I'd like to start by welcoming everyone Q & A interview with vert guru Luke Lowrey. 

What I will be endeavoring to do today is try to get Luke to shed some light onto the ever popular subject of increasing vertical leap.

Welcome Luke. I'd like to start the questions off, for those readers who don't know you...

Q. Who is Luke Lowrey, and how did he get the title of the worlds #1 Vertical Leap Trainer?

Luke Lowrey is an enigma.

I got the title “The World’s Undisputed #1 Vertical Leap Expert” in a letter from an Olympic trainer down in Houston, Texas.

I liked it – and it fit - so it stuck.

Q. What inspired you to create The Vertical Project?

It’s a very long and very strange story – even though I’m only telling about half of it – but I actually got pushed into starting The Vertical Project without really wanting to…

I have been involved in peak performance training since I was a kid, I was Australia’s youngest ever qualified personal trainer at 16… and my involvement in basketball progressed to a point where I had a number of D1 full ride offers when I finished high school. Along the way, I was exposed to things the regular athlete wasn’t (as well as every vertical jump program under the sun by the time I was 15). I always had an intense interest in it, because I was always given a lot of hell as a kid for being slow, weak, couldn’t jump – you know, the tall goofy kid. But when high school finished, that’s what I wanted to do – go to aUS college and pursue an NBA career.

Anyway, the summer after I finished high school, I was helping a friend move house… and my left little finger got jammed under the tailgate of the removal van and was severed. I got rushed to the hospital and was lucky to get a good surgeon, but word got back through the scouts to the colleges in theUS and all my scholarship offers dried up.

After three months of not really knowing what was going on, Brian Goorjian gave me a call and heard about my situation and asked if I wanted to come down on his squad and try and work something out again for US college. At the time I was managing a gym on the weekends. So, I spent two years under on the Titans NBL squad (2000-01), got some burn, but after the finger, the interest never really came back and that was something that was hard for me to deal with, because I didn’t really care for playing in the Australian pro league anyway. It’s a great quality league, but I only want to be the best at something, not second-best.

After my second season there, I finally had some time to dedicate to training solely for vertical leap and I was wrapped about it, because I thought maybe I could reverse theUS colleges minds. At the time, my vert wasn’t too bad – about 32 inches – or so I thought. My problem was that I only had a short time and I only wanted to train in a way that I could be absolutely certain and guaranteed that if I did “x” things, I would get “Y” result.

This is where you realize there is nothing out there that can do that.

So for a long time I sat down with a close friend of mine and threw everything we thought was “meant” to be the way to train – you know, heavy weights, plyometrics, Olympic lifts – and we threw it all out of the window and started from scratch. I didn’t want to use it, unless I could mathematically plot how and why it would given me a certain result within a certain time frame. If it didn’t stand up to that, it hit the cutting-room floor.

It’s interesting what happens when you do this, but it soon became very clear to me that the fault of performance enhancement on a whole is that it’s based on false premises and assumptions that no one has ever really had the intelligence or guts to ever question. It doesn’t matter how good you build the house, if it’s on shaky foundations - it will fall.

All I wanted to be able to rely on was… “If I do “x”, chow can I be guaranteed that “y” will be my result?”

That is the foundation of science. Knowing that performing a certain set of tasks will get you a certain result.

Simple, huh?

So having thrown everything out the window, and started all over again, building a new formula for increasing vertical leap – one where you mathematically and scientifically cannot fail… so much so that the numbers could actually predict when and how much by the athlete would increase their leap. I want that kind of scenario in anything I do in life, period. And I wanted that from my vertical training, too.

It’s actually a mathematical algorithm, and I had to play around with it to test it for a while before we knew it would work. On top of that, I added a strict recovery regime – made up of a number of things I had been working on.

The result of testing and tweaking this combination with my friend was that my vertical increased from 32 to 41 inches in roughly 6 and 1/2 weeks. Anyone who actually knows anything about performance training knows that those kinds of results are crazy, actually at the time, unheard of.

