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Woohoo! So what's your squat:bw ratio right now?

Q1 of 2016 Update

Been maintaining full squat strength with paused 405s 1-2x per day.

using volumes of loaded squat jumps + SVJ jumps for explosiveness and skill practice.

03/25/16- repeatable SVJ 35s after squat jumps without any stim. not even perspiring. and on chuck taylors.

will get serious soon. my loaded jump squats at 75lb now and getting better.

from all the jumps these last few weeks, i get the best SVJ if i do it like my squat. i bounce of my calves.

Quote from: T0ddday on August 29, 2011, 03:15:41 pm

Quote from: Kingfish on August 28, 2011, 04:50:23 pm

^ yes. all my maintenance reps aside from 1RM testing a while ago are all paused. im trying to keep my strength while doing more speed and jump drills. BW also went down from 188-192 to 172-174lb while improving my paused rep to 425x1.

i like paused reps. trains me to really explode and go all out really quick. non-explosive paused rep will slow down too much and get me pinned nicely.

Yeah, that's REALLY impressive weight loss.  And it's pretty much exactly what I am trying to achieve right now.  A few questions?  Was it just diet?  How far down did you cut your calories?  Did you up protein intake?  While cutting the weight you were able to maintain close to your maxes just by doing the ramp up singles?  How much did you have to cut the volume when you were in negative energy balance?  And finally, did you add any additional cardio?  I am pretty anti-cardio but was considering something low impact like swimming to add a little energy expenditure and get the weight coming off a little faster.  Thanks.

BW 182-184 right now. i'm jumping better doing just volumes of jump squats (20-25-30%RM), SVJ drills and a leaner diet.

revived from sept 2011.. yes. if I lose another 10lb weighing me down, ill be gaining inches in my jump.

and half a decade ago, TOddday is already trying to lose weight. he's jumping at 205+ now . I think he gave up on the weight loss

Lol.  Good call out.  Well I did have surgery in the interim and am the lightest I have been post surgery... So I didn't give up so much as I recalibrated... Which is kinda a euphemism for giving up.

I have peaked below 200 a few times which is really rare.  I actually was thinking of the key to getting over 50 inches might be to earnestly get into the 180s... My calculations estimate I can get another 2 inches or so from 10 lbs - iff I lose no power in the process.  That's not too thrilling honestly because I think I might be able to squeeze out more gains from training...

Really it's the weight vest that made me decide to jump at higher bw and stop trying to be light...

When I realized I could dunk with 20lb vest and not hurt my knees I realized two things.  I'm handle weight pretty well, taking off 20lbs is a few inches but not game changing.  And my knees don't get hurt because I'm heavy the hurt cause I land from high up (fast).  They hurt less with more way and lower landings... So losing weight and jumping higher won't save my knees, it's the landing from high that causes injury so I have to be moderate about this no matter my bw...

Still thanks for the inspiration.  If I get into the 180s I'll owe you... Only thing holding me back... The opposite sex doesn't exactly adore me when my cheeks start looking gaunt and my shirts are not filled out.  And they voice it. Lol quite a sacrifice.

Quote from: T0ddday on April 20, 2016, 12:06:10 am

Still thanks for the inspiration.  If I get into the 180s I'll owe you... Only thing holding me back... The opposite sex doesn't exactly adore me when my cheeks start looking gaunt and my shirts are not filled out.  And they voice it. Lol quite a sacrifice.

yes. you will look like an addict or somebody with an eating disorder. been there. no other way to jump very high but to go very lean and  strong.

Lol.  Yes, not quite like an addict but someone who just recently kicked a heroin habit... I've heard the jokes though.  Here is me at one of my lower weights in the last 5 years... The cheeks and arms started looking real skinny... 

I look weaker than my girl here which isn't really acceptable. I don't like skinny women and it's hard to justify when you look like this.

you seem to have good skills using extra mass as leverage for jumping high. I wont change a thing cause its working for you.

Yeah I'm good at jumping w weight.  My keys for vertical jump improvement are loaded jumps, band squats and band training w a squat base.  I do want dunk diversity though (left and right hand and one and two feet) and one footed jumping requires really low bw.  Interestingly, so too does standing vertical for me which is your forte.  Standing vertical is much harder when heavy than running two footed vertical.... Although it's more dangerous.  I can jump 30" at 285 pounds (75 lbs of weights) which is just off my predicted max so I'm good w added load but the higher you jump the more cutting weight helps... I'm hoping I can do specific enough training to be able to be 190-195 without looking like a drug addict...'this would be optimal and I have accepted I can't be 150 like Andrew.  It's annoying that I have non-existent quads, tiny calves, small arms, and still am perpetually over 200lbs... Probably gonna have to get reverse fat transfer surgery from glutes to quads lol.


I love the way you state your goals.  First goal was standing two handed dunks at 5'10.  Quite an accomplishment.  Accomplished.  Check.

Next goal.  Standing two handed dunks without looking like a recovering addict.  Not yet accomplished.  Lol.   Pro tip, don't cut your hair quite as low when your skinny, low hair makes you look even more like an addict.

