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What do you guys think of this journal article?: https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://www.benthamscience.com/open/tossj/articles/V003/52TOSSJ.pdf&chrome=true

How can I implement eccentric training into my training routine? What exercises would be good? Thoughts?

Thanks man. Yeah, I won't be doing these anytime soon. How would people even do these if they can't lift it back up? Go as slow as possible eccentrically and have a spot help you get up?

It's pretty cumbersome to do this with squats. I've tried it before with a leg press, but I did it single legged so I could lift it back up with two feet. i was sore for 5 days and my legs clearly hypertrophied over that period of time. But as LBSS has said, if you haven't done much conventional training, don't do anything crazy. I did something like this when I first started and developed piriformis syndrome, I still have it, but it's not bad anymore.

About this article, the author of that report suggests that eccentric training will help with producing muscle power mainly due to the increased hypertrophy and length of the muscle. He goes on to say that any increase in muscle size will improve muscle power in high speed movements, no matter what. I cannot tell you how far this is from the truth. He mentions tendon stiffness very briefly in the end.

I'm still uncertain now how physiologically muscles and tendons produce more power from either strength training or plyos or both, and how strength training transfers over to high power activities, but one thing that is clear to me is that heavy resistance training makes muscles slower. There is obviously a conversion of type iib fibers to iia, but beyond that rate coding is slower. People on this forum will tell you to get stronger and stronger... but whether or not that's right for you really depends on your body type. Furthermore many people on this forum get so interested in strength training, they don't do much jumping and continue to get slower and more strength dominant.

Shorter stockier legs, shorter toes, indicates strength dominance, less tendon elasticity in general... so ST might be a better route (maybe). Longer legs, longer toes may indicate greater tendon elasticity and plyos may benefit you more, or rather, you may respond to plyos better. There are plenty of athletes that only do plyos and become high fliers and can't squat shit. But that doesn't work for us for the most part. Similarly, getting "stronger," and I put that in quotes because muscle strength gained in a squat doesn't transfer over to a running vertical jump for everyone the same way so the "strength" being applied during the jump is questionable, doesn't work for everyone either. You hear a few success stories here and there (Kingfush on this forum but i haven't seen his running vert not sure if it exists or his sprint times but if you want to squat to improve your vert, take at least 2 years and devote yourself to weightlifting. Many here take that route, and I haven't seen a single success story yet except for kingfish. As a newbie on this forum, I want you to synthesize your own ideas, like I did, instead of being sucked into the dominant paradigm.

Getting stronger over the past two years (not being able to squat 225 to being able to double 315lbs for two sets) made me slower, and decreased my running vertical jump. But I didn't sprint or jump at the same time. Currently, i am improving my lunge strength (right now doing 190lbs with each leg with dumbells) while doing plyos so we'll see how that goes.

My best vert has been obtained before I could squat 225 comfortably for reps, and afterwards. So clearly something is going on other than muscle size that helps produce "power."

^This!

Noone on this forum will tell you to just squat. Yes, most of us believe that getting the squat/bw up is the most fundamental base for improving your vert. But each and every one of us will tell you to keep up with : p-chain strength, body fat and most of all doing the actual thing you are trying to do, max effort jumping.

Kingfish is an incredible squatter, but he kept up with all that. He did tons of GHRs and loaded back extensions that he never logged, he did SVJs each and every time he squatted, he is lean as fuck even now at 210+lbs.

There does not have to be a fight between some supposed strength-based and the opposite 'philosophies'. You don't have to become a die-hard powerlifter or plyo-junkie. You don't have to pick a side. Things are VERY simple. Get stronger, stay ( become ) lean, never neglect practicing the actual ability you want to improve (jumping), that is all.

Kelly Baggett discussing the weights make you slow issue:

http://www.higher-faster-sports.com/verticaljumpfaq.html

But I heard I need to squat faster with light weights to improve power production for vertical jumping and that lifting heavy weights will make me slow?

Until you have a really good base of strength in place you will get faster with light weights by increasing the poundage on your max lifts. Let me explain: Let's say we take someone with a 150 pound bench press who wants to be a great shotputter. Someone tells him that he can be an olympic caliber thrower if he just practices being very explosive with light weights. So he trains by putting 100 pounds on the bar and does sets of 5 as fast as he can. What's gonna happen when he goes out and throws against 400 pound bench pressers who can throw 300 pounds around as fast as he can throw 100? He's gonna get his butt kicked that's what's gonna happen.

Just for the sake of argument let's say that the guy who can throw around 100 pounds the fastest will have a superior vertical jump. Who's gonna throw around 100 pounds faster - The guy with a max squat of 135 pounds, or the guy with a max squat of 300 pounds. Definitely the guy with the 300 pound squat. But if we were to compare a 600 pound squatter to an 800 pound squatter in the same task the answer may not be so clear cut.

