Nathanael: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to
another video. Today we are going to be reacting to my very own vertical jump training workout.
Usually you react to other people's workouts or other people's videos, but this is my channel,
so I can do what I want. And I'm going to react to a vertical jump workout that I randomly found in
my phone. I was like, "Oh wow. I recorded that." It was a workout from a month ago and I'm going
to go through it because I think that it can bring you some value. I'm going to talk about why I did
all of the exercises that I did and how you can use the same workout, these same exercises to take
your vertical jump to the next level. Nathanael:
So here we go, guys, I'm going to let you into my phone. I'm going to screen record my phone. So
you'll be able to see all of my deepest, darkest secrets. Okay. You won't be able to see that,
but we are going to go into my camera roll. Now, there's nothing crazy in my camera roll. If this
was back in my college days, then I most definitely would not let you into my photos
or my videos. Because you would see some stuff that you do not want to see, but we're grown now,
we're 30 years old. Everything that you're going to see in my camera right now is strictly workout
videos or dog videos or my cats fighting one another so we don't got nothing like that anymore.
Nathanael: But here we go. Let's get into
it right off the bat ladies and gentlemen, check out my screensaver, check out my background photo.
It says "Now". Now, why do you think that it says "Now"? It's to remind myself that action is
everything. We don't put stuff off till tomorrow. You know how many times I say, "I'm going to cheat
on my diet. I'll get back to my diet tomorrow. I'll start on Monday." If you have that mindset,
ladies and gentlemen, we are not going to win. So we do everything right now. I'll record that video
eventually. No, do it now. I'll ask that girl on a date. No, do it the next time you see her. I'll
study for... No study right now. Nathanael:
Let's get into the photos. Speaker 2:
I'm an island boy. Nathanael:
Oh, I forgot that I screen recorded that.
Oh my goodness. Speaker 2:
I'm just trying to make it. I'm an island boy. Speaker 3:
I'm an island boy. I'm an island boy. Nathanael:
Oh my God. Oh my God. Okay. Anyways, these boys are standing in the same dude. That is...
Anyways. Anyways, let's go. Come on, come on, come on, come on. Let's go. Let's go to the
video. Let's go to what this video's all about. What's this video all about? This video is about
the workout. Where is the vertical jump workout that I posted? Whoa! Whoa! All right,
listen. Hey. Hey, listen. This is progress. These are progress photos from one of my athletes.
All right. Progress photos. We ain't on no weird stuff. Okay. Here's some more progress photos.
Come on, man. Bro, get my members programs. This is my boy Kenu. Do you see? Bro, he's up there and
he's dunking off all approaches. Let's go. Nathanael:
All right, let's get to the video. Where's it at? I think it was October 19th.
So this was exactly one month ago. I don't know what I'm going to publish this video, but this was
one month ago that we did this workout. So I'm going to go through each of these videos.
I'm going to go through each of these exercises and I'm going to explain what I did, why I did
it and how you guys can use these exercises to increase your own vertical jumps. So here we go.
Nathanael: Exercise number one was reverse sled. Okay.
Normally, if you've been following me for a while, or if you're in my members programs, I always plug
in either reverse sled or reverse dead mills. I do a dynamic warmup first, but then I do these
reverse dead mills because this is just the best warmup that you could possibly do for your VMO
muscle, for your knees. And just to get yourself ready for the workout. This gets everything warm
so that when you go do your plyometrics, when you go do your squats, your other strength and
weighted exercises, you are ready to go. Nathanael:
So first thing we did was dynamic warm up. Second thing we did was reverse dead mills.
Then we did some jump rope. Okay. And I think I just took a video so that you guys could see that
I was jump roping. But second thing that I did was jump rope actually, third thing. Dynamic warm up,
reverse dead mills, then I did some jump rope, which is low level plyos, low level tendon
stiffness and elasticity work. I did three sets of one minute for jump rope and I rest a minute
in between. So a minute of jump rope and I rest a minute, minute of jump rope, rest a minute,
minute of jump rope. And that's what I did. Nathanael:
Then after that, we did some lateral line jumps. For this one you're not jumping as high as you
can, but you're definitely jumping higher than you would if you did some jump rope or some baby ankle
bounces. So lateral line jumps, I did three sets of 25 reps. Once again, I'm firing up my central
nervous system. I'm getting everything revved up, ready to go for the rest of the workout.
