Introduction: An Old Dude's Quest to Jump Higher

Getting older and dunking the basketball don't seem to go together. I've read through and tried different training programs that don't seem to work for me as I've gotten older. A lot of them claim that an older person should still see progress with these programs, but my success with them has been limited because of a few factors:

• I'm turning 40 this year. My ability to recover has changed drastically in the past few years.  I haven't been able to complete every rep of every exercise every week because of this.
• I work full-time, have a wife and kids, and don't have a lot of time to devote to training. 
• I work swing-shifts. Sleep isn't consistent and neither is my training schedule.
• I have some nagging injuries the don't allow me to perform certain exercises: Bad knees, bad right Achilles tendon, bad shoulders.
• It's recommended that I get lighter in order to jump higher. I've put on some muscle over the years and I'd rather not have to lose any of it. Right now, I'm almost 6'1" and weigh about 215 pounds. When I was younger and jumping my highest, I weighed about 190 pounds.

 Over the years, I have discovered certain factors that have consistently helped me to jump higher:

1. Heavy lifting with squats and/or deadlifts. I don't have a lot of natural strength and heavy lifting has always had a positive effect. 
2. Depth jumps. While the height of the box and training frequency has varied over the years, my highest jumps always came with these added to my training program.
3. Olympic-style lifting. When I was younger and skinnier, I hardly ever used these exercises and still had success. As I've gotten bigger and more muscular, vertical jump gains have not come without these lifts incorporated into my program.

That's it. These are the 3 factors that have always helped me jump higher. With this blog, I'll keep track of my training progress and see if I can get back to dunking a basketball using these exercises without causing further injury to my body and without having to lose this muscle that I've been able to put on (I'll gladly lose any of the fat that I have). This blog will help me keep track of what's working and what isn't.

My training program, which I started last week, looks like this:

• A modified Madcow program. Madcow is an intermediate lifting program that I found at www.stronglifts.com . I used this program before a recent surgery and liked the gains that I made. I've tweaked it a little bit to add some plyometrics and power cleans. Here's how it looks: 
• Monday: Squats, bench press, barbell rows, drop jumps (depth jumps where you stick the landing off the box). 
• Wednesday: Squats, overhead press, deadlifts, stair jumps (from a stand, I jump to the highest stair the I can). 
• Friday: Squats, bench press, power cleans, pogo jumps.
• While squatting three days a week may seem like too much, especially when I've said that recovery has been an issue for me and that I have bed knees, this program has you lifting at different intensities throughout the week. The lighter days, I've found, really help me with my recovery. Squatting, overall, has helped my knees become stronger and feel better.
• Over time, I'll change the drop jumps to regular depth jumps. I've decided to start with drop jumps to re-learn to load my body for jumping and to land properly. This should help me jump higher and help prevent further injury.

To help determine if I will have success with this program, I've set the following goals:

• Dunk a basketball with two hands.
• Squat 480 pounds (this is the amount of weight that I have here at home)
• Close-grip bench press  275 pounds (close-grip makes it easier on my shoulders)

I'll let you know how my training goes and I'll add some posts explaining more about my exercise techniques and which programs I've used in the past. 

C