Nathanael: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to another video.
In this video I'm going to teach you how to squat to increase your vertical jump as high
as possible.
How should we be squatting?
Shall we do front squats, back squats, box squats, quarter squats, half squats, deep
squats?
How should we squat to increase our vertical as much as humanly possible?
I'm going to teach all of that to you in this video.
Don't go to college, ladies and gentlemen, come to Nathanael Morton's YouTube channel.
I will teach you everything that you need to know.
Any time that you are squatting, there is one major role that you must follow for squats
to transfer best to your vertical jump.
And that is this.
The golden rule is to move the weight fast.
When you are squatting, you need to move the weight as fast as possible, especially on
the concentric portion of a squat.
Nathanael: So when you are going down with the weight
in a squat, that is the eccentric portion of the rep.
If you were to hold it at the bottom, that is the isometric portion of a rep.
And on the way up, that is the concentric portion of the rep.
So from the bottom of the rep to the top of the rep, for that concentric, you need to
move the weight as fast as you possibly can because that will recruit more motor units,
more muscle fibers, and increase your rate of force development.
Therefore, increasing your vertical jump.
So always follow that rule no matter whether you're going to do front squats, back squats,
deep squats, quarter squats, half squats, always move the weight as fast as you possibly
can.
I have two friends, that's it.
I don't have any more than that.
My two friends are Jimmy and Johnny.
My friend named Jimmy can squat 315 pounds.
He could put three plates on that thing.
Nathanael: Johnny can also squat 315 pounds, but Johnny
for some reason can jump way higher than Jimmy.
And they talked about it.
They said, "Why can you jump higher than me?"
And Johnny said, "Well, when I squat, my focus is to move the weight as fast as possible."
Jimmy realized he's just moving the weight up to get the weight up.
Whereas Johnny's intent, Johnny's focus, is to move the weight fast.
So they have the same strength, but Johnny has better rate of force development than
Jimmy.
So they have the same strength.
They can produce the same amount of force, but Johnny can produce that force faster because
he practices producing force fast.
Therefore he can jump higher than Jimmy can.
Moving over to the green marker.
This is the equation for vertical jump.
Power equals force times velocity.
Force and velocity make up power.
Nathanael: Vertical jump is nothing more than a test
of power output, how powerful are you.
So if you have more force, AKA strength, and more velocity, AKA speed, how much force can
you apply into the ground, how fast can you apply that force into the ground to get an
equal and opposite into the air, that is how high your vertical jump is going to be.
So to increase your force and your velocity, you just have to get stronger and you just
have to get faster by moving the weight faster.
Rate of force development and strength, so that's all that it is.
Moving over here, to increase vertical jump we must, A, recruit as many muscle fibers
as possible.
We do that by going heavy.
And B, we need to recruit them as fast as possible.
We do that by moving the weight fast.
Nathanael: So when you go heavier, when you use heavy
weight, you recruit more motor units.
You need to use more muscle fibers to move that weight up.
I'll tell you a story.
When I was in high school, there was a little boy who had a string, a piece of rope attached
to a bookshelf, and he was leaning back on it.
All of a sudden, the bookshelf tilted over.
He put his hands up and he held the bookshelf there.
Nathanael: He's crying, but he's holding the bookshelf
there.
He couldn't push it up.
Then one of his friends came over and he helped to push it up.
Then another friend came over and they all three of them pushed the bookcase back up
and they got it standing again.
This is the same way that your muscle fibers work.
If you're doing a squat and the weight is really heavy, your muscle fibers realize,
Oh crap, we can't do this on our own.
So they recruit all their boys, all the other muscle fibers come.
And then you have more muscle fibers, more motor units pushing, trying to get that weight
up.
So if it's light, you might have a few muscle fibers can do that.
If it's heavier, you might need to recruit all of your muscle fibers to do that lift.
So the heavier that you go, the more muscle fibers you recruit.
The ability to recruit more muscle fibers transfers to a higher vertical jump.
Nathanael: But the ability to recruit your muscle fibers
faster, that rate of force development, also increases your vertical jump.
So here's the contradiction.
We need to go heavy, but we also need to move fast.
