What's up, guys? Welcome back to the teach me strength podcast. My name is John Evans, and I coach four of the current six individuals who have tested a 50 inch vertical, hopefully soon to be adding two more people to that list. This is my best friend and business partner, Isaiah Rivera. He was the first person to break that 50 inch barrier.

And yesterday, he tried to break the 51 inch barrier. We're gonna talk about the results, what they mean, mindset, some of the ways that testing impacts athletes, and part of the reason why don't like it. So, Isaiah, tell them the story of what happened yesterday.

I tried testing, I didn't do it. Basically the cliff note. Yeah. The cliff notes. Alright.

So more details. It was deload week. Supposed to jump on Friday. Woke up excited on Wednesday and so I decided to test on Wednesday. I think part of the reason I wanted to is because I was anxious about testing and I just wanted to get it over with to be honest.

I don't like the sensation of testing particularly looking forward to it is very nerve racking for me and I don't know why compared to like dunking I get excited more so than than testing. But I was still excited. Like it was like a good excitement is how I would describe it. And then yeah, I went in I actually felt really good warming up and everything. And warmed up with dunks, had the top of the vertex at twelve four and a half or no twelve five was the very top.

My PR is twelve three and a half, A 51 would be twelve four for me. And started doing, I did a height check where I like, it was a really good height check at low effort. And then, just started testing. I think I touched 44.5, then it went 46, and then it went 47. And as soon as I got to 47, I was like, yeah, 50 one's not happening today.

It was a lower effort 47, but I could just tell one, I've gone through I think, is it three or four ankle sprains over the last six months? I think it was Quite a few. Three. Yeah. It was three or four.

And I could tell as soon as I started adding speed, the the ankle wasn't gonna be able to handle those full approach jumps. And then just how I felt jump wise. It it felt like on the day I could get to 49 maybe 50. But 51, fifty one five wouldn't be in the cards. And to me it's a waste of time to test if I'm not gonna hit 51.

Like I don't care about testing fifty, fifty point five because it's not a it's not a PR. And, it's it's it's kinda just wasting jumps. At the end of the day, what I like is dunking. And, I would rather spend time trying to hit a new dunk or just destroy it. Like, that is my like what I enjoy doing is that that is my sport is dunking.

And yeah, there's no point in me testing what I've already tested. So I decided not to do it. Mentally wise, I've been joking about it with Dom, I'm retiring from testing. Like Dom was there at the session, was like Dom, I'm too old for this shit anymore. You gotta take over.

Test the torch.

Hit 50 hit 51. So there's definitely a little bit of demotivation in terms of testing. I was telling John yesterday as well, I'm like, I don't even know how motivated I feel for going like, to me 50 was like bonus points. I never even thought a 50 would be possible for me. If you would have told me in 2021, early twenty twenty two, if I thought I could test 50.5.

It's actually a similar state of mind how I feel now. Where like, don't know if it's possible for me, but I'm gonna keep training. And I'm gonna give my best shot. So yeah, mental wise, I guess it's like on a trough. But, I will keep training and I do think like the environment.

Like I've tested mind you, fitness wise some of the best shape, maybe the best shape I've ever been. Like I've probably jumped 48, 49 for a month straight even feeling crappy, not having a good ankle. I've essentially been doing like 90% speed approaches instead of a 100% of my maximum control velocity for an approach. So fitness wise, some of the best shape I've ever been in, but I've tested higher in worse shape purely from the high adrenaline environment. And my how I feel about it is testing for me personally, this I do not recommend this for other people.

But for me personally, it kind of is a waste of time to do it in a session. Mhmm. Yeah. I have quite a

few thoughts. I think the first thing I wanna address is, do you believe it's possible? Is it possible? I absolutely believe it's possible. I wouldn't be, you know, doing progressions to help you jumping higher if I didn't think it was possible.

You know? Like, I mean, I guess I would just just maintaining at that point. So Yeah. I definitely think it's possible. And I think the difficult part of it is you're comparing it to times when you had these idealized conditions.

So Which is the advice I always give. Yeah. Is funny.

It's hard to take it. You're you're comparing it to these idealized, know, conditions. Like, that's like going into practice as a high jumper and trying to beat your PR on a random de load week. Like it's not gonna happen. It's not gonna happen.

Or or like long jump over eight meters if you never long jumped over eight meters in practice because it's a de load week.

Problem with dunking is the sport isn't testing.

No. It's not. Like there aren't Yeah.

I guess Andy is doing it now with the vert trainer competitions, but it's not something like there isn't a weekly there isn't a season where you go and test your vertical weekly.