This discussion makes me wonder about a hypothetical scenario:

- Athlete weighs 200lbs, squats 2x bw
- Athlete cuts down weight
- Athlete weighs 175lbs, squats 2x bw still

How would his DLRVJ, SLRVJ, and SVJ been affected, assuming all other factors were held constant?

depends.

I think we need to go to the extremes here to make a point. Ask it another way:

Athlete A is 300 lbs in BW, squats 600
Athlete B is 150 lbs in BW, squats 300

Both have the same ratio, structure, CNS etc. Who jumps higher? I would say the 150 lbs one, because it takes less effort to change direction at that weight and there are other things like, again, the absolute force that you can transmit through connective tissues that is important too. These things are being monitored by the CNS all the time for safety reasons (mechanoreceptors, proprioceptors etc).

So imagine the 150 lbs guy going for a high speed jump with a let's say 8G plant.

That's 8Gx150 lbs = a 1200 lbs force in the amortization phase that is transmitted through the skeleton.

Athlete B tries the same thing, at the same speed, and gets himself the same 8G plant. His skeleton, connective tissues, tendons etc need to deal with 8Gx300 lbs = a 2400 lbs force in the amortization phase.

So Athlete's B connective tissues need to sustain a tremendous amount of pressure and tension without the CNS raising red flags for safety reasons that they might break, regardless of the fact that they both squat the same 2x and muscularily produce the same amount of force/eccentric force etc.

It's like taking a tractor and trying to make it a race car. Sure, you might design an engine capable of revving and pulling the tractor at a racecar pace, but the joints of the car themselves, the materials themselves, the wheels, the articulations, the suspensions etc would just fail at those extreme tensions and forces being applied at that weight.

And if the tractor has a very good computer that senses all that, the computer will shut down the power to prevent the tractor from breaking down.

In my opinion, that's what's going on with the bodyweight in a human when jumping, that's how it acts.

And it's even trickier than that - we are looking at squatting here. But usually we increase our squat and bodyweight (say we keep the same ratio) but the calves don't get that much stronger. And then the calves, which don't grow as fast/strong, remain behind with the squat going up. That changes the mechanics/overloading of the jump, making the quads do the breaking more, which makes you more quad-bound, which makes you increase the knee bend more, deactivates the hamstrings more, the angles are different and on and on and on.

So it's more complicated than simple numbers here.

Absolutely. For the standing vertical jump, things are easier, meaning, the 300 lbs guy might have an easier time being at the same level as the 150 lbs guy. More about voluntary power than anything else. Maybe the speed of the movement/reversal of the jump would differ due to the added momentum of the extra weight, but even then, mathematically, they should pretty much be the same. I don't see why they would be different. Maybe all the extra things we've talked about above would still apply (there's still some G-forces occuring during the reversal) but the percentage that these factors are important are far less in the case of the standing vertical jump.

Also, and this might be interesting, maybe there's a certain threshold of "mass" certain muscles have.

Maybe if you take one guy at 150 lbs that squats 300 lbs, and get him to be 300 lbs and squat 600 lbs, his muscular distribution changes and his mechanics change. Maybe when he was 150 lbs and squatted 300, his quads weighed 30 lbs and his glutes weighed 50 lbs. Now, at 300 lbs, his quads weigh 80 lbs and his glutes weigh 100 lbs. Or it might be that his quads weigh 50 lbs and his glutes weigh 150 lbs. Who knows, right? They grew differently, and promote different mechanics. They have different strength ratios now, because the shape, the amount of muscle fibers, motor neurons etc in each muscle is different and has a different potential for growth.

So it's not that easy. But assuming everything is equal, which is not, in real life, then I don't see any mathematical undertaking that would make the 150/300 guy not jump exactly as high as the 300/600 guy.

Here's a question for Dreyth.  I don't know your numbers exactly so excuse me if I underestimate but let's assume your 200lb and squat 400.  Would you trade 50lbs for 100lbs.  So you now weigh 250 and squat 500...   I'm gonna bet you won't.  That's probably the  best answer to your question...

I don't want to weigh 250.

If you give me the choice between 200/400 and 175/350, I'm picking the former. Will either one make me jump higher? Not sure. That's what me and raptor are talking about. Not sure what you're so confused about to be honest; me and raptor seem to understand each other just fine

Well are you holding vertical jump equal then?  If so the answer is the same.

No, we are testing for vertical jump. What we're wondering is the following: if my relative strength is 100% equal on all lifts at a bodyweight of 150 and 200, at which weight would I jump higher? But more importantly, WHY?

Raptor brought up some great points about that. We didn't exactly control for everything since we both agreed that calf strength won't increase as fast as squat strength, meaning calf relative strength will probably be stronger at 150bw verses 200 bw.

But it's still something to think about because we probably will be at a crossroads at some point in our training where we wonder: should I drop 10lbs even if my relative strength will stay the same? Will it lead to a higher vertical? If it doesn't then i wouldn't do it. Kingfish may be coming close to that crossroad sooner or later. Perhaps after a certain point, he physically can't get stronger without adding mass, but the amount of mass needed to add for a given increase in squat will be equal to the ratio of his squat:bw already.