When we go heavier, when we squat heavy, we can't necessarily move that weight as fast
as when we go light.
So how do we put both of these together and go heavy, but also go fast.
What we need to do is go as heavy as possible when we are squatting, but we must be able
to do the concentric portion of a squat in less than one second.
As heavy as you can, within less than one second.
If the concentric portion of a squat takes you longer than one second, that weight is
too heavy and you need to go lighter.
And I'll give you a few examples by some of my own squats right here.
Nathanael: So guys, here's what I did.
I pulled a video out of the archives, okay.
This is one of my old squat videos.
But the reason that I chose this video is because in this video I do multiple sets of
squats and each set is different.
Each set of squats that I do gets heavier and heavier and heavier.
And you can tell in this video, as I get heavier and heavier, each set, the concentric portion
of the rep gets slower and slower and slower.
So remember our golden role, the number one role that you need to follow to increase your
vertical jump with squats is to move the weight as fast as possible.
Now how fast is fast as possible?
But it should be, the concentric portion should be less than one second.
If it is more than one second, you need to go lower with the weight.
Nathanael: So as you can see here in my first set, I
have 135 pounds plus the bands.
I think the bands are around 40 to 80 pounds, I'm not quite sure.
But it takes me 0.58 seconds to do this first set.
Okay.
So great.
That transfers perfectly to my vertical jump.
In my next set, I have 185 pounds plus the bands.
How fast do I do it?
0.75 seconds.
Okay, awesome.
That transfers perfectly to my vertical jump.
My next set, we get a big jump.
We go to 275 pounds.
How long does it take me?
It takes me 1.06 seconds.
So in my book, if that was my athlete, I would tell him to lighten the weight just a little
bit so that we can move it faster and get under that one second mark.
Then we get even heavier.
I have 295 pounds on the bar and that takes me 1.13 seconds.
Nathanael: So once again, that is too heavy.
I need to go lighter.
And then my last set, 315 pounds, it takes me 1.23 seconds to do this 315 pounds squat.
So the last three sets that I did were too heavy.
I should've gone lighter so that it transfers better to my vertical jump.
Now here's where we can both have our cake and eat it too.
Here's where we can get the best of both worlds.
Research has shown that joint angle specific squats are better for your vertical jump than
deep squats.
If you squat with a joint angle specific to your vertical jump joint angle, it will transfer
better to your vertical jump than a deep full range of motion squat.
Think about when you're playing basketball, you don't squat all the way down to the floor
before you jump up for a rebound.
Not to mention that you can go both heavier and move the weight faster with joint specific
angle squats.
Nathanael: It's by going deep down all the way into the
hole in a deep back squat that causes you to move the weight slowly on the way up, not
to mention you're only doing half range of motion or quarter range of motion when you
do joint angle specific squats.
So that is why you can go heavier.
And because you are only doing half or quarter range of motion, therefore you can go faster
and move away faster.
And it will transfer better to your vertical jump.
So why not do it?
Now before all of you go out and just start squatting the house and squatting heavy and
doing heavy quarter and half squats, let me write a plan for you so that you can follow
a plan.
I'll give you three months of how to squat to increase your vertical jump.
Let's go.
So here's what you need to understand.
Nathanael: You can't just go out and start squatting
heavy.
If I had an enemy, if I had somebody that I didn't like, I would tell him, "Yeah, man.
Just go start squating heavy.
Yeah.
Put a bunch of weight on the bar.
Yeah, move it fast.
Move it as fast as you can, go as heavy as you can and go as fast as you can."
After a while, he's going to be like, "Man, why do my knees hurt?"
That is the surest way to get jumper's knee and patella tendinopathy.
Your tendons do not like fast, unexpected load.
And they do not like too much load.
If you overload your tendons, you will have knee pain.
So what I did for you is I wrote out a full three months, or I'm going to, this is just
month one.
A full three months of programming that will take you to the bottom and progressive overload
you slowly, which your tendons love, all the way until the top where you have a high vertical
jump.
Nathanael: Also your tendons love eccentrics and your
tendons love isometrics.
They eat it up.
It makes them stronger.