Yeah. You could

It's dunk contest. I mean, you could you

could conceivably do that if you wanted. It's just like an extension of what we do and it helps you be better at the sport. So that's the first thing. I think the second thing is it's like your mindset is kind like you had a bad meet. It's like a track and field athlete that goes in, and you have a bad meet, and you're kind of down on yourself.

And you're like, have I lost it? I'm supposed to be running nine seventy and I ran a nine nine, or I ran a ten second, you know, how am I supposed to run a nine nine four? And the reality is, is nine nine is not slow. It's just that your expectation coming in of wanting to hit 51 because you are so fit, because of that, is it's a difficult pill to swallow when that happens, but it doesn't mean that it's not possible. It doesn't mean that it's outside the realm of possibility.

It just means you had a bad testing day. You tested on a Wednesday, not a Friday, so you cut a few days off the de load. Wasn't a high adrenaline environment. In the warm ups, I could tell it probably wasn't gonna happen. I can tell right away in the warm ups if it's gonna happen or not.

You can just see you're very electric, you get to high efforts relatively quickly. You know how you were like, Oh, didn't want to warm up too fast? That's part of the risk of trying to break the world record, is you do have to warm up a little faster. Do have to be a little fresher. Do have to be a little sharper earlier.

You can't be fatigued and go in and try to test. You really need to take advantage of your nervous system being absolutely more revved up than it's ever been. And I think when you are doing those warm up jumps, you're anxious, you cut a few days off the rest, you don't have a high adrenaline environment, you took less caffeine than usual, the spacing on the jumps weren't ideal, you know, it's just you're in a small gym. All of those things, along with just day to day variance to me, largely explain the discrepancy. Know, I I don't think you don't you don't have all of your metrics go up across the board and conclude that your vertical is gonna go down.

That doesn't happen. Unless the things that you're doing and the things you're tracking don't actually make your vertical go up. So that's one thing that I think is like a habit, or it's easy to fall into that trap. I mean, I've done it as well, I'm, you know, obviously I think every every person that's saying their vertical is running. It's human.

You know? It's it's human nature. And, you know, as a coach, it's obviously my job to tell you these things. But it's also, like Boo said, I can only you know, you can only do so much as a coach. I can prepare you as best possible to achieve those goals, but at the end of the day, you've gotta go out and do it.

And for me, it's probably more of creating better environments and better conditions for you to do that, right? The problem is that's hard to do, right? How do I get a gym packed with 300 people and have a vertex up at twelve four that is measured and everything else, and then you're dunking and there's other dunkers there. It's just a hard environment to emulate, and I think that's part of the reason why dunk camp, specifically for you, is so good. The problem is usually, the other thing we haven't even talked about is injuries, right?

The problem is usually you don't go in 100, one hundred, one hundred percent healthy, which you really need to do if you're trying to hit 51. I think people view you as this genetic outlier that can just go out and do these crazy performances, but the reality is you're a well trained, really good athlete, but I wouldn't say you're like the freakiest of freakiest freaky, you know? Yesterday, I judged a high school dunk contest for the church that I go to, and one of the kids showed up. He's 18 years old. He windmilled the living hell out of the ball, took his penultimate step from the free from the free throw line.

He's an 18 year old, right? Has probably never trained a day in his life, and jumped over a girl, punched a one hander, cleared her by like a foot and a half. Then his last dunk he was gonna do in East Bay. And he's in high school, like this is just a random high school kid in a small town in Florida, right? And he's never trained days in life.

You've trained since you were 16 years old, and all the formative years of weight training with your dad, and commit ten to twenty hours a week to training. So you're in a way different category in terms of training age, and to assume that, oh, he's just a genetic freak, he should just be able to go out and just test infinitely higher, that's

just

not the case, that's not reality. There's gotta be, 50.5 is already fucking ridiculous. So if you wanna test a 51, that was already a ridiculous environment, a ridiculous condition, everything is, you know, the the first time you do it, it's at dunk camp, there's hundreds of people there, everyone wants to see you do it. You're You've got butterflies in your stomach, you're nervous, you warm up fast. This is before IT bands

Dude, even the 12 that I touched. Like, think about how casual that was.

It was. And And then think about ankle. That's the other thing. We haven't even talked about your ankle. You you didn't even run full speed and attack the approach.

Like, any anything that is going to impede your ability to get to a 100%. You're basically saying, I wanna beat the best I've ever done in ideal conditions in suboptimal conditions. And I think that, you know, it's it's like I always used to tell Donovan, it's data. It doesn't doesn't have to mean anything. It's just data that you're going to use to adjust the training accordingly and make changes.

