Evolutionary Athletics Jump Program

Written by Jack Woodrup for VerticalJumping.com

The new vertical jump e-book by Alex Vasquez from Evolutionary Athletics is an excellent read with lots of good information. Alex has some interesting methods for increasing an athlete’s vertical jump and I hope to speak with him in the future to explore those further. But for now, here is the review of the program.

QUALITY OF INFORMATION

The e-book starts off with an excellent introduction into the various factors that influence an athlete's ability to jump high. This discussion looks at the factors that help an athlete jump with a greater focus on some of the various research studies that have been performed.

The crux of these studies is summed up nicely at the end with the simple conclusion that jumping high comes down to getting stronger, increasing explosive strength (RFD), reactivity, and improving co-ordination.

For anyone who has read our free vertical jump training guide you will of course already know about and be familiar with these factors as they are discussed at length.

In terms of the actual program itself it is broken down into several specific training phases consisting of a GPP (general physical preparation) phase, a horsepower phase, a maximal strength and power phase, and finally an explosive strength and reactivity phase.

The GPP phase I found to be particularly interesting as it consists of a large volume of Long Duration Isometrics (LDISO’s) which are designed to teach the athlete proper movement patterns. In fact LDISO’s appear frequently throughout the program.

I cannot personally attest to the effectiveness or the efficiency of using them as I have never done so with either myself or anyone I have trained. However I am hoping to grab some time to chat with Alex about them in detail as I think it I something that the readers of Verticaljumping.com might be interested in learning more about.

CUSTOMIZATION

The initial program is a one size fits all program designed to take you through a variety of training blocks that cover all the bases for jump training. Once you have completed the program Alex provides workout templates that you can use to build your own workouts with a variety of exercises allocated to strength, explosive strength, and reactivity.

PRESENTATION

The e-book is well written and the concepts are easy to follow. However a lot of the exercises use inno-sport terms that many athletes will be unfamiliar with. For those of you who don’t know what inno-sport is, well it is a long story that basically involved some guys who not only made up a fake German coach to sell their stuff, but also a whole bunch of phrases and terms to describe their various training modes and techniques that were unique to inno-sport.

Although the guys behind it were using a made up identity it doesn’t necessarily invalidate the actual training information (there are a lot of people who swear by the inno-sport stuff despite the fraudulent fake German coach deception). Anyway, to get to the point, if you are interested in the program be prepared to have to do a whole bunch of research just to work out what half the exercises are and how to perform them correctly. Inno-sport terms are not easy to understand to the uninitiated (I have read the inno-sport book about 4 times and I still find it very difficult to remember what all the terms mean).

VALUE FOR MONEY

The Evolutionary Athletics program costs $27 by itself, but if you subscribe to Alex's newsletter you can pick it up for $17. Subscritpion is free and Alex doesn't send out spam marketing emails, just updates to his site with new articles etc so this option is well worth it.

As for the program itself, like the Jump Manual, it is essentially one size fits all program. Unlike the Jump Manual though this program is reasonably well priced. $17 is a fair price to pay for one program.

CONCLUSION

Alex and Evolutionary Athletics certainly take a different approach to their training of athletes. Personally I love to keep an open mind about all things training and this is one of the things I like about reading Alex’s work. If you have an open mind about how to improve your athleticism then get in quick and check out the Evolutionary Athletics jump program.

If I had one criticism it is as mentioned that there is large amount of assumed knowledge required to get the most out of it. I read a lot of programs and training texts and even I had a bit of trouble identifying exactly what everything was in it.

To find out more you can grab a copy at Evolutionary Athletics