It's the fast concentrics that hurt your tendons and give you knee pain.
But we need the fast concentrics to increase our rate of force development and our vertical
jump.
So what we need to do is do eccentrics first, then isometrics, then we get into the concentrics
and we skyrocket our vertical jump.
So here we go.
This is month one.
This is the eccentric focus phase.
You have an entire month, week one, two, three, and four.
And by the way, I'm putting a PDF down below in the...
And subscribe while you're down there.
But there's a PDF down below.
You can download this.
It's my full program, three month program, if you want this squat program down below.
Nathanael: So eccentric focus.
Eccentric, remember, is on the way down.
So we are focused on going down slowly.
But here's the golden role.
We always do our concentrics fast.
So six to eight seconds.
That's how long I want you to be going down on the eccentric until you hit your joint
angle specific squat, okay?
You're not going all the way down.
You're not doing deep squats unless you want to.
But you're only going down quarter squats or half squats, whatever your jump angle is,
squat down that far.
Then you do that for six to eight seconds.
So that's a decently long time.
You're going to be squatting down, six to eight seconds.
Here we go.
Wonder what I'm going to have for lunch.
Boom.
Then you do the concentric all the way until the top, okay?
So Monday is going to be your speed day.
Nathanael: Friday is going to be your strength day.
Remember, how hard can we press into the ground, how fast can we press into the ground to get
an equal opposite reaction into the air, putting anybody on a poster.
So Monday, speed day, Friday, strength day.
In week one on Monday, you're going to do six sets of six reps with 60% of your one
rep max doing a eccentric focus, taking six to eight seconds on the way down and then
exploding up.
When you do eccentrics, you should have a spotter.
If not, then use the bars on the side or squat down onto a box.
Remember, you're not doing full deep range of motion squats.
Then none of this is going to apply because then you can't go so heavy and you can't go
down so slow because then you're going all the way down.
This is specific to joint angle specific squats.
Nathanael: So Monday speed day, six sets of six reps
with 60% of your one rep max.
The way that you find your one rep max is you squat as heavy as you can.
How much can you get from one rep?
That is your one rep max.
Or just do a set of squats.
Let's say I got five sets of five reps, 185 pounds.
I will put it into the calculator that I will also link down below.
And it will calculate your one rep max for you.
Then you take your one rep max.
My one rep max is 365 pounds.
So I'll get my phone out type in my calculator.
365 multiplied by 0.6.
Whatever that weight is, that is how much weight I squat for six sets of six reps.
Week two, six after five reps, 65%.
I'm not going to go through all these.
I'll have the PDF down below and you can just look up here.
Week three, five sets of four, 70%.
Nathanael: So that is your speed day.
Over here on your strength day, the percentages are higher because we are trying to go heavier
and get stronger, increasing our maximum strength.
Therefore increasing our vertical jump.
Four sets of three reps with 75%, six to eight.
Four sets of three with 77%.
What I want you to notice down here, this is the only difference.
Everything is six to eight seconds on the eccentric, except these two sets.
Once you get above 80% on your one rep max, it's harder and harder as you get heavier
and heavier to hold that during the eccentric.
So if you are above 80%, like here, 80% one rep max, 82% one rep max, then you want to
do five to six seconds on the eccentric.
So this is month one, the eccentric focus.
Now I'm going to write out month two, which is the isometric focus.
Month two, ladies and gentlemen, is our isometric focus.
Nathanael: So remember the reason why we do eccentrics
and isometrics first is not just for tendon health, it's because when we do a slow eccentric
focus squat, we are teaching our body to absorb that force, build up that kinetic energy,
work the stretch shortening cycle.
And then boom, explode up into a vertical jump.
When we do isometrics, we're doing four to five seconds isometric holds.
So we're squatting.
We squat down to our joint angle specific to our vertical jump angle.
And then we hold it there four to five seconds.
What you are doing is causing your muscle fibers to fail and recruit more muscle fibers.
And then they fail and they recruit more muscle fibers.
So as you're holding it there, your muscle fibers are failing and recruiting more and
more muscle fibers.
And then you explode up.
So that ability to recruit as many muscle fibers as possible transfers to a vertical
jump.
