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this is from another post i made in another forum i'm just gonna copy & paste.  naturally vag's Age vs. Vertical is a great inspiration for me.  :-)

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subject: any age 30+ guy here significantly improved your vertical?!
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I'm 36 and will be turning 37 in November. In beginning of 2009 I was at my heaviest ever (~87 kg/190 lbs) after being a lazy ass for about 1.5 years and hardly exercised. I'm at 180 cm exactly or 5'11". Then started in Feb. 2009 I got back into basketball and yoga and started playing ball just about every day ever since... slowly but surely I shed the weights week after week in the beginning of 2010 I weighted about 72.5 kg (160 lbs). Lately I've been at 70 kg or slightly below so about 153 lbs ish and this is pretty much back to my weight in high school.

Between 2009 and now I've only hit the weights sparsely. Less than 20 sessions total. I weight myself at the local hospital with a digital scale that can measure body fat, water weight, muscle/bone weight ... etc. All I've lost are fat. Muscle change has been less than 0.5 kg. If anything, I should have gain a little muscle (or at least it should've become denser/heavier) through the exercises.

As far as vertical is concerned, at my best (probably around age 25) I remember I can jump and try to grab the rim and it would be at the middle of my palm. I have fairly small hands. So that's at most 5" above the rim. At my worst in early 2009 the tip of my finger was about 6" below the rim. Boy did I feel fat, clumsy and just straight NASTY when I was out of shape. Right now I'm only able to barely touch the rim. But I am happy just to be able to touch the rim again. :-) At least the lateral speed and endurance (I average ~3 hours a day 6 days a week in the past year) are back. I hold my own in scoring against anyone just fine thanks to my wide array of weapons and basketball IQ.

Skills wise I got back all that I lost (due to poor conditioning mainly) and the shooting touch is back as well. My biggest skill improvement would be my left fade away and it has been pretty much un-stoppable in 3-3. Another one has been steals I can read the dribble better and time my hands jabs more accurately.

Anyway, back to the subject of vertical. Since I was never a gym rat and I never trained for vertical specifically, I always thought that I should be able to dunk if I trained to improve my vertical specifically. Since I can put the middle of my palm at the right at my best, in theory if I just gained 6" vertical my entire palm should be 2-3" over the rim and I ought to be able to just "stuff" the ball in...

So, anyone here past age 30 improved their vertical by 8" or more?

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this is from another post i made in another forum i'm just gonna copy & paste.  naturally vag's Age vs. Vertical is a great inspiration for me.  :-)

====================================================================================
subject: any age 30+ guy here significantly improved your vertical?!
====================================================================================

I'm 36 and will be turning 37 in November. In beginning of 2009 I was at my heaviest ever (~87 kg/190 lbs) after being a lazy ass for about 1.5 years and hardly exercised. I'm at 180 cm exactly or 5'11". Then started in Feb. 2009 I got back into basketball and yoga and started playing ball just about every day ever since... slowly but surely I shed the weights week after week in the beginning of 2010 I weighted about 72.5 kg (160 lbs). Lately I've been at 70 kg or slightly below so about 153 lbs ish and this is pretty much back to my weight in high school.

Between 2009 and now I've only hit the weights sparsely. Less than 20 sessions total. I weight myself at the local hospital with a digital scale that can measure body fat, water weight, muscle/bone weight ... etc. All I've lost are fat. Muscle change has been less than 0.5 kg. If anything, I should have gain a little muscle (or at least it should've become denser/heavier) through the exercises.

As far as vertical is concerned, at my best (probably around age 25) I remember I can jump and try to grab the rim and it would be at the middle of my palm. I have fairly small hands. So that's at most 5" above the rim. At my worst in early 2009 the tip of my finger was about 6" below the rim. Boy did I feel fat, clumsy and just straight NASTY when I was out of shape. Right now I'm only able to barely touch the rim. But I am happy just to be able to touch the rim again. :-) At least the lateral speed and endurance (I average ~3 hours a day 6 days a week in the past year) are back. I hold my own in scoring against anyone just fine thanks to my wide array of weapons and basketball IQ.

