Today on the couch with us we have vertical leap training, Mark Sias from Bionic Plyometrics here to answer all our questions. Let's begin...

Q. Who is Mark Sias, and how did he did he get into the vert scene?

Well as a teenager I think I can share the same feelings as many aspiring to dunk & increase my athleticism to impress friends, play a better game, etc. Back then very little science was applied to the situation & the best advice you could get was to "jumprope"! Never-The-Less, I ended up coaching gymnastics almost by accident & the institute I worked with invested in making me a better, more knowledgeable instructor. Our athletes had impressive strength & power using very little equipment. Fast forward a few years, I was heading up a new gymnastics program at a large athletic facility in Michigan and met a determined college basketball player who was dumping big bucks into useless trainers to improve his jump. At 6'4 he could barely dunk! He came to me after hearing rumors about me stuffing a medicineball. I agreed to work with him & modified his workouts. I was criticized by the Personal Trainers there for my unorthodox methods but I had the fruit on the tree & he got much better! This encounter made me realise how little people STILL knew about performance training. It was around that time I looked over many popular methods of jump training & I decided to make something better! Word of mouth spread & more clients came my way and well here I am!

Q. What is Bionic Plyometrics and why did you bring it out?

Bionic Plyometrics is my website, It's basically my way of sharing what I've learned & continue to learn to the masses of athletes across the world. My sites principle product is the download ebook "Bionic Jumping Power". Which teaches & shows in detail how to set up your own vertical training that will progressively increase in intensity. Im currently performing an independant study/review of every vertical "devise" if you will, on the market so athletes can get an unbiased expert opinion on equipment like the sky-king calf isolator or Vertimax before they buy.

Q.What equipment, training tools would you suggest are required with your program? 

Ideally to achieve maximum results one should have access to barbell & dumbell weights, medicineballs, any various height boxes to jump onto & off of. Now I have tried to acommodate those who are on a shoestring budget as I too have been there. I show how to construct medi-balls & have compiled an isometrics program/article on the site to substitue heavy weight lifts & still achieve incredible results. In truth you can incorporate any number of additional devises into the system, its flexible enough to accomodate jumpsoles, variable bands, etc.

As for the sprinbaks...well these aren't really training devises but rather a cheater of sorts. Let me explain:You put these thin rubber inserts into your shoe & you get more bounce regardless of training. When I first came across these & after several phone conversations with Mr. Crow I was still convinced they were a total sham. But they do seem actually work. More so horizontally than vertically. I've heard some feedback from a few athletes that didn't quite get what they expected. I have 2 suggestions for  them. First is if you bought them off ebay you got the older versions that aren't quite as good as the newest springbak has come out with. The newer ones are available on both my site & springbak's. My second piece of input is that I have time & again noticed that 2 inserts are better than 1. Double them up!

Q. How did you personally get your vert to what it is today?

Hard work! Lots of sweat, ambition, supplements, & trying new things. My vertical jump fluctuates depending on the training modality I'm in. Also, I see progress stagnation as well as bad days like anybody else, but I also get those really highs too & end up jumping over a person or sports car or getting my elbow over the rim. Just don't be afraid to try new things, ditch drills that don't seem to work for you, psych yourself up before work outs & above all keep your faith.

Q. Does Bionic Plyometrics focus only on plyometrics?

No! My motto is if it works use it! We attack the vertical in several ways. Building maximum muscle strength with weight training, negatives, & variable resistance. Building muscle elastic speed with plyometrics & overspeed. Creating muscle force production through speed lifts & power absorbtion. Augmenting the whole thing with nutrition & avoiding mistakes & even a couple new ideas I'm not quite sure how we'd classify them.

Q. What is the most common mistake you see when it comes to training for vertical leap?

Overtraining is a big one, I'm constantly getting emails from guys wanting to try Air Alert, Jump USA, & my program all at the same time! More isn't better! Other than that I see guys doing things that aren't conducive of fast-twitch muscle fibre recruitment. Like jogging, doing low resistance long duration drills like 100 calf raises and such. Remeber power is HIGH INTENSITY SHORT DURATION!

Q. Do users of your program hit a plateuas, or can they continue to use it every year with continues gains?

It's contiually progressive unlike 99.9% of the rest, so one could use it for a long time and to continue to make gains; however, it would be foolish of me to claim that infinite progress would be made without special considerations.  Naturally, the higher an athletes leap becomes the slower results will be realized thus, different measures must be taken. 

Q. Do you suggest people take supplements while using your program?

Yes absolutely!  Any athlete at any level can always benefit from naturally increasing testosterone production as well as insuring high quality protein intake.

Q. What kind of athletes is Bionic Plyometrics aimed at and what gains can they expect?

Any athlete looking to make rapid progress and improvement in speed, strength, power, etc.  To be more specific, basketball players, football players, soccer players and martial artists alike.  My most frequent clients are basketball players of all ages.

Q. Some programs we believe do more harm than good. Is Bionic Plyometrics safe?

It's my experience that athletes participating in my program are not only safe but in turn become more injury resistant because of my focus on development of stabilizer muscles.  Typically programs that are unsafe are usually the result of overtraining and because of athletes performing advanced techniques without an adequate strength base.

Q. Any chance of a 'Bionic Plyometrics 2' being released in the near future?

 I have certainly been kicking the idea around, I am currently working on a cheerleading program, when that is finished then we will see.  I am continually learning new things in the way of exercise science and actually am doing a modified workout with new methods that seem to work better than the original bionic jumping power.  It would only be fair to share these ideas.

Thanks for taking this time to speak to us Mark, your content you provide our visitors is truely awesome. 

Mark Sias
Plyometrics Expert
www.bionicplyometrics.com