Chris Bernard – The Flight System

The “Stretch Shortening Cycle” (SSC) acts like a slingshot within your muscle..

When a muscle lengthens, it builds up elastic energy…think like a rubber band.

The energy is released when the muscle is immediately forced to shorten (like a vertical jump)

The sequence of lengthening, building-up, and releasing in itself is responsible for an impressive vertical jump.

But if we want to take it even further…

We must start by shutting down the GTO (as outlined in Step #1), increase the SSC and pair that with Step #3…

A motor unit is a motor neuron and the muscle fibers it innervates.  Groups of motor units work together to coordinate the contractions of a single muscle;

Motor Unit Recruitment is a measure of how many motor neurons are activated in a particular muscle, and therefore is a measure of how many muscle fibers of that muscle are activated.

The higher the recruitment the stronger the muscle contraction.

In the past athletes have tried a variety of different methods in an attempt to increase their motor unit recruitment with little to no success.

In recent years, we have discovered the best way to increase motor unit recruitment is to spend a significant amount of time strengthening the muscles at their isometric phase in correlation to the specific range of motion they utilize in competition.

By doing this we figure out which specific ranges that particular athlete must train in to recruit the highest motor units…

And display the explosive power throughout the entire movement.

The 4th and final step to developing an awe-inspiring vertical jump is…

Speeding up your Rate of Force Development.

Rate of Force Development (RFD) relates to how quickly you generate muscular force.

It is determined by how fast your muscle fibers are recruited, activated, and synchronized to perform a movement.

The key to increasing RFD is to generate as much force as possible at the beginning of a muscular movement before the Stretch Shortening Cycle comes in and robs the muscle of that potential energy.