Bounce Kit Review Summary
Bounce Kit
After having reviewed every vertical jump training program on the current market, it's clear to me that Bounce Kit is actually quite a solid program overall.
I firmly believe Bounce Kit, if paired with the right athlete, could produce significantly above average results compared to other vertical jump programs!
4
The Good
Extremely well organized and workouts + exercise demos are super easy to understand.
Lots of max effort jumping!
Large focus on strength development with plenty of heavy lifting.
Dedicated upper body day!
The Bad
Does a poor job of easing into things and throws you right into the deep end from day 1.
Not so beginner friendly. Lacks information explaining the fundamentals of jump training.
Quite repetitive jump workouts (exercise selection lacks variety).
Recommended For
Bounce Kit is a fantastic option for advanced athletes who already have experience with resistance training and want to get stuck into some tough workouts without wasting any time!
Bounce Kit Review – Decent Program For Advanced Athletes
Jordan Kilganon, arguably the greatest dunker of all time, has put together one of the better vertical jump training programs on the current market.
I’m personally a big fan of Bounce Kit and think it’s a pretty underrated option and a great fit for certain athletes!
Before we get into it, make sure you check out my list of the current best vertical jump programs for 2023.
How Does Bounce Kit Work? & What To Expect
Created by arguably the greatest professional dunker of all time, Jordan Kilganon, Bounce Kit is a 12 week vertical jump program which requires access to a weight room to complete.
Expect to be training 5 days per week on Bounce Kit with 2 heavy leg days, 2 jumping days, and an upper body day.
Bounce Kit Training Description
Before we get into the structure of the program, let me give a quick summary of the approach to training used in Bounce Kit…
- Large Focus On Lifting Heavy – Bounce Kit really doesn’t muck around and immediately prescribes heavy lifting from the first week onwards.
- Decent Amount Of Upper Body – BK is one of the few programs that has a dedicated upper body day!
- Bulk Of Plyometrics Volume Comes From Regular Jumping – Kilganon believes that the key to jumping higher is to jump a lot. Instead of crazy amounts of pogo jumps or depth jumps, you’ll mostly be doing standing vertical jumps as well as approach jumps in Bounce Kit.
- Minimal Accessory Exercises – After your dynamic warmup, you’re diving right into the meat and potatoes of your workout. Each exercise is impactful and intense; there’s zero boring/throwaway type movements in this program.
Bounce Kit Program Structure
Bounce Kit runs for 4 months and is broken down into 3 phases and, like most jump programs, begins with more of a focus on strength development before shifting gears towards speed strength and reactiveness.
I really like the design of this program and I think Kilganon has used really smart progressions all throughout.
Jordan recommends you complete Bounce Kit during the offseason for best results, however if you are currently in-season, he suggests starting from week 6 and just doing the last 6 weeks of the program. This will help you maintain explosiveness while avoiding excessive fatigue