Keegan Smith breaks down jumping into two skills: generating force through heavy squats and cleans, and absorbing it with proper landing mechanics. Start with low-intensity bounce work like rope skipping to build tolerance, then progress through a weekly split of sprints, weightlifting, and dedicated jump sessions on increasingly harder surfaces.
Everyone needs bounce. Often when we use the word athleticism, what we're really talking about is elasticity and bounce. Athleticism is really big and we talk about that in this whole system. But bounce specifically is something that we all need. What do you need for bounce? You need a very high power to weight ratio. So you need to be able to produce a lot of force and produce that force quickly. Big squats, big cleans, being able to jump up onto boxes. These are really important for us to be able to jump high and be bouncy. But the ability to land and absorb force is equally as important, probably more important for preventing balance from causing you pain and holding you back. Most of the injuries that we hear about are related to the white tissues and they're related to too much force for the tissues for the body to handle. So we want to be able to absorb force really well. This is essential for us to have healthy balance if you want to be able to jump higher and have a really good one off performance. Dunking, high jumps, triple jumps, long jumps. We also want to be able to do a large volume of low intensity jumping. So the best way to get yourself started, to build your tolerance, even to be able to jump super high, is to not jump super high, but to jump low for lots of reps. So you can do this by jumping over jumping, rope skipping. We also do like the dancing and combat footwork in your athlete. Really important, really, really valuable for building the foundation in our bouncing. And then just once a week, going hard with the jumping. For us it's the Friday is the jumps, Wednesday is weightlifting, Monday we have sprinting motor Monday. Regularly doing something bouncy, I am for it every day. Builds that foundation where I have less fear, need to warm up less, recover faster. You would think that doing it once a week might lead to less soreness, but it can actually lead to more soreness and more risk because you have these huge spikes in intensity and less of a foundation. So this is kind of the how and why to get started with the bounce. I've made a longer video about it that gives some examples from different athletes and different training systems to help you understand how this can work. And in future videos we'll go more into the details of the feet and the knees. But for getting started with the bounce, bounce regularly, bounce low. Changing the surface and using the slow surface is also a really important one for starting. Don't be afraid to jump on sand or on a spongy surface to begin with. If you're not ready to jump on the concrete or on rubber as you are. That's one way that you can progress. You don't have to jump higher. You can jump on something harder as well, to give your body more of that steering stimulus. So it's a beautiful thing to feel like you're ready to jump. It's a sign of youth. It's a sign of joy and enthusiasm when you've got a spring in your step, when you're feeling bouncy. So let's build this bounce together with everything else that we're doing. Let's make sure that we don't miss out on this piece of bounce.