Nathanael: So that's why we are working the isometric
holds as well.
So same thing.
Monday is a speed day, friday is a strength day.
One major difference is that now we have four to five second isometric holds instead of
six to eight second eccentric holds.
Other than that, it kind of reads the same.
Four sets of six with 60% of your one rep max.
Over here on the strength day, there is a difference.
Four sets of three reps with 75% of your one rep max.
It is like that for week one, two, three, and four.
That is because I don't want you to go above 75% with your isometric holds.
Isometric holds are harder than concentrics and harder than eccentrics.
You're going down to the bottom.
You are holding it there for four to five seconds.
And then you're going up.
So I don't want you to go above 75% on that, but this is the isometric focus.
Nathanael: If you have any questions, leave them down
below in the comments and I will get to it.
But let's go ahead and move on to month three.
And this is really where we start to skyrocket our vertical jump.
All right, month number three is our concentric focus.
This is what we've all been waiting for.
So we still have a speed day.
We still have a strength day.
But you'll notice there is no eccentric.
There is no isometric.
You just move it as fast as possible through the full range of motion.
So how fast can you go down, absorb force, switch directions and produce force.
That is how you're going to do it.
So as fast as possible, you're not going slow down and exploding anymore.
You're not going slow down and holding and then exploding anymore.
You are going fast down and fast up.
How fast can you change that direction, reverse that direction and get up into the air or
into the top of a squat.
Nathanael: So six sets of three reps with 75% of your
one rep max, that is week one.
Six sets of three reps with 80% of your one rep max, that is week two.
Week three, we have six sets of three reps with 50% of your one rep max.
So a huge drop in weight.
And then week four, six sets of three reps with 40% of your one rep max.
The reason that I did this, the reason that we drop in weight is because by dropping from
75 and 80 to 50 and 40, we are giving our central nervous system a rest.
We're giving our body a rest so that at the end of the third month, we are peaked and
we are jumping as high as possible.
So at the end of this is when you're going to want to test your vertical jump.
Nathanael: Same thing over here, five sets of two with
85%.
Now this is a little bit higher because it's your strength day.
Five sets of two with 90%.
That's as high as you're going to get.
And then five sets of two with 60%.
Five sets of two, 50%.
So these last two weeks, we are dropping in weight significantly.
We are still running the motor pattern because your brain needs to still be squatting.
You need to still be building that neural pathway.
But you need to be going lighter, giving your central nervous system a rest.
And then at the end of that, test your vertical jump.
Put somebody on a poster.
If you don't want to test your vertical jump and you don't want to put somebody on a poster
and you don't want to peak right here, then you could just keep progressive overloading
for these last two weeks.
Nathanael: So you can do six sets of three with 82%.
and then six sets of three with 85%.
So you could progress overload slowly, getting heavier and heavier and heavier.
Then at the end of this, you could even go two more weeks in the concentric phase.
And at the end of this, then you will repeat it.
You would go back to the eccentric phase.
You would test your one rep max again, because it is going to be way higher.
You can now probably squat way more than you did when you first started this.
So retest your one rep max.
And then go through it again with the same percentages using your new one rep max.
Ladies and gentlemen, that is all I have for you.
This the best video that I could possibly do on how to squat to increase your vertical
jump.
I've tried to give you everything that I can, but unfortunately, squats and vertical jump
is a topic that could be talked about forever.
Nathanael: So I could've made a six hour long video,
but I wanted to cram it down into what I thought was important.
So I hope that you liked it.
As always comment, jump down below in the comments section, I will send you a free body
weight program.
If you're interested in my weight training vertical jump programs with all of this in
it and all of the other exercises that you need to hit, your hamstrings, your glutes,
your calves, your tibialis, your posterior chain, I'll put everything together.
I have programs, advanced programs.
Link will be down below in the description.
It is $20 a month for access to all of my programs.
All of my weight training vertical jump programs, my indestructible knees, my upper body for
athletes, complete core, my nutrition manual.
Everything is linked down below $20 per month to access to me to coach you and all of my
programs.
I'll see you guys in the next video.
Speaker 2: (Singing)