Evolutionary Athletics

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During our years in the combine prep industry I have read people talk about a number of things related to prepping for performance and a big vertical jump PR.  Tricks stem from stretching the hip flexors prior to testing your vert, a crowding the line on your 40, the spiderman shuttle run (a now banned technique) to full on athletic preparation programs.  With all the tricks and techniques discussed one area is often neglected: a proper warm up.

Warming up for a power event essentially boils down to priming the CNS.  Getting the CNS fired up will allow for an increase in muscle fiber recruitment, including the hard to reach high threshold motor units, during the testing which will allow you to generate more force.  More force = running faster and jumping higher.  In Sky High: Improving Your Vertical Jump I discuss a warm up method called ramping.  Ramping is a way to fire up the CNS when you are going to be lifting weights.  The warm up I am going to outline here is designed to prepare you for explosive/plyometric activities.   This will prepare you to run your fastest and jump your highest.

The warm up involves the following three exercises:

Kettlebell Swing

Depth Jump

Altitude Drop- Performing an altitude drop is simply the first two images in the depth jump photograph

Warm Up

Kettlebell/Dumbbell Swings x 10

Altitude Drop x 8

Kettlebell/Dumbbell Swings x 10

Depth Jump x 8

You should rest based on how you feel and can feel free to add in a third set of swings followed by depth jumps.

In this warm up the swings are aimed at explosively activating the posterior chain so that it will carry over into jumping activities, thus why it preceded the altitude drops and depth jumps. The altitude drops get your body generating more force than you can voluntarily create which has a significant impact on the CNS stimulation and muscular contraction. Altitude drops precede depth jumps because they are similar movements and serve a preparatory function for the subsequent depth jumps. Depth jumps accomplish the same task as the altitude drops plus get you jumping which means that they will have greater carry over to the jump than altitude drops will.

Enjoy the warm up and have fun setting some new PR’s

-Alex