And it gives you informed, it helps you make informed decisions in the future. And it's just more confirmation of what we've already known. You need to have a higher adrenaline environment. There's no point in testing unless you can create those environments for yourself. And that's hard to do if you're not competing a lot, which you're not right now, and they don't have a vertex.

With a measured

Yeah. With a measured vertex. Like, even if you are, like, am I allowed to talk about the contest coming up?

I don't know.

I won't mention it, but there's a contest coming up. Even at this contest, don't I know if they're gonna have a way for him to measure his vertical. Even if it is this ideal condition that, you know, everything is perfect. There's no guarantee that there's gonna be a way to even measure his vertical if you are flying in that condition.

So Which I most likely will be.

Exactly. So it's Like it'll

be like a nine nine flight time Yeah. Hike like

And I think it's like, it's one of those things where if they just happen to have it Yeah. But if you go in with the expectation of I'm gonna test, I need to test, I need to do all that, it causes anxiety, then your performance arousal curve is fucked up. Like I so mean, that's that's part of sports psychology.

Almost every time I've hit a vertical PR, it was unplanned. Exactly. That just happened to be

It just happens.

There's happens to a vertical tester.

And you decided to do it.

But what I was gonna say is even me touching 40 yeah. Twelve, forty seven, and cutting it, like, there was more. There was more room in the tank.

Like, think you could've hit based on the ones I saw where you were reaching, I, like, looked at it a few times, and I was, like, you probably had two more inches on that jump specifically.

Yeah.

Like based on where your finger was, where it could have been, you know, stuff like that. And you were reaching out in front of you. You probably could have tested a 49 yesterday with perfect spacing. Perfect technique, perfect spacing, probably forty eight five, 49.

But think about when we went to overtime elite, that was me testing 47.

And that was

Feeling amazing. Like, I was like

With Sutherland?

Yeah.

Yeah. You were flying that day, and you tested 47. And you came into worse floors, worse conditions, no hype, no NBA level talent watching you, no coaches, you know, no other pro dunkers, you know, Lewis is there, but it's it's just not the same. And your ankle's still fucked up. And then to and then to try to draw some conclusion from that, think is just it's not it's not a fair assessment.

Know? And I think to

It's like it's just practice.

It's just practice and it's data. It's practice and it's data. And this is the other part of it I was gonna say is like, you need to get those max ever jumps in. Yeah. You know?

And they're really intense, and that's a good training stimulus. It's probably the best training stimulus. So I think it's like go in to a deload. If you test anything better than 47, that's awesome. I think if you go in to a to an unload, a deload, you know, and you test anything over 47, you should consider that like a major success.

I've realized Anything over 12 feet is a is a win.

Yeah. I mean, I've learned now testing a few times. There's like a when I dunk, it's like a 47, 48 vertical jump range is like my sweet spot. Or like my approach feels good. It's almost like my dunk technique is good.

When I go to test or even to a certain extent high checks, it's another gear where you can't sustain that for a session. The gear the gear where I go to to get to 50, like I would say like forty nine fifty fifty one, probably that range right there. It is not like I can sustain it for like three jumps probably. Yeah. And then I will blow up.

But a session where I can dunk for an hour straight, that is like you're at forty six, forty seven, 48 maybe.

Yeah. And I mean, if you think about just sprint training, the best way to get faster is to compete is to compete because it's the highest intensity environment, and it's where you see the craziest forces. And you're gonna get more motor recruitment, you're gonna get greater neural drive, you're gonna get a faster stroke shortening cycle, and higher neural conduction rates, and all of the electrical mechanical aspects are going to be faster and more intense and upregulated. And that is going to cause you to adapt. So I think every fourth week or third week, it makes sense to touch it.

To touch on that intensity so you see it, so you're comfortable with it, and that it's not a surprise. And I you know, my I my brother used to have the same thing. He's like, oh, you know, I went out and I ran a terrible 800. I'll never break two minutes. And I'm like, there's always next time.

Just go try again. No one said you couldn't try again. And it's it's really just like take you know, not tapering your expectations. I forget what the word is. But, taking your expectations to a level that's realistic.

You know? And I think it's, am I gonna break the world record today? Okay. I don't know. Maybe.

Let's go try. Let's find out. I don't know. And for me as a coach, you know, I'm sitting there and I'm like, you know, like, should he have broke the record? It's like, no.

