welcome back to another episode of coaches breakdown this is coach tyler ray here with project pure athlete and today with my counterpart coach donnie over at elevate yourself we're going to dive into one of our most asked questions the legs back in a vertical jump is this something that i should be training is it something that comes natural we're gonna dive into two parts here first and foremost i'm gonna send it over to coach donny to go over the initial explanation of the legs back in the vertical jump never promise anything but one question that coach ty and i get asked very often is should i fold my legs back when i jump or will folding my legs back help me jump higher before we answer that question let's take a look at a few high-flying athletes who jump with and without folding their legs back so you can see the difference the first one is yuji nishida who is the opposite hitter from the japanese men's national team [Music] he's got a nasty vertical and an even nastier arm swing you'll see how it explodes through his penultimate step and then his legs quickly fold back like they're coiling back from a spring the second clip is from taylor sander who is the outside hitter from the usa men's national team taylor has an incredibly quick ground contact time which means he gets off the floor very quickly but he doesn't fold his legs quite as far back as nishida [Music] we've observed two athletes of similar height both with over 40 inch verticals playing at the highest level of volleyball one folds his legs back all the way to where his feet almost touch his butt and the other only exhibits a slight flexion of the knee so should you fold your legs back to jump higher i'll let coach tai from project peer athlete explain why this happens and how it applies to you so coach ty take it away thanks coach doni and hello everybody welcome to the workshop this is my home gym this is covid headquarters over the last year and today we're here to talk about the legs back jump phenomenon what's causing this why do some athletes present with it and some don't and should i be trying to do this on my own should i be trying to emulate it well what we see here is essentially the display of the legs back is as a result of one really important factor is how much horizontal real estate is being displaced through the takeoff and essentially how much an athlete is using that hip extension to drive their jump as an engine for example an athlete that is a little bit more collapsed on takeoff has a longer range of motion through that hip is going to have legs back as more of a reflexive means at takeoff to control that center of mass because as i'm taking off and covering a little bit shallower of a line of action the legs are going to come back to control that center of mass they're also going to come back because i've created a incredibly high velocity extension through my hip so i'm getting some stretch reflex activity through that posterior chain some as i rapidly lengthen my muscle it's going to shorten as a reflexive means to protect that whole structure versus if i have a bit more of a vertical take off straight up and down there's less of a need reflexively to pull the legs back to control the legs may then come back as a means to create global extension which is really to benefit the swing itself so athlete to athlete we see them performing legs back a couple different ways one is going to be a little bit more reflexively through takeoff because we have that kind of shallow line of action and that long hip range of motion and secondarily we're going to see legs come back as kind of a consequence of creating a lot of extension we might have the legs pull back a little bit we might have the legs pulled back a lot and some athletes might not pull the legs back much at all and depend a little bit more on the thoracic rotation and thoracic extension which is through the upper back so to answer your question should i be practicing this on my own well it comes quite naturally it's something that you can play around with but we don't want to be sacrificing our jump behaviors to get into a position that we think we should be in we have a lot of instinctive behaviors that are built into us naturally and it's really our job to listen to our body and listen to how it works we can work on elements of jump technique to become more efficient to fine-tune those behaviors but ultimately we want to find what works best for our body so don't waste your time trying to get your legs back thinking it's making you jump higher work on being aggressive through your approach and accelerating all the way through takeoff focusing on some very important key factors that's going to be as we apply that last contact to the ground that block step we are striking the arms down and through to create an aggressive impulse from the ground and essentially help us lift off the ground the rest is gonna be as a result of the play i hope that provides a little bit more context we will be diving deeper into this in the future i'm going to send it back to myself that's how it's going to be hey tyler back to you hey thanks me i appreciate you and we hope that you've learned a little bit here today with part one we will have part two down the road that dives into greater detail but for now we hope this gives you a great start make sure that you're subscribed here at ppa as well as donnie's channel elevate yourself the link is in the description below donnie you're a stud as always i appreciate you make sure that you head over to his channel to check out any other episodes of coach's breakdown we like to go back and forth to share the love it's been coach ty it's been my pleasure we'll catch you in the next one oh uh covet high five [Music] i almost forgot i want to let everybody know we just dropped our brand new 12-week volleyball off-season training program this is for athletes with access to a weight room traditional free weights and the links in the description below we're running a special launch sale this weekend only so instead of 29 dollars it'll be 19 yes for an entire training program that is video examples for every single exercise we have strength and power training there's plyometric jump specific training there is conditioning built into it there is shoulder stabilizing and rotational core power everything that any volleyball player could ever want is in this program and if you add the missing link our famous jump technique program to your cart with the code missing 50 you get 50 off that program as well this is all limited time but we're letting you know coach has got your back let's go uh let's let's check out the the trailer let's go that's a teaser let's go see it ready three two one go [Music] [Music] you