Donovan, can easily be like, well, this is the big thing we gotta do and this is we're gonna

do x

y n d. Right?

No. Think bro, I think that's just human nature. Because I think think about all the times I've we joke about this. When I start training myself, it turns into three by five max out squatting, two hour dunk sessions.

Yeah. I it works. Get better, but boy is it fun.

Boy is it Well, I know. Like, I know how to train. So if you give me somebody to train, I can train them. No problem. But it's when it comes to yourself

It's a bit bit funny, isn't it?

Hard. That's what wisdom is. A wise man is someone who learn from other people's mistakes. I would actually actually and can this and I can apply them to themselves.

To their own life. Yeah. Because I've learned from other people's mistakes. I just have a hard time at the second part

of the future.

It's very difficult. Yeah. So that's the video, guys. We could we could deep dive this even further. Maybe we need a part two at the end of the week.

We'll mix it up for you guys, not not bore you and keep it stale. But if you're interested in coaching, click the link below. Go to the comment. Look at the pinned comment. Try to pin one there.

Sign up for coaching. We will take care of that constraint for you. We will help you understand what your constraint is, and we'll write the training so that it is no longer a constraint. And then you can make the constraint the training and what your deficits are and all the fun stuff that you really can get better with. So you guys will be seeing me lean back into training hard again.

It's gonna be a lot of fun. I'm super excited. You guys, if you wanna be a part of that, hop in, join the training, and

be a that. DM John. Don't Don't point jump if your hammy's tight. Everyone DM him. We need

Please don't do that. Please don't do you're gonna be so overwhelmed. Alright. We'll see you guys next time. Bye.