Road to 50"

It's official, I am now on the road to a 50 inch vertical. My knees still aren't fully healed, but I'm at a point where training for vertical jumping and getting my knees healthy isn't a mutually exclusive thing. I hit the gym last night, and part of my workout was to squat. This was was my first time squatting with any weight on the bar. I was supposed to go for a heavy load on this exercise, and the weight that ended up feeling appropriate was 110 pounds. That's good and bad for two reasons.

Bad reason first: 110 pounds is a joke! That's like 100 pounds under my max bench press. The squat is supposed to be the exercise where you use the most weight, and 110 pounds simply doesn't cut it.

So true...

The good part: I wasn't too upset that the weight was low. I actually thought it was good news because that means that my vertical is already high despite the fact that my strength is low. I think I have above average strength for someone my size, and I know my leg strength is going to catch up eventually. So as the weight that I can squat goes up, I'm sure the inches I can jump will too.

Injury Update & Squatting

My knees feel a lot better. I've been squatting without weights for a while now, and I almost feel no pain. I have no plans to play basketball soon because I don't want to risk anymore setbacks. I also don't wanna be holding back when playing. I'm tired of favoring my right knee when I play or avoiding things that I know will put a lot of stress on my knees. The next time I play I wanna be healthy enough that I won't be thinking about any of that.

I can't wait to start doing squats with weights. I need to get my legs stronger to get over the injury, and in the process I think I may add a few bonus inches to my jump. I'd never done squats or leg-presses before my injury, and I still jumped pretty high. And it's been said that there's a strong correlation between max squat strength and vertical jump performance. So personally I feel like squat strength is an untapped area for me right now that could take my vertical from good to great. The best part about this is that it's going to occur while I'm doing rehab exercises, and well before I start the Road to 50 workout regimen.

Wishful Thinking

I've been thinking lately about what kind of dunks I'll do when I get my vertical high enough. I'm sure we've all done this; fantasized about how we'd dunk the ball if we were as tall or could jump as high as player X.

Well I'm a step ahead of you guys right now, because I've found someone who's dunking style reminds me of me. That's a pretty bold statement since he jumps WAY higher than I've ever done. BUT... back when I was 14 or 15 there was this court that had rims on the sidelines that were almost 9ft, and we'd have these dunk contests on them. I got to try out a wide array of dunks, windmills, 360s, elbow dunks, off the board, reverse dunks etc... The cool thing is that you kind of got a sense of what style everyone had. Well... mine was pretty similar to this guy's:

The one thing I'd say we really have in common, other than being almost the same height and having a similar build, is that his jumps all seem effortless. I've never been the type to run at full speed and then really blast off the floor to get to my max jumps. I don't jump like that. I'll give myself a few steps and then come in slowly and then jump. From the video I think you can tell what I'm talking about.

What a 50 inch vertical really looks like

I noticed while surfing around on youtube that most people have no idea what a 50 inch vertical is supposed to look like. Most of the time it'll be; "Jordan definitely has a 50 vert", or "Spud Webb must have had at least 50!" or "Kadour Ziani has a 56 inch vertical!". I find this irritating because it really is simple math and these guys are usually way off. It's really simple... Take the guy's height, subtract that from the height of the rim, and you'll then have a good comparison point for saying if he's got a 50 or not. Jordan for example stood at 6'6'', which is 42 inches from the hoop. For his head to touch the hoop he must have needed to jump 42 inches high. From his dunk contests I have no doubt Michael could have done this if he'd tried, but getting his head 8 inches higher than that!? No way!

The guy in the picture above is called Alan Barch. He is 5'9" and what you see in that picture is a 54.5" vertical jump! It is the highest I have ever seen ANYONE jump. There are a few ironic things about this picture. First is that he is white. I don't really eat up all that "white men can't jump" stuff, but if you had asked me what race the highest jumper in the world is, I don't think I would have gone with white. The other ironic thing is that this guy doesn't really play basketball! He is a physical trainer who apparently has pretty much no interest in dunking! He is just interested in being the best athlete he can be.

The Best Shoe in the World

I recently got myself a new pair of basketball shoes. I'm not normally too picky about what shoes I wear for basketball, as long as they've got decent ankle support I'm usually good. The last shoes I balled in(which was like 10 months ago) were Reebok ATR's, and they were alright. But this time, partly because of my knees and also because I haven't played in so long, I decided I was going to treat myself and get the best possible shoe out there.