So we knew we were onto something good.

After returning to the team to practice and playing in some international tournaments, word got around that my vertical leap has gone up dramatically and that I had visited some crazy camp inFlorida – which was crap – I was just at home! Then I started getting calls from coaches and teams around the world… all kinds. It was insane.

Then one day I was out playing a street game and went for a tip jam in the lane – I got really too high for my co-ordination at the time, and I ended up fracturing my knee.

More depression… all I wanted to do was play.

In the meantime, the coaches, trainers, athletes and teams kept on contacting me, when an older friend of mine said I should start a business out of it. I was really against the idea – but he pointed out that they had sent me non-disclosure forms to prevent me telling of my work with them, so what I was doing must be in demand.

Sure, I knew it was - I just wanted to keep it for myself and my own career. I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t rather be in the NBA.

So I got rehabbed from my knee and everything was starting up again, I was getting healthy… and then – bam – another injury. I was kicked hard in the back when I was under the hoop - it felt like my torso separated out of my hips, like one part of my body was here and another part was there. That killed me – broke my spirit. But I realized I wasn’t meant to be a basketballer – I was meant to be something else. That was 2 and 1/2 years ago.

Anyway, more heavy depression came along – I was still advising my pro clients, but I was desperate to get back to where I was and use the knowledge I had for my own career. But something was urging me otherwise – and my older friend was still telling me that I should give up the hoops and stick with this.

There was a point where I had to give in and accept that God’s will for me wasn’t to play in the NBA, no matter what I thought about it.

So I gave in…

And I was blessed.

About 2 years ago, I accepted that I wasn’t going to have an NBA career and I figured that meant I had a responsibility to the young athletes who still had a shot, to get my system down on paper fully and concisely, so that they might have the chance.

And The Vertical Project was born…

Today, my PrivatePro client list has grown slightly (I only have a limited number I accept and knock back way too many!) and our flagship product for all athletes is the Double Your Vertical Leap system. We operate out ofLos Angeles, CA and Melbourne, Australia.

Q. There are many programs on the market place. We at vertcoach believe the majority of programs are not just hit & missed, but are so far left-field it's dangerous.How does Vertical Project differ itself from the pack?

Ha, it’s funny – because I’m the one that gets called “left-field”.

Unfortunately, you’re right. There isn’t a lot of good info out there. I hate to give a short answer, but if you can’t read my letter posted on our website, then there is very little I can do to show you how we differ from the pack. It tells the whole story, in the kind of depth you need to see:

http://www.theverticalproject.com

But here are some very major and basic points:

- UPN technology; allows you to plot-and-predict your results. It’s the only mathematical formula around for performance enhancement of any kind. The only place you can get it is from TVP.

- The Window Plan; this addresses the “window” one hour or so before training and the three hours thereafter and it is certainly when results are made or lost. It is a seven-pronged, highly-scientific method for approaching recovery in an enhanced way.  Again, only available in the Double Your Vertical Leap system

- Abundant proof; go and read the testimonials from our users. They will knock your socks off.

- 6 in 60 or your money-back… plus $100 cash, too!  That’s self-explanatory. I would either have to be a certified idiot, or someone who knew beyond doubt you were going to hit those kinds of results, to arrange that kind of deal. I’m no idiot.

- ME!  My PrivatePro clients force me to sign non-disclosure legal forms, preventing me from publicly saying who I work with, because what I do is the best. Period. Don’t care who you are. I’ve been directly involved with 9 athletes crossing the 50-inch vertical leap mark, and dozens of others who have passed 40 inches. And I’ve had to knock back writers from ESPN for my own reality show based on my work! Also, I’ve got a large brain… and fair sprinkling of personality, too.

- Customer service. Jason Dalley rocks. Nothing more to say.

Be on the lookout for Part 2 of this interview, coming soon!