Skills wise I got back all that I lost (due to poor conditioning mainly) and the shooting touch is back as well. My biggest skill improvement would be my left fade away and it has been pretty much un-stoppable in 3-3. Another one has been steals I can read the dribble better and time my hands jabs more accurately.

Anyway, back to the subject of vertical. Since I was never a gym rat and I never trained for vertical specifically, I always thought that I should be able to dunk if I trained to improve my vertical specifically. Since I can put the middle of my palm at the right at my best, in theory if I just gained 6" vertical my entire palm should be 2-3" over the rim and I ought to be able to just "stuff" the ball in...

So, anyone here past age 30 improved their vertical by 8" or more?

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first off, props on getting back into shape over the last year! dropping that fat & getting back into basketball shape was the first step towards really improving your vert, you got gains off that alone, now it's time to implement a progressively overloaded strengthening program to achieve the rest of your goals. You didn't mention if currently you have started to implement that, so i'm assuming you are thinking about incorporating soon?

If you don't know where to start with weight training, you could check out this SUPPLEMENTARY simple program:
- http://www.adarq.org/forum/performance-training-blog/an-introductory-block/

If you wanted to do something like VJB or the JackM split, or something along those lines, that'd be fine too, as they are solid programs.

The keyword here is "supplementary" though. Whatever program/training method you decide on at the time, it can't come at the cost of becoming less fit, less conditioned, and more fat, which can often happen when people start getting addicted to the iron. For performance gains, there of course needs to be a balance, conditioning/basketball can't be in such an excess that your weight training suffers. So just supplement in a nice routine (that has squat + unilaterals), work on getting those weights up at least every week or every two weeks, jump, play ball, eat good, and you'll get those gains.

peace man!

in the last month i've started to cut back hoop playing time and started lifting.  i love playing hoop so much and have enough skills, conditions, and bball iq to give anybody a good for for their money.  but the addiction to hoop itself is no help to my dunk dream.  slowly i'm forcing myself to rest more and play less.  i'm the kinda guy that shows up at any court and i'll play until there's nobody left or light it out.  need more self discipline if i'm to gain more.

definitely.. frequency of basketball training can actually be quite high while still making gains, BUT that is only possible if the sessions are short.. that "guy who gets there first and leaves last" mentality is definitely going to conflict with making power gains.

at first I started with FST-7 (more of a body builder program I guess?) since a friend was doing that and i did few sessions with him and i like how the program felt afterward.  good burns and after only 2 sessions it really toned up my triceps already.  signed on their board and have some questions for their guys but they kept on staying just stick to the beginners program listed.  but the thing is their information is scattered in various posts and the same beginner program was different in different posts and it was kinda PITA to gather all of them up.  so i ended up putting a workout based on my feel and add the 7x12 finishing sets they like to do in the end.  i was doing 12 reps on my sets a month ago but now i've cut them down to 8-10 reps for warm ups and 8 for the regular sets.

ah..

for now i'm just trying to build in the habit (or discipline) of hitting the gym consistently.  i'll probably look into a specific program like your intro block or Kelly's ultimate split in a few months.

cool man..

i'm going to try some depth jumps, never done them before.  should i do them on a day i'm not at the gym doing legs or just do them there?  just measured my wing span and reach today, i guess it's pretty normal.  now days i wish i have freakish long arms and extra large hands.  :-)

since you're just starting out with them, you should do them before your leg training, start off with a low box ~12", work your way to 18" over the course of a few weeks.. you really want to get the form/timing down, that becomes pretty important.. dorsiflexing the foot as you drop off the box, timing the arm swing as you land, exploding up while not looking down etc.. start off using ~3x5 or so.. you could spend quite a bit of time using 18" depth jumps and still make a ton of progress, no need to go crazy with 24-30" too soon.

peace