This week’s guest is Jon Hinds, owner of Monkeybar gym chain, with its HQ in Madison, Wisconsin. Jon is the son of Bobby Hinds, founder of Lifeline USA, a prolific trainer and exercise inventor in his own right. You can say that working out is in Jon’s blood. Jon is a former NBA strength and conditioning coach and training consultant for the NFL and MBA.

One of the things Jon is known best for is vertical jump training. He is a master of the use of the power jumper, as we’ll get into this episode. In Jon’s own training, he reached a very high vertical jump, and routinely trains athletes towards 8” gains on their own vertical leap through a unique system. What’s most impressive is that he does so without pushing barbell training, but rather emphasizes training based on movement abilities, band resistance, and descending power sets.

By listening to Jon talk, there are a lot of implications to be made in regards to the way we as humans learn and adapt skills. Jon’s thoughts on the priority of movement skill (sprinting and jumping being a skill) over barbell lifting numbers is definitely something I am in agreement with. The way things like the power jumper overload running jumps is really interesting to consider, since it is a more specific overload than what most traditional plyometric exercises have to offer. The more I learn about sport, the more I realize that the way we force the brain to react to our environment dictates our sprint and jump results much more than cueing movements and lifting weights.

Jon has been doing jump training for 25 years, and it’s great to have a wealth of practical information on the podcast.

Today’s episode is brought to you by SimpliFaster, supplier of high-end athletic development tools, such as the Freelap timing system, kBox, Sprint 1080, and more.