- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together we are most famous
physical therapists on the internet.
- In our opinion, of course, Bob.
- All right, the people are here, Brad.
They wanna learn how to jump higher.
- Right.
- They wanna train themselves to jump higher.
Maybe they wanna be able to dunk
or maybe they want to be able to
dunk better with two hands or.
- Right.
- And they're saying, look,
there's a bunch of old guys here.
The reason we're qualified to
teach you how to do this, Brad,
is because we're physical therapists
and we're gonna use science-
- Right.
To help you increase, not just some nilly, willy, milly.
- And I'm certified strength and conditioning specialist.
- Right. And on my side,
I could dunk until I was 36 years old.
In fact, I was in a dunk contest with my brother at age 30.
If I can find it, I'm gonna put a
little clip of that on this video, too.
- All right, so we got three exercises.
- All right, three exercises.
These are the the top three ones
that I think that you want to do
is using plyometrics to some extent.
And Brad will talk about plyometrics after the video.
- Right.
- After the jumps so that you can kinda know.
So these are the three, I would say, Brad,
first off what you understand about plyometrics,
they can get you very, very sore. Very sore.
- They're very aggressive.
- Yeah. I wouldn't do this like right
before the basketball season, you know?
I mean, I wouldn't do it during the season.
If you haven't been doing it,
I'd be doing it in the off season.
- This is assuming you're already-
- Somewhat in shape.
- Yeah, a fit person.
You're not a couch potato and gonna
decide to get like this in a week.
- Right. And I would do these probably every other day.
Maybe every third day to start.
You guys, I want you to listen to your body.
If it's really sore, go ahead and stop.
You're gonna need to warm up a little bit.
You know, jumping jacks or whatever, Brad.
- Yep.
- Maybe some just deep squats here,
just to start warming things up, get things ready.
- You'll probably already have a warmup that
you had from your previous activities and sports.
- Bad knees, I don't want you to doing this either.
- Right.
- So the first one is tuck jumps.
And I'm not gonna do all eight,
but I want you to do three sets of eight.
- Okay.
- So you're gonna come down
and we'll get the plyometric action here.
Come down.
Tuck, tuck, tuck, tuck.
- So the tuck refers to bringing your heels up to your body?
- Right, exactly.
- And then go down and freeze yourself, Bob.
Look at the good posture he's maintaining.
- Right. - Good athletic stance.
Shoulders back, arch in the back here.
- Right.
- So you're gonna maintain that for every jump.
- Exactly.
You wanna do the second one? I'm already tired.
(laughs)
- I'm 54 years old.
- All right.
The straight leg calf giant.
- Right. - Okay.
So the calf muscle is really important on your vertical.
- Right. Exactly.
The last one was for the gluteus maximus
and some of the quads.
- Right. Yep.
Now we're down the leg down to here
and with this, we're gonna keep the legs straight.
- And be as straight as you can.
There's a little bend to 'em.
It's impossible to do without.
- We're not gonna lock them, exactly.
So here, we're just gonna jump as high as you can.
Do not let your heels touch the floor.
- Jump. Jump.
Isn't that, there's that song. Jump. Jump.
- Don't sing too much about now.
Okay, so we're gonna do 30 of those.
- You can do three sets of 30 on those.
'Cause they'll take a lot more.
- Right.
- The other one was just three sets
of eight for the tuck jumps.
- You'll get, yeah. You gotta watch your fatigue level.
All right, the third one is alternating lunge jumps.
- Okay. - This is the lunge.
- Yep. Okay.
- So you're gonna start it off in this position,
one leg in front of the other.
And then you're gonna again,
the same thing, spring-loaded here.
- And look at this posture.
- Yeah, good posture. - Vertical.
- Ready?
(feet hitting floor)
How am I doing Brad?
- Uh, keep going, Bob. You're doing good.
- Yeah I'm old.
But when we were young,
we could have done this better than anybody.
- Oh, you better believe it.
- So, those are the three
and let's talk a little bit about
the science behind them, Brad.
- Okay.
- It's plyometrics, right? - Plyometrics.
And with plyometrics,
the reason why you wanna do plyometrics
is because it works and they've done studies on this.
And what plyometrics means,
I'm gonna talk about it in relationship to the calf.
The calf muscle,
when you do a jump.
Can you go down here?
Right down on the floor.
If we look at this muscle right here,
when I'm landing, my toe hits first
and the muscle, my calf muscle is lengthening.
In other words, an eccentric contraction.
And that automatically tells a muscle,
your nervous system, to contract,
without even thinking about it.
So that adds a little bit of power to the jump.
Okay, the next thing is the physical or the
mechanical makeup of the muscle is elastic.
You know, muscles aren't like a steel rope.
They have elasticity.
So when you're going down,
the elasticity of the muscle naturally wants to contract.
So that also adds to pushing up.
And thirdly is your strengthening the muscle through that.
So you're adding the strength,
and those are the science of plyometrics.
- And that's how we were also trying
to target the specific muscles.
- Right.
- That's why each exercise kind of
did a little bit of different muscle.
You know, like this one was more trying to simulate
I think more the one-legged jump off, you know?
- Sure.
- She might do it with the dunk.
- Yeah.
And where these were more, the two-legged jump off.
But getting the calf muscles, getting the quads,
getting the gluteus maximus and those are the three main
muscle groups that we're after, so.
- And you'll see other things,
but you know, this is, you don't need any special equipment,
just a flat surface and a pair of shoes.
- And you'll find, now let us know
how this works out for you.
But again, I think you're gonna start off.
You're gonna have to, you know,
every other day or every third day.
Eventually you can do it every other day,
when you start getting in shape and keep going with it.
And you'll be amazed at how much more high you can jump.
- Check your vertical jump before and do it for a month.
- You'll be swatting those balls, get that crap outta here.
- You'll be able to get up to your elbow into the rim.
- That's right.
- Try to pull that out of there.
You'd be hanging there like that if your elbow would.
- Bring the rim down, why not?
- Take care. - Thanks.