Not always, but most of the time do some plyos before you do your weights, because it's going to
fire up your central nervous system. It is going to turn you on and get you ready to go for the
rest of that workout. But three sets, 25 lateral line jumps. Then we did some ski jumps. Okay. And
oh, oh little mess up. What are you doing to Nathanael? But I did three sets of ski jumps,
five reps, each foot. So jumping off my left foot to my right and then my right foot to my left,
10 jumps, total five off of each foot. This is just for balance coordination, stability
and little bit of one leg lateral jumping. Nathanael:
Then I did some depth jumps. Okay. And this was sketchy to me. My friend Nate was like, "Bro, just
do it" this, if you see that platform right there, the second one that I'm about to jump onto, it was
just sketchy. It was just, nobody wants to jump up on that. It felt like it was going to fall. So
when you do your depth jumps, make sure you have a sturdy platform. Because I was not feeling this
whatsoever. See this is what I'm saying, I was not feeling these depth jumps right here. It just did
not. And I'm in my socks and we're on hardwood, slippery floor. And this is another question,
I like to do my plyos in bare feet. Nathanael:
So yeah, when you do your depth jumps, make sure that you have a sturdy box and make sure
that you have a floor where you're not going to slip. Also, I wouldn't do it on concrete,
do it on carpet, do it on wood floor, do it on gym floor, anything. But if you do it on concrete,
I would wear your shoes. But I did four sets of five reps of depth jumps. And I actually worked
my way up to this height. I don't know, it looks like 24 inches or around there. But four sets of
five reps of depth jumps. Nathanael:
Then we moved into squats. These next two videos are actually just me trying to get
a good video of depth jumps again, because I felt like it was so sketchy. But after that
I did squats. Okay. So I did isometric focused squats. I'm just going to fast forward it here.
I did isometric focused squats, and I want you guys to pay close attention to what I do.
I get under the bar. Here's how you do isometric focused squats. Let me pause it real quick.
This is a great example of intent with these isometric focused squats. You want to actively
pull the bar down fast and then decelerate it, stop the bar as quickly as you can.
Nathanael: In your joint angle squats, the same joint angle
of your hips, knees and ankles that you use for a vertical jump. Think about when you go up for a
rebound. What is... Let me move back. When you go up for a rebound, what is the angle of your hips,
your knees and your ankles? Then you squat down to that angle or a little bit lower. So pull the
bar down fast, stop it as fast as you can act like the bar is hitting concrete. Okay. There's a wall
here. There's an invisible wall. Don't let it go past that. Stop the bar as fast as possible. Hold
four to five seconds and then explode up. So let's take a look. I un rack it. Boy in the
orange right there is getting some gains as well. Pull it down fast, hit the ground, like a brick.
Oh, that was not a four to five second hold. That's more like a two to three second hold, but
we're going to have to watch this again. Nathanael:
So a few things here. Let's see. Let's watch it one more time. Pull the bar down fast, stop the
bar fast, decelerate quickly, hold four to five seconds. This is like a two to three second pause,
hold longer than I held the bar right here and then explode up as fast as possible. And I got a
question. Yesterday I posted this on my Instagram. Do you always jump at the end of your barbell
squats? No, I don't. When I do these isometric focused squats, I do jump. But let's say we're
doing speed squats with the bands and the goal of it is to do three reps as fast as possible.
It doesn't make sense to jump in that case, but for these isometric focused squats, it does
make sense to jump for me. Okay. If you don't feel comfortable jumping at the top of a barbell squat,
then don't. But if you do feel comfortable and the weight is light enough, this is 225 pounds
on the bar. So it's not relatively heavy weight, for me at least. And I feel comfortable jumping
with this weight. Nathanael:
So let's go ahead and watch one more time. Down fast, stop fast, hold four to five, explode up.
But like I said, that wasn't four to five. All right. So that's the next thing that I did. And
so I did three reps. I actually got up to six set sets of three reps using 225 pounds. All right.
