Explosive Training: The All Or Nothing Principle And Squats

Ok, I wanna rant and rave for just one second before I explain something you can add to your training to get a little bit better results—maybe even a whole lot better results, depending on what you’re currently doing to increase your vertical jump. First of all, I had about maybe ten different requests from people who are trying a certain training program— I’m not gonna mention the name of it, you guys who e-mailed me know the name of it. And you’re wondering why you’re not getting results or why you’ve even lost some results, and please go to the website; look at the first video on the website, and it’s gonna explain why you may be training your endurance and not your jumping explosion. There’s a lot of programs out there doing that, but there’s one in particular that is really bad with it, I mean repetitions up to like twelve hundred in some cases where you’re doing twelve hundred times one exercise; and that’s training your jumping endurance. And so I just want you to be aware of that. I know I’ve said it a hundred times, but I still get a lot of the same type of questions.

Ok, first I want to explain a couple little principles that might help you understand why this principle of training is gonna work out. First of all, your muscles work on a principle called the the “all-or-nothing principle.” The “all-or-nothing principle.” It’s not something I made up, it’s something that I learned during my personal training education. You can look it up on Google: the “all-or-nothing principle.”

Basically how it works is, depending on how much weight you’re lifting, it’s gonna depend on how your body recruits muscles. So let’s say, for instance—this is not true—let’s say  you have twenty muscle fibers, and if you’re only lifting very light weight, your body’s only gonna recruit maybe half of those muscle fibers.

And it uses muscle fibers either the whole muscle fiber, or not at all. So it doesn’t use, like one muscle fiber a little bit, or all the muscle fibers just a little bit, it recruits a certain number of muscle fibers, and then it either uses all of them, the entire fiber, or not.

So basically, if you’re training with lighter weight, you may not have been training certain muscle fibers at all, because you’re only training a certain portion of the muscle fibers. So, that’s why in your training you wanna emphasize doing heavier lifts, because you’re gonna be training every single one of your muscle fibers as your body recruits everything it has to lift that weight.

Ok, with that in mind, what I recommend you do, and please don’t be afraid to alter your current jump training program. You may be on the strength training, you may be on the vertical jump project, there’s tons of good programs out there. But don’t be afraid to alter it, if this makes sense to you.

If it doesn’t make sense to you, keep doing what you’re doing. But I recommend you do your heavy lifting with five sets. The first three sets should be very heavy weight. Keep your reps below ten, and do them very explosively. If you do it explosively, that’s what you’re trying to train: your explosion. So you’re going to be following the pattern of doing explosion to gain more explosion.

And so the first three sets, reps below ten, and then high explosion. So if you’re doing squats, you’re doing it like you’re exploding. If you don’t approach each exercise like this (you’re gonna do it with more intensity than you’ve ever done), then you may be lacking results because you’re not pushing yourself to a higher explosion.

You’re just pushing yourself at a lower level of explosion. So you’ve got to get fired up during the training, if you’ve got to play some music in your head, or whatever you’ve gotta do, you need to be exploding.

Now the last two sets are gonna be different for a couple reasons. One of the reasons is, when you do explode, that initial hit is gonna make that weight coast for a bit, so it’s not gonna be straining your muscle, which is not a good thing. So your last two sets, we’re gonna be doing a complete muscle strain. So on these last two sets, keep your weight below ten still, or your reps below ten, so keep your weight heavy; but do the weight very slowly. So you might have to do a little less weight.

So if you’re doing squats, go to the peak point, lower very slowly so that you can feel the strain on the muscle the entire time. If you feel the strain the entire time, you’re getting every area of the muscle trained.

Now, your last set is something a little bit different that you want to do. This is gonna be what we call the “burn-out set.” When you train your muscle to go a little bit past total failure or fatigue, you’re able to train the muscle to its maximum potential. So, here’s what you’re gonna do on your last set:  you’re still gonna keep your reps below ten.

And what you wanna do is, it’s best to have a partner. If you’re doing squats, no matter what you’re doing it’s the same thing: go until failure, until you can’t do any more. And then the moment you can’t do anymore, rack the weights. Take off twenty to forty pounds or ten pounds or however much, so that you can go back and do just as many again.

Now once you’ve pulled off those weights, immediately get under there and do under ten, but go until failure, until you can no longer lift anymore. Once you’ve gotten to that point, repeat that process one more time. Take the weights off quickly, and then go to failure again until you just can’t go anymore. If you have a partner, have him help you do two to three more so that your muscles are just completely exhausted.

So basically, if you change your workouts to doing five sets, the first three explosive, and you’ve gotta get fired up, and you’ve gotta explode like you’ve never exploded before.  Do make sure you’re warmed up so you don’t have any muscle injury, and that you’re well-stretched. But those first three—explosion. The fourth one, slowly but thoroughly straining the muscle.

The last one slowly but, surely straining the muscle and then doing, taking off and then going to failure again; and then one more time going to failure and having someone help you do two to four more repetitions. So that’s the way to completely train your muscle to get stronger and focus on the explosion that’s gonna help you jump higher.

If you like any of these tips, please go to the website. We have a newsletter that’s gonna send out just helpful tips that are gonna help you just fill out your knowledge in your vertical jump training program.

It all depends on you. If you go out there and you find a program, and you’re excited about the program simply because there’s testimonials on the page or because it promises you, ten to thirty inches of vertical jump power added to your vertical, it’s—you may be disappointed because basically you’re just buying into to someone’s marketing.

But if you go out there, you do your research, you go to my site, you go to other sites—which I can recommend a lot of different sites that have good information on them—you’ll be able to develop your own vertical jump training program.

You’ll be able to know for yourself whether it’s gonna be an effective program or not and not just have to guess or buy into someone’s marketing. So, I hope these tips are helping out. If you do have questions, e-mail me. I’ll try and address it in one of the videos. Thank you. Bye-bye.