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MVP Program Review
The MVP vertical jump program from Alan Stein is one of the better programs available on the market, but like most programs, it is certainly not without its flaws. For our full view of what is good and what is not so good about this program read on.  Quality of InformationWhen it comes to basketball training and indeed, how to increase your vertical jump, Alan Stein knows his stuff. The MVP program covers the areas of strength, power, core and flexibility. All these areas are essential for improving not only your vertical jump, but also your overall athletic ability. The program is well balanced in that it tackles these 4 areas in its workouts.Its exercise selections are a pretty good mix of choices that have been shown time and time again to be effective at improving an athlete's strength and power. A rather large criticsm we have though is that the video demonstrations for the strength section are very misleading. Our concerns are that the exercises are performed in an almost deliberately slow manner (even with the feather light weights being used). Whilst it is definitely important for safety to lift weights with good form and in control, it is also just as important for effectiveness to move them as fast as you can. Our second concern is that they are shown being performed with exceedingly light weights that would never really help an athlete's strength that much. Given the lack of guidance in the program on how much weight to use it might give the wrong impression about what is an effective load. One other area that seemed a little weird to me was the core work. It comprises a lot of stuff using a basketball. I am not going to suggest that the core sequence wouldn't be effective, but it certainly seemed, well for want of a better word, contrived. You can get a much more effective core workout without actually taking a basketball to the gym. For it to be included in here just seemed like a clever way of trying to make it basketball specific. On a side note about the MVP site, it is also full of very useful information about the vertical jump programs in general. It says to steer clear of sites that are just sales pages, that are trying to sell you platform shoes, and that are written by people who are clearly just internet marketers. In fact, one of the best things you could hope to see on a vertical jump website is this quote from Alan (admittedly this was a quote given in an interview Alan was giving with, er, himself, but it is still an EXCELLENT quote):
There are no "secrets" to increasing vertical jump, as in, there is no hidden information. But people are so focused on finding an easy way out or looking for some nonexistent "secret" that the overlook reality... if you want to increase your vertical jump you need to:
If all you took from Alan's program was this quote, and then went away and focused on improving these areas you would surely improve as an athlete. CustomizationHere is the biggest weakness in the MVP program. There is zero customization. If you are a 5'10 athlete who weighs 165 pounds but can squat 400 pounds then you will be expected to do the exact same workout as a 5'10 athlete who weighs 165 pounds but can squat 165 pounds. For anyone familiar with sports training you will know that for these two athletes you would require two very different approaches.The other area of customization that it is let down by is in the strength section where there are no indications given of the appropriate load for the user, nor any mention of a suitable method of identifying an appropriate load. Basically the athlete is left to guess how much weight they should be using. PresentationI believe that the MVP program is the most professionally put together jump program available. This doesn't mean necessarily that it is the best program by the way, after all, Air Alert has better production values than most jump programs too. However, it does make the MVP program easy to follow and understand.Coach Stein gives clear instructions on all of the exercises, how to perform them, and what they are trying to achieve. It also comes with a nice and easy printable workout schedule for you to fill in. MVP's quality presentation levels are possibly the benchmark for jump programs.  Value For MoneyWhen you consider that you are essentially paying $39.95 for a very well presented, dare I say it, cookie cutter program, I don't think this is that great value for money. Yes it is very clearly presented and lovely to look at, but basically it is just a list of exercises. For some people such as beginners, this will be a great program. For a more advanced athlete it will provide significantly less value.That said, I don't doubt that if you follow the program, and you know a thing or two about how selecting appropriate weights for yourself, then you will see improvements, and this is rather refreshingly in this over hyped industry, all Coach Steins claims. ConclusionAlan Stein is clearly a guy who knows his stuff. I like the honesty about jump programs expressed on his site, I like the fact that his program covers the key areas of vertical jump improvement, I like the fact that it is so well presented, and I REALLY, REALLY like the fact that he doesn't make a bunch of ridiculous claims.It is a good, well balanced beginners program, that with a few tweaks here and there, as well as some more guidance on selecting loads, could have been truly superb. That said, I would still rate this as one of the better programs available. For more information you can visit the MVP site (which does have some excellent basketball skills DVD's that we would highly recommend). COMPARISON TO VERTICAL MASTERY
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