Nathanael: So this was likely six sets of three
reps at 60% of my one rep max. So the way that you find your 60% of your one rep max is number one,
you have to know your one rep max. So mine is 365 pounds. That's the most weight I can squat for one
single rep, deep squat. Then I take 365 pounds, that's the most I squat multiplied by 0.6
or 0.60 for 60% and that is 219 pounds. I just rounded it up to 225 pounds. And I did that for
six sets of three reps. Nathanael:
All right, here we go. So the next thing that I did was barbell hip thrust. Actually I took
two videos of barbell hip thrust. I think this was the better one, but I did five sets of five
barbell hip thrust. So here we go. So guys, there's no better way to get explosive hip
extension. There's a lot of good ways to get explosive hip extension. You could do kettlebell
swings. You could do band pull throughs. There're tons of exercises, but barbell hip thrust is a
great way to load up your hip extension. So let me stop this real quick. One important thing
that you want to do with these barbell hip thrust, actually with all of your exercises,
unless you're in a max strength phase or you're in a speed strength phase where the weights are low.
Nathanael: You want to go heavy enough to cause a stimulus,
but not so heavy that you cannot move the bar fast. So I have 225 pounds for these hip thrusts.
If I were to go any heavier, I feel like I would not get effective sets. I feel like I would not
get effective reps. I feel like I would not be able to move the bar as explosively as I need to,
for it to transfer to my vertical jump. So let's look one more time. I am going heavy enough
to cause a stimulus, but not so heavy that I can't be explosive. So if you look at my hip extension,
this is explosive hip extension, all right. So five sets of five there.
Nathanael: Let's move on. And then I did looks like
I took two videos of hex bar dead lifts as well, but I did five sets of five hex bar dead lifts.
Okay. And how much weight do I have on there? The first plates are obviously 45s. The second
and third plates look smaller, but those are actually 45s as well. It makes sense because it's
much easier to load the bar when you do these dead lifts. If you have big 45s and small 45s,
you can just slide the rest of the 45s on. But the ones on the end, those are not 45s, those are 25s.
Nathanael: All right. So three 45s on each
side and a 25. That's 365 I have on because once again, I want to be sure that I am going heavy
enough to cause the stimulus, but not so heavy that I can't explode with the bar. All right.
If this was too heavy, I would be moving the bar super slow. Was that five reps? One, two,
three, four. Bro, did I just do four reps? What are you doing? Anyways, guys,
that was supposed to be five reps. It is five sets of five for the dead lifts. But once again,
the main thing that I want you to take away from the weight training that you see in this
workout is that you want to go heavy enough to cause a stimulus and adaptation in your body.
Nathanael: If you do the same thing you've always done. If
you don't force your body to do some new weight, then you're not going to grow. Your vertical
jump will not increase, but also if you just do heavy, heavy weight and you're moving slowly,
that's not going to transfer to your revert. So it has to be heavy enough to cause a stimulus,
but light enough that you can still move it explosively. And guys, that is it for the workout.
Nathanael: So we did a dynamic warmup.
We did reverse sled for six minutes straight. We did jump rope three sets of one minute. We
did lateral line jumps, three sets of 25 reps each. We did ski jumps, three sets of 10 reps,
five jumping off each leg. Then we did depth jumps, four sets of five working your way up
to your four working sets of five reps. Then we did isometric focused squats, we did six sets of
three. Then we did barbell hip thrust, five sets of five and hex bar dead lifts, five sets of five.
Nathanael: I normally don't do squats and dead lifts in the
same workout. This workout was just an overlap of my squat on my workout day, but normally I have a
squat day and then I wait a couple days and I have a hex bar deadlift plus barbell hip thrust day.
So I do barbell hip thrust and hex bar dead lifts on the same day. And if you don't have a hex bar,
just use a straight bar. Okay. I'm sure a million people already typed that, "But I don't have a hex
bar." Just use a straight bar. Okay. Nathanael:
So yeah, that's my workout. Anyways, let me know if you like this video. Let me know if you like
these reactions. Let me know what you want me to react to next. Comment, jump down below for
your free vertical jump training program. And then link below in the pin comment and the description
of this video, we'll get you access to my advanced training programs. I will see you guys next week.
Speaker 4: Young beast mode from the East coast,
a young kid with a West coast feel. And I don't even know how to West coast feel, come from where
it's cold. The city made us still where a lot of [inaudible 00:14:33] fold, only couple keep it
real right, next hill keep it real tight. Keep two LS just like Cool J. my heart's cold as Ice Cube
pain, it's a good day. I'm at a crossroads, but in a good way, I got money on my line.