Fuck no. I mean, yeah, okay, it's towards the end of the cycle. Cool. You're the fittest you've ever been, but your ankle's messed up and you're in a dead gym in in Lakeland with no one around and you are not trying a 100%. Like, no.

I don't expect and you cut the taper early. No. I don't I don't or the deload. You dunked four days prior. Yeah.

Like, it's not

Yeah.

Yeah. Outside the realm of to me, it just seems very reasonable that you wouldn't break the world record.

Yeah. So Well, that's why I cut it though.

No. I think so that to your credit, this is what I would say is when going in, I told you, I'll let you test under two conditions. One, that you don't beat yourself up if you don't do well, and two, that you stop if you know it's not there. Yeah. Like, dunk, if it's there, you do it.

If it's not, you don't. And you were like, okay. Test it. I could have told you it probably wasn't gonna be there, but obviously, I'm not gonna say that in a session. You know, that that would be stupid.

Like, let me just destroy my athlete's motivation. But I also wanted the data. I wanted to know, okay, how is he jumping in these environments? Like, where is he at right now? So that I can make an assessment.

I think all things considered, going out and testing a 47 after all the ankle shit is actually really fucking actually I mean, I

like, when I joke about it isn't me joking when I say the retiring stuff and all that. Like, there is a I was actually gonna mention this earlier. Like, I got a lot of perspective actually, like, being around Lewis and Lewis testing. Because I was on the drive back, was like, oh man, I only tested a 47. And he looked at me like I was crazy.

And it helped with perspective because I need to be proud. Yeah. Like I'm somebody like, you guys have to understand. I'm somebody who had so much knee pain early on. Who's gone through so many like potentially career ending injuries.

Like a lot of comments. His Achilles twice and being like, shit, I wanna know the Golden Rule and break the world

record. Like there's been so many comments of people. I I remember getting comments when I was around 44 a half saying I'm plateaued. I was getting the same comments when I used to be at 47 and I was plateaued. And then now it's the same comments at 50 and I'm plateaued.

So I just need a, like I really am an extra credit. Like I have gone way beyond whatever I thought was possible. And part of the reason I'm like making this type of content cause we could easily not post me testing. We could post We could lie. Like, but this is the reality of training.

This is part of why I like doing the podcast. Why I like posting my training and all that stuff. Like the good days and the bad days. Like when you go on Instagram, you're seeing usually people's absolute highlights. But I think it's important for people to know the suck.

I love this quote. It comes from business. One of my business mentors, they had a mentor and they were like, it's about describing shiny objects and all right. You have a business and then you're like, oh, I should just go start this other business that is more lucrative. And the person had like this like country accent and they were like, look here, business looks good, but every business is fertilized with shit.

So meaning like any business can look good, any opportunity can look good. It might look like someone's making a bunch of money, but underneath that there is shit that everybody has to deal with. And in our industry, in the in the the art of jumping really freaking high, there's a lot of shit on underneath it. I'm sorry for cussing, but I think it served its purpose here. There's a lot of shit in jumping that you got to deal with.

You have to deal with bad days. You have to deal with deloading and not testing as well as well as you thought. You have to deal with, you know, and when it comes to posting content, people putting you down and stuff like that. Like John like John seen it, right? Like John I

get it all the time.

Has been jumping some of his highest crushing dunks, but when he's a year ago and he's coming back from being hurt or out of shape and he's still deciding to post his content and there's people hating. Yeah. Because he's not dunking. He's he's barely able to do a one hander. Like, where where are those people right now?

When you're

when you're fucking like that. I haven't seen them comment good job.

No. They'll be like, some people be like, oh, you you got excited for a one hander and I'm like, well, mean, I did jump like close to 40 inches. So yeah, was pretty excited. Yeah.

There there's there's so much shit. But that's why we post this stuff. Like we do it for the guys that are in it, that enjoy it. And I'd like

At the end of the day, it's like wear blinders. You've gotta you've gotta just stay focused on what you're doing and kinda just you really do have to roll with the punches. You're gonna have good days. You're gonna have bad days. I mean, that's life.

Life there's gonna be ups and downs.

I wouldn't even say yesterday was a punch though. It was a thing.

What would you call it? It was a win. It was a good session.

No. You threw a punch.

You threw a punch.

Yeah. It was like, alright, tested 47 low effort and then had fun dunking.

Yeah, exactly. Right. So I don't think yeah. I I think in general, in terms of like testing next time, yeah. It's just like, it has to be opportunistically.

Yeah.

