Adarq.org

I think the muscles you use to amortizate depend on where the body center of mass is. If it's forward then the quads will be loaded because you'd otherwise collapse at the knees. If the legs are reached forward a lot and the butt is therefore behind a lot, then you'd collapse at the hip instead so the posterior chain is activated.

That's why I keep on telling Adarqui to try and throw those legs foward and reach out with them to load the posterior chain. He's probably jumping the way he is right now because of these massive VMOs that he has, and he naturally feels the proper way to amortizate is by using his strongest muscles which are the VMOs, so he keeps the body center of mass forward and amortizates in the quads, which is probably efficient in his current condition.

However, people with great posterior chain strength I believe CAN and SHOULD be using this "reach out" technique, and probably are using it without knowing anyway. I also think that there are people who can amortizate with the posterior chain more and jump with the quads more. These people will usually have long amortization phases because they need to transition from a "backwards" position towards a front position where they engage their quads.

Maybe one way to move the focus onto posterior chain involvement in a depth jump is to jump and try to reach a overhead goal, but the goal needs to be JUST A BIT behind the plant location, so you kind of jump "backwards" or at least influence the jumping in such a way that more posterior chain is involved because of this.

I don't know. There's a lot of stuff going through my mind.

10 hours? What PC do you have?

What do you mean strong plant, no jump? Decelerating and doing what? Planting and doing what?

350 on what? 1/8 squats?

I wonder if this method can make the deadlift more posterior chain oriented. For a guy like me who "wants" to use his quads at everything, maybe doing this could make me shift more into posterior chain work during deadlifts.

I wonder what would happen if someone would do downhill jumps. Like a SLIGHTLY declined slope where you run and jump. I think I've seen something like this, obviously there is more overload occuring so it's a mini depth jump, I'm talking unilateral jumps here or bounds.

Like, consecutive one-leg bounds on the same leg going downwards.

It's interesting you mention reactive stuff as working the VMO, since whenever I play 5 on 5 basketball my VMO is very sore afterwards. I think it's because of all these decelerations that occur when playing 5 on 5 vs the halfcourt 3 on 3 that I usually play outside.

Quote from: Raptor on December 12, 2010, 05:29:50 pm

I have invisible VMO on my right leg. It's visible when the leg is flexed, but when it's extended you can barely see it. So much vastus lateralis.

damn.. i'd say i'm mostly vmo, pic might not do it justice i dno, but my vmo definitely outshines my VL by a big margin..i'm the complete opposite of u.

Well that explains why you're jumping so much higher than me off two feet. Any ideas on how to get that VMO bigger? Maybe using a more narrower stance in the squats? How about other exercises?