I'm not much of a sneaker head but I quickly managed to narrow down my choices to three pairs. The Nike Hyperize, the Nike Hyperdunk and the Zoom Kobe IV. These 3 pairs are some of the lightest basketball shoes currently available right now, with the Zoom Kobe IV being the lightest basketball shoe ever made. Decreased weight was a huge criteria for me because I've kind of lost a step having been out for so long, and I now need every edge I can get.

In the end I decided to go for the Zoom Kobe IV.

I tried all these shoes on, and in terms of comfort I've gotta say it felt superior. The shoe also looked so much better with much more appealing colorways. The big question though was the ankle support. I've been playing basketball for almost a decade now, and the majority of the injuries I've had before my knees betrayed me were ankle sprains and jammed fingers. I don't think the height of the shoe is as big a deal as people make it out to be. I think what's more important is if your foot is stable within the shoe. Because if your foot is sliding sideways within your shoe, even slightly, you're definitely going to sprain your ankle at some point. With the whole landing on someone's foot thing, when that happens you're going to sprain your ankle regardless. While I think ankle tape may help, I don't think the height of the shoe will make that big of a difference.

So there it is. Zoom Kobe IV, best ball shoe on the planet. These are officially my comeback sneakers.

Good News & Bad News

The bad news first. So a few days after my therapist cleared me I got to play basketball without holding back for the first time in a very long time. I got so caught up in it, I forgot I had a time limit. And since my team kept winning I ended up staying on the court for almost two hours. I was exhausted and sore all over, and worst of all I couldn't find my ice pack.

The next day my knees hurt again. I didn't even have to squat to feel it. So yeah, that was pretty stupid of me. It's been almost two weeks since then and I'm still not back to feeling as good as I did before I played, but I'm almost there. Maybe in a week or two i'll be feeling as good as I did then.

Also the things that used to be my strong points are now my weak points. I used to rely on my explosiveness to get past people, get to the basket, get rebounds and block shots, but now I've lost most of that.

The good news. Although I'm very rusty and hesitant, I've still got some game in me. I am much better at understanding where to be on the court, and I've become a lot more crafty and efficient. My shot's OK, it's not great but it's pretty good for someone who hasn't played for as long as I have.

The best news though is this; I can still jump! I don't have much explosiveness anymore but I think that will come back as my knees and legs stronger and I increase my endurance. But when I really TRY to jump, I still get fairly high. I only went for a max jump twice in between games but I when I did I could almost get my whole hand above the rim. My hands are 8 inches long(I can palm the ball), so let's just say I got 5 or 6 inches above the rim. This would mean that my running vertical right now is around 34-35 inches. I think that's as good as I could have hoped for.

Can I dunk? I don't think so... I usually attempt dunking if I know I can get at least my whole hand above the rim. But honestly, at this point I don't care about being able to dunk(I first did that 6 years ago), what I care about is regaining my explosiveness because it's such a big part of my game. I'll start caring about dunking when my vertical hits the low 40's, until then it won't matter too much.

I should have thought of this:

Almost Back

So it's been a while since I last came on here. 3 months and a half to be exact, and in the meantime there's been some setbacks and some progress. I've been rehabbing my knees hard for the past 2 months, and it's really paying off. I can now do squats with almost no pain, except that I still feel some discomfort.

My left knee is probably at 90-95%, and my right knee at 70%. So there's still some way to go before I'm back to having the knees of a 21 year old (that's how old I am). But unlike the last time I posted on here, I can now run, jump, and walk up stairs pain free, and I guess that was good enough for my physical therapist to give me some of the best news I've heard all year; I am now cleared to play basketball. I mean so far, it's only 30 minutes of basketball once a week, but given how long I've been out I'm still pretty excited about it.

Let's talk vertical then. I've tried jumping a few times in the past two days, and each time I didn't feel any pain. How high? I'm not 100% sure because I haven't really been going for max jumps, but I'm fairly certain I can still touch the rim. So that means that in the worst case I've got a 30" vertical. It's a long way from 50" but for someone who hasn't been jumping or running for the past 8 months I think 30" is not too bad.

The plan right now is to keep doing rehab until my knees are as close as possible to 100%. By then, I think I will have added a few more inches to my jumping just from getting in better shape.

"When I come back like Jordan, wearing the 4-5..." Jay-Z.