Scythe Matters

I love basketball. L. O. V. E. love. I love watching it – both college and pro – I love playing it, I love talking about it, and I can already tell I will love blogging about it. And, being that I’m a skinny 5’8″ white guy, of course one of my dreams is to be able to dunk a basketball. Regulation size, on a regulation hoop.

So, I’ve set out on a mission to improve my vertical jumping ability and reach that goal. At 26 years old, I think my peak-athletic window is closing, so it’s now or never, and with that I took the plunge and purchased one of those sketchy-feeling vertical leap training manuals, specifically the Vertical Jump Bible. One look at that website will tell you all you need to know about why I was hesitant to spend money on this, but my own exercise routine wasn’t cutting it and I thought, if nothing else, it would be $40 well spent toward some entertaining blog stories.

I also thought this would be a great opportunity to actually review this manual. There’s a ton of information online (as with all things) for increasing one’s vertical, with some packages claiming “super secret formula” going for as high as $300! And while all of these sites have plenty of testimonials, there’s very little in the way of real review and analysis. The best I could find were short threads on various bulletin boards of people saying it was or wasn’t good, never going in-depth. At $40, the VJB is one of the cheaper options out there with at least some people online claiming that it’s effective. It’ll be some weeks before I can definitively answer that, but I’ve already gained some insight that hopefully will benefit future short caucasians in their quest for that elusive slam-dunk glory.

What you get when you purchase the Vertical Jump Bible

For $40, you get the main training guide, about 150 pages, plus two supplements (20 and 50 pages), all as PDFs. Except, the main guide is protected by Virtual Vault software from CBP, a stupid method of blocking access to things like printing out the document or sharing it with others. The VJB website actually says that you can print the document, but I couldn’t get it to. Not only that, but when you first open the file you have to register it with the Virtual Vault software, after which it becomes licensed to THAT COMPUTER ONLY. Meaning you can’t open and read the file anywhere else. If you registered this on your laptop and then your harddrive died…oh well. Plus, it only works on Windows. Own a Mac and you just paid $40 for this? Too bad. Not exactly customer friendly.

Fortunately, the Virtual Vault software is basically nothing but a file wrapper: I fired up a hex editor, deleted the protection stuff around the actual book, and voila, I now have an unrestricted PDF. To the author of the Vertical Jump Bible: stop wasting money on DRM. Your book is not that special, you’re only frustrating your customers, and you’re stuffing CBP’s pockets for a product that anyone can break in a couple of minutes.

My baseline

Of course, before I can review the performance of the VJB, I needed to get a baseline. How high can I actually jump? And more importantly, how much higher do I need to jump to be able to dunk?

Makeshift vertical jump meter

So I got my best friend to help me set up a makeshift vertical leap measure. With a tape measure, some scrap paper, and some scotch tape, we created this –>
Each strip of paper is 1 inch tall, and we marked from 8 feet to 9’6″. We then took some basic measurements: my standing reach (how high I can reach when flat footed on the ground), my stationary vertical leap (how high I can jump from a standing postion), and my running vertical leap. My friend spotted my measurements (from a step ladder) as I flailed and swatted at tiny strips of paper.

Here are my results:

So I have a standing reach of 7’6″ and a standing vertical of 9′, giving me an 18 inch vertical jump. But that’s just straight up from a standstill. With a running start, I reached 9’6″ for a 24 inch vert. Certainly not a bad start. But definitely a lot of room for improvement. After these tests, I’ve settled on a lofty goal: I want to add another 22 inches to my vertical. I figure, 6 more gets me to the rim, another 12 gets my hand high enough to actually dunk, and another 4 gets my elbow almost to the rim, at which point I could do some spectacular things . A 46″ leap: the dream of every 5’8″ guy who’s ever touched a basketball.

Standing under my makeshift vertical jump measuring tool

Rising up for a vertical jump from a running start

But can the Vertical Jump Bible get me there? It’s certainly not going to happen overnight, but if the online testimonials are to be at all believed, even more impressive feats have been achieved, so we’ll see. I’ll be back in a few weeks to update on my progress and give some more insight into how much value a $40 pdf about jumping can actually provide.