jumping high is an important skill for a
lot of sports
and in certain circles of the internet
it's even become its own
niche competition the standing
vertical lead is one of the critical
tests at the nfl combine
and has long been a gold standard for
assessing human leaping ability
so who jumps to highest you might think
a dunk legend like michael jordan would
own the vertical leap record but the
highest jumpers
actually aren't basketball players
football players actually have the
highest vertical jump
even better than basketball players yeah
most people would think well basketball
guys jump more so they have the highest
but you know football players are used
to starting from a static position
which is what a vertical jump is the nfl
combines top leaper gerald centerbaugh
once hit 46 inches
and then there's the extra inch higher
that usc football player josh imator
bebe was once measured jumping
so what's the limit today we're going to
look at why jumping from a standstill
to higher than 50 inches is almost
impossible the box jump which has been
made popular in part by crossfit
workouts
has gone viral on the internet and it's
easy to see why
this is evan unger who set the guinness
world record for a standing box jump
at 63 and a half inches
he set the record for single leg jump
too
to find out what it takes i trained with
unger
learned how to cheat the analog vertical
jump test
perfect there's another inch and talk
with a scientist about why some people
like evan unger can jump so much higher
than the rest of us
his muscles are capable of doing bigger
forces than yours
we flew him out to san francisco to show
us how he jumps so high
so this is ridiculous this is up to
almost my chin like i can rest my head
on this pretty easily
we're 60 inches right so this is 5 feet
60 inches yeah that's insane and that's
three and a half inches shy
of the world record which you set that's
correct right okay so
like how how i can't even think about
how to do this
what do you do mentally and physically
to prepare for
and then actually execute a jump like
this
i will train jumps sporadically but not
very often
but a lot of weight training and usually
just focus on the lower body
so i'll be squatting three times a week
and as i get closer the squats change
uh in variation in reps and sets they
get heavier and
less reps uh ends up like making you a
lot stronger for
a one-time explosive movement right
mentally
i think the mental game is just as hard
as the physical game
the problem is like mentally you can't
really prepare too too much for it
um but i find when i'm coming up to the
box i try not to think of anything
unger trained for a year before he set
his record i didn't have that kind of
time
but with his coaching i got to 34 inches
easy
and then 38 inches nice
and that's a mic and then 42 inches all
right this is
30 inch box three four inch plates we're
at 42 inches high
before i began to really worry about
cracking a shin unger had me jumping to
46 inches
thing is i'm not technically jumping
that high because remember
the nfl combine record is also 46 inches
and i'm nowhere near as athletic as a
pro football player
now there are lots of different kinds of
jumps there's running jumps
high jumps triple jumps
but the standing vertical jump is used
in the nfl combine and by sports
scientists
because it's a good measure of explosive
power
the box jump looks amazing but it's not
just
pure vertical jumping it's actually a
complex move that
builds on top of a vertical jump by
pulling your feet
up towards your hips interestingly about
a century ago there was an olympic event
called
the standing high jump and it was pretty
similar to box jumping
this guy american ray eerie was the
reigning champion
he once cleared a bar at 65 inches
if he were alive today he'd probably
give unger a run for the box jump title
but we wanted to know how unger might
stack up against today's nfl combine
jumpers
so he and i both jumped in front of a
measuring tape
that was ridiculous i just like watched
him rise past me
as you can see he out-jumped me by a lot
it was hardly scientific but it looks
like he's cruising to nearly
three feet that's almost 90 centimeters
here's the thing exactly how high he
jumped
depends on how you measure it do you
start from a standstill with his feet
flat on the ground
or the moment before takeoff when he's
on his tiptoes
depending on your form and how big your
feet are the difference could be
10 or more inches either way it's a very
impressive jump like i look at this guy
doing the standing vertical jump and i
go
my god what a monster right that's
biomechanist jesus dipina and my
specialty is trying to understand the
mechanics
of how athletes jump those mechanics are
actually
pretty intuitive the way to get the
biggest possible height
is to have a big vertical velocity at
the end of the taper so how do you do
that
dipina says it's all about moving up as
powerfully as you can
for as long as you can before leaving
the ground
okay so you would think that you would
go and you would
crouch yourself bend your legs throw
them out and be down there
and then wait and say okay let's go and
then you
use your muscles to extend your legs as
powerfully as you can
to get out from the ground the problem
with that is that
when you're down there waiting to start
your jump
you're making a force that is sub
maximal he's just needing
to make the force that you need to hold
the downward position
and to be able to go upward you need to
make a force that is bigger than that
he says there's an even better way so
what you do is instead of starting at
the bottom you start standing up
so you're standing up and then you relax
your muscles completely
so you your legs turn basically into wet
noodles right
and your gravity is pulling downwards so
you go down
as you're using your muscles to slow
down
this downward motion you're activating
those muscles you're pretensing the
muscles
so at the very bottom point you have all
of your
vertical range of motion for the upward
motion available to you still
and your muscles are already pretensed
it's called the counter movement jump
anger and i both tried it and not
surprisingly he jumped
way higher than me i asked dr dipino why
he has better muscles his muscles are
capable of doing bigger forces than
yours basically it just means that
he has a bigger cross-sectional area of
muscle in the main movers really we're
talking
quads and glutes if anyone knows how
lucrative a solid jump is it's joel
smith
he's a coach who runs an online jumping
academy for athletes who want to improve
their leaping abilities
he watched me jump and offered some
suggestions for how to improve
we all know squats deadlifts front squat
we think strong legs
it'll help i view it as a way to create
tension so
right now if we can create more tension
in your legs by getting stronger
you will have the capability to jump
higher
so it is possible that i could get
better at jumping but i'll probably
never get to unger's level
that doesn't mean i couldn't have a
higher vertical jump i went to sparta
science to talk with founder phil wagner
from a research standpoint
vertical jump has been associated with
performance in a variety of sports he
works with pro athletes including nfl
hopefuls
to post their best vertical leap on an
analog measuring device
called a vertec using it is simple just
subtract the highest you can reach while
standing
from the highest you can reach while
jumping the difference is the height of
your jump
kind of because for as easy as the
vertex is to use it's also
really easy to cheat just make your
standing reach as low as possible and
your arm that much because you had a lot
of elbow damage right
right wagner showed me how i could add a
few inches with a fake
injury wow you can't even get close let
me walk through this thing
actually with my short of my shoulder
tipped up my fingers extended my arm all
the way straight then i walked through
again
no fake injury fully stretched out yeah
look at the difference that 45 seems a
lot closer yeah it's a lot closer now
then i jumped great and jumped again
this time using another trick some toe
bounce which amplifies the counter
movement's lift there it is
yep okay so how did i do
so what's considered probably average
quote-unquote average for
an nfl vert would be in the mid 30s
about 35.
so you did about a 33-inch burp just
there look at that no warm-up
a little cheating no warm-up just casual
but here's the other thing scientists
can't even agree on the best way to
measure
vertical jumps there's the analog vertex
there's video analysis
and then there's force plates which
measure an athlete's force on the ground
to calculate
the height of their jump they're harder
to cheat
they're also what wagner's company uses
and thanks to their proprietary
equipment
he says they're also far more accurate
at measuring a vertical leap
so 14.1 inches that's your first jump
that's half yeah after three average
jumps the force plate brought me back
down to earth
and more than halved my vertical leap
too wait for it
15 inches is actually not a bad score
it's real now that might sound like a
big difference but remember
the vertex isn't very precise you can
cheat it with the arm extension trick
and it's measuring your jump from a
flat-footed start even though your body
is
fully extended at the peak of your jump
the force plate just
uses the speed you leave the ground to
determine your jump height wagner says
the highest
any athlete has achieved on the sparta
plate that includes pros he can't talk
about
is about 30 inches but he doesn't think
we're at the limit just yet
i believe that we're capable of getting
up on this
you know to a 40 inch vertical jump
really yes i believe that we're
streaming right now
as a starter is about 29 30. that's
correct it's a fight between
gravity and muscle drop some weight
and you might float a bit higher if i
lose 10 pounds am i going to jump higher
yes as long as you don't lose
the capability making force with the
same proportion so what counts as the
ratio
force you can make on the ground or
muscle tension that you can make
divided by body weight or body mass so
the ratio is what counts
so if you can make your body mass be one
half
which is impossible imagine if you make
it be one half that'll be amazing the
problem is if your capability for force
it's also one half what it was before
you'll jump the same
wagner says better nutrition careful
training and injury prevention
could see athletes cruising even higher
i think the true limiting factor
is how well can we allow individuals to
recover and that's why monitoring is so
important
but how do we continue to add capacity
on each individual
without having a setback so it's
possible we'll see
somebody with a greater vertical leap
someday
but for now bear in mind that what some
of these athletes are doing is already
almost impossible
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