The main point is, unless you're already stronger than an ox, the fastest way to improve your ability to lift light weights is to increase your maxes, and the best way to do that is to lift fairly heavy with reps between 1 and 10 with weights between 70 and 100% of your 1 rep max. Lifting light loads will not improve max strength. When lifting heav weights the load may not move that fast but it doesn't need to move that fast.

As for heavy weights making you slow, this is only true of people who carry strength training to the extreme. Even then, it's not the strength or heavy weight that creates slowness, it is the excessive muscular bodyweight that can develop. To verify this all you have to do is look at olympic weightlifters. Their entire sport is based on lifting heavy weights, yet they have the best vertical jumps of all athletes and are as fast as sprinters out to 30 meters.

Some people are sometimes under the misguided assumption that strength training with heavy weights makes one slow because it can create a temporary state of fatigue and soreness in the muscles. That fatigue will sometime temporarily "mask" explosiveness. The solution to that is very simple: Take some occassional downtime and let that fatigue dissipate.

Kelly Baggett's analysis is wrong.

You get slower due to slower rate of force development, not excessive bodyweight. This is a FACT. I can even scan graphs documenting this from Zatsiorsky's textbook, but it's pretty obvious.

I didn't jump because I couldn't, I didn't feel like it because the motor pattern took over, as it does for most people here who get into lifting heavy. People become preoccupied with it and forget their original goals, to DUNK, and be an explosive beast, not a fat piece of steroid injected shit who deadlifts 1000 lbs... yet that's what you guys like to post in the beast thread, un-athletic fat powerlifters and olympic lifters, nothing to do with athleticism whatsoever.

Bagget's analysis about the athlete with 135 max squat vs another athlete with 300lb max squat is also incorrect. I could "throw around" 185lbs in a jump squat more easily when I practiced doing it while my max squat was barely over 225lbs, better than when I improved my max squat to 341lbs (while gaining only 4lbs), this is simply because the exercises are totally different and require totally different forces at different joint angles from muscles and tendons.

I'm not advocating lifting light weights, but I'm against the idea of heavy strength training being the only way to get faster and more explosive. Most people who do it don't become that explosive and just inflate their 40yd dash times and VJ numbers to make it seem as if they're more explosive. I haven't seen many deep squatters who are athletic. Most great athletes do half squats while is a more specific joint angle to jumping and sprinting.

My advice is to pick 2 primary strength exercises, and stick with those. If you like squats and deadlifts do them, but make sure to do high power exercises. The power output of a vertical jump is much higher than that in a max squat. Training just vertical jump doesn't work, but training just the strength aspect doesn't either, the velocity must be trained and that's what I see is the biggest deficiency in the programs of people on this forum. However traiing velocity and strength seem to compete from my experience which is one major problem. Your program looks solid enough.

There are many schools of thought but in reality its all dependent on the athlete, some athletes need to get stronger some need to work on their reactivity/RFD. The bag of tools each coach/athlete has is the same just the implementation changes. Be balanced, switch up training when you stall and always practice jumping.

Are you quad or p-chain dominant? Are you a 'power' athlete or a reactive athlete? Those answers will help you focus your training.

My legs were usually shot after squats so there was no way I could do max jumping, and even regular jumping.

My first two months training for vert, 5 years or so ago resulted in a 7.5-8inch increase in vert in 8 weeks with no jump training with minimal jumping but my running vert stayed the same because my movement efficiency back then was horrible. For SVJ i don't know if it's necessary to practice it that often, however f/v time curves of RVJ is completely different and requires more than muscle strength than SVJ in proportion to tendon elasticity and stiffness.

Have you measured your RVJ? 

Yes ian that's what I mean, in short. It's difficult in my experience to train tendon stiffness with muscle strength for whatever reason but yea be consistent with jumps + squats and see where you can go.

My legs were usually shot after squats so there was no way I could do max jumping, and even regular jumping.

My first two months training for vert, 5 years or so ago resulted in a 7.5-8inch increase in vert in 8 weeks with no jump training with minimal jumping but my running vert stayed the same because my movement efficiency back then was horrible. For SVJ i don't know if it's necessary to practice it that often, however f/v time curves of RVJ is completely different and requires more than muscle strength than SVJ in proportion to tendon elasticity and stiffness.

Have you measured your RVJ? 

Yes ian that's what I mean, in short. It's difficult in my experience to train tendon stiffness with muscle strength for whatever reason but yea be consistent with jumps + squats and see where you can go.

squat with less intensity. leave yourself enough gas for the jumping drills.

most vert trainees really screw things up by wanting so much so soon.