About a year ago, I was listening to episodes of the Just Fly Performance Podcast with Joel Smith and many of his guests were referencing the work of Jay Schroeder. I had never heard of Jay, so like anybody of this generation, I went “on the line” and tried to find any material I could from him to learn more. Luckily, I stumbled upon a YouTube video going over his training philosophy and many of the concepts the podcast guests were speaking of. Besides the old training videos of Werner Gunthor (Swiss Shot Putter), this was one of the craziest and eye opening training documentaries I’ve seen. It was so different from how 99% of coaches train their athletes now that I had to watch the video 2 or 3 times to make sure I was seeing things right. Many of the exercises that were demonstrated were advanced, but it was the reinforcement of “perfect position” and principles behind the exercises that led me down a rabbit hole. Everything was geared towards “speed” and training the nervous system to turn on and off muscles quickly. Since then, I found Dan Fichter (IG - @wannagetfast) and DB Hammer as sources to learn from.
*FACT: Nobody really seems to know who DB Hammer is... He wrote some articles for EliteFTS, was present on old forums, and wrote a book explaining his training. When trying to find his material though, I was amazed at all the criticism he got, primarily for his content being too complicated and his training to be “whacky”. I personally don’t care if it’s a little too complex to understand, let alone the fact that the information was coming from a person who WE CAN’T IDENTIFY. People that understood it and tried it had tremendous results. That’s all I need to convince me to look into it.
One of the methods that piqued my interest from the original Jay Schroeder video was the Altitude Drop training, and all the different variations for the different regions of the body (ex. Shoulder raises, bench press, push-ups, etc.). For those that don’t know what an Altitude Drop is, it is essentially catching a falling load. For example, the exercise most used is an Altitude Drop from a box, in which you’re standing on a box (ex. 12” tall), drop down, land and hold a squat or vertical jump position. The KEY to performing these is to absorb the forces rapidly and not let your body or the additional load move after contact.
Now, it’s not that the Altitude Drops were new to me, as I’ve been doing them with my athletes the last couple years during the initial training phase to prepare them for jumping in subsequent phases. It was the intensity at which these drops were done and the different variations that amazed me. The heights of boxes mentioned were MUCH higher than what I was implementing. If I’m not mistaken, Dan Fichter often refers to an athlete he trained and improved their vertical jump and 40 meter dash simply by progressing his Altitude Drops (up to 6 feet high!). If you watch the video with Jay Schroeder, the athlete demonstrating the exercises is Adam Archuleta, an NFL player at the time that had one of the most impressive combine performances. He was jumping INTO the air, not just dropping off, from a 48” box and landing in a perfect squat or lunge position (Advanced Altitude Drops).
These stories sound pretty crazy and involve exercises that are way too intense for the majority of athletes (both coaches had these athletes for quite some time and were able to build them up to the point they’re dropping from 6-feet in the air so it’s not too intense for them). However, it’s the principle behind these drops that led me down the rabbit hole on Altitude Drop training.
Alright, so what is the premise behind these Altitude Drops?
I’ve talked about eccentric training and lowering weights under control in previous articles. However, sports and athletics aren’t played in a slow eccentric and conscious fashion. Every motion we make, our muscles are unconsciously (or reflexively) contracting and relaxing at a very fast rate. Imagine playing basketball and having to think about how you jump and land every time you go for a layup…You wouldn’t do too good out on the court.
Altitude drops can (I believe) teach the muscles to go from a relaxed to contracted state very quickly and do so in the correct order of activation to absorb the presented forces. The faster you can absorb a force, the faster you can transition to producing force. On top of that, you have the factor of gravity, which I believe and will be looking further into, is a great tool for exposing the athlete to greater force demands. At the end of the day, if you examine any sport, they consist of hundreds (if not thousands) of collisions (ex. Foot hitting the ground while running/sprinting) so we need to ensure the athletes can sustain the impact forces to prevent injury, let alone improve performance.
I’ll try not to go too much into the math and physics of Altitude drops, but there are four factors that affect the intensity, or impact force, of the drops: 1) Gravity, 2) mass of the object dropped (ex. Your bodyweight), 3) height of the drop, and 4) the surface of landing. Unfortunately, gravity will always remain at 9.81 m/s2. However, adding an elastic component pulling us down can contribute to increased forces (*Potential energy is the sum of gravitational potential energy and spring potential energy). The mass of the object dropped is easily manipulated, simply by adding weight to the implement or holding an additional load when dropping from a box (ex. Holding DBs and dropping down). The height of the drop simply requires you to use a higher box or drop an implement from a higher starting point. Finally, landing on a softer surface result in dampening of forces as there as the implement is slowed down by the surface (explains the large difference between running on grass vs. running in sand).
If you’d like to understand the physics and calculations behind altitude drops, I’d be happy to share them with you.
These can all be manipulated to achieve certain “intensity ranges”, which can be used to develop a long-term plan geared towards Altitude Drops. For example, using a softer surface will reduce the forces slightly so this can potentially be useful for those athletes recovering from injury and who aren’t prepared for high forces absorbed at high velocities.
Now mathematically, if my calculations are correct, mass and height of drop should have equal effects on the force of impact so it shouldn’t necessarily matter which avenue you decide to progress. However, this is something I will be looking to explore through my own testing over the next couple months too see if there is a different effect between the two.
Here is a quick chart of some of the results I had testing myself different conditions (height and/or mass) of Altitude Drops:
Additional Weight (lbs) | Drop Height (cm) | Peak Force (N) | Impact RFD (N/s) | Stiffness (N/m) | Contact Velocity (m/s) |
0 | 61 | 5226 | 135,553 | -5267 | -3.06 |
25 | 61 | 5391 | 111,188 | -6393 | -2.79 |
0 | 69 | 6229 | 160,579 | -6502 | -3.31 |
25 | 69 | 7345 | 170,833 | -8349 | -3.13 |
0 | 76 | 5973 | 141,167 | -6253 | -3.38 |
0 | 76 | 7180 | 175,225 | -33,402 | -3.50 |
0 | 84 | 6748 | 161,049 | -23,446 | -3.70 |
0 | 91 | 9048 | 214,463 | -25,454 | -3.86 |
0 | 99 | 6714 | 150,545 | -4429 | -3.85 |
Some interesting things to notice:
The drop in stiffness and impact RFD between the 91cm and 99cm drop.
Stiffness is dependent on how deep you go upon landing. The lower you drop, the lower the stiffness value. Think of it as a rubber band - A stiffer band doesn't get stretched as much.
In my mind, I interpret the results as 91cm being the maximum height I can absorb quickly. The significant drop in both metrics might be an indication that the forces on impact from a 99cm drop were too great or the speed was too fast to absorb abruptly. This is similar to managing the height of a box when performing Depth Jumps (ground contact time < 0.25s).
The relationship between peak force and drop height isn’t perfectly linear (however, I did one drop for each height, which isn’t enough to make a solid conclusion).
Mathematically, this doesn’t make sense…But in practice, different landing strategies (hard vs soft landings) probably affect the magnitude of force experienced.
The ridiculously high rate of force development at impact! (214,463 N/s is equivalent to 48,213 lbs/s).
Talk about training the muscles and nervous system to absorb forces at a fast rate! I couldn’t believe how high the numbers were.
Anyways, I’m by NO MEANS done looking into this, and haven’t even started trying out the upper body exercises, so I can’t make definitive statements or conclusions just yet.
All I am putting out there is that I can see great potential use of these exercises from both an athletic performance and injury prevention side considering sports are primarily composed of many collisions and require the ability to absorb high forces at fast rates.
To be continued!
Train hard folks.
Coach Max
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