And if you're talking about something that no one's ever done in the history of the world, yeah, your expectation shouldn't be that you're gonna be able to just go out and do that on a random Thursday, like Yeah. Wednesday.

Like Yeah.

You know, the the day to day variance, all the other stuff, like there's too much there's too much variance, you know. It's and you just look at the cluster. Is my cluster going up? Is my cluster going down? I had three ankle sprains this year.

I tested 47 low effort. Sick. To me, this says, okay, I need to get your ankle healthier. Yeah. And it doesn't change any of the the training aspects.

Know, it's not like

I've also been loving training is the other thing. Yeah. Like this, like, if hypothetically, right, you told me nothing we do is gonna make me jump higher.

It's gonna be fun.

I've been having a blast. Like Yeah. Doing plyos. Like, I'm someone that just genuinely just enjoys moving. I've been learning about sprinting.

Like

mean, I think all that stuff is like all of that stuff is not concurrent, but complementary to the goal.

So, you know, if you

High wanna tides raise

all ships.

High tides raise all ships. Whatever So like the fuck is. Yeah. Whatever the fuck it is. So yeah.

It's just Yeah. It's it's really It's pretty simple. It's keep going. Just keep

And you know, if you're listening to this and you're like, yeah.

This is pretty relatable.

I I can get down on myself or whatever. I can tell you this. If you keep going, you might be, let's say, like what Mike said, you go

for another three years, you

might be on, when you decide to quit at that three year mark, you might have been on

the other side of a massive breakthrough. And he talks about Josh Pooley training for two years and then he goes out and jumps eight meters. And, you know, that's a huge jump. And he probably didn't think it was possible. Probably didn't, but he just stuck with it.

He just stayed with it, stuck with it, gave himself a lot of opportunities to do it, eventually he did.

There's this picture it's like this drawing of a dude and he's mining, and then he like quits, but then it's like a side view of of the the hole he's digging and there's like a diamond.

Yeah. Right. It's like It's

an inch away. Like if he would have just done one more hit, would have gone to the diamonds.

It would be different if your power clean was going down, your squat was going down, your plot, your RSI was going down. Like, you weren't getting better at any of the indicators of success in vertical jump. Like, I'd be like, okay. You know, like We're getting old. We shouldn't test.

Yeah. You're getting old. Like, we shouldn't test. There's not really a point, You know, maybe you'll squeak out something, but that's not the case. Know?

Bro, it could literally be as simple as

ankle. Literally. Any of those it it could be as simple as you just need adrenaline. Like, literally, could be that simple.

Yeah. And Like, I think alright. On the day, I think I could have got 49. You give me a good ankle, I think I'm at 50, and then you give me adrenaline I'm at 51. I'm at 51.

Yeah.

Like it's like pretty simple, but I think it's just, yeah. Just keep And grinding it now we know it's like, okay, we gotta get, we gotta get this ankle healthy. Gonna do some seated calf raises and load it up and heavy, big range of motion.

Yeah.

Come back in three weeks.

We found the bottleneck. I would not know what the bottleneck is if not I had a You

know your bottleneck had you not actually tried.

I bro, I legit I think a valuable thing I can do is like I like mentioned it yesterday, but just like keep a vertex there.

Yeah. No. I think so too.

Even if it's we don't measure it, but I do think it's important

for Just to

have it.

Cut, like, touch At the LA Fitness.

Something high.

At least. Either that or the VertTrainer, like, one of the two. I think it's fine. I mean, I like the VertTrainer, but the VertTrainer is faster. It's like

VertTrainer for the I mean, it's called the VertTrainer. I think for that aspect of it

Yeah. It doesn't matter. Really well. Like, it's like just

For testing, I like the VertTrainer because if you get a massive jump, I would wanna know, like, what I get.

What you actually get? Yeah.

But, like, week to week, like, I think VertTrainer is a really good one.

Mhmm.

I agree. Please code THPStrength you want 10% off.

Oh, yes. Vert Trainer. I was like, we don't have a discount. Oh, we don't have a discount for our training. But, yeah, that's the video, guys.

Hopefully, it was insightful.

We do have a discount for our training.

Oh, we do have a discount. If you sign up for a year, it's 50% the cost of the month to month coaching.

Yeah. Half off. Six months free. There you go.

Six months free. But thank you guys for watching. Hopefully, this is insightful for you guys. It's a more transparent

We should title it. Is Isaiah Vertical Jump Training.

That'll probably do super well. That'll do great. That's definitely

Well, a thumbnail of me looking really sad.

Oh, this is gonna be great.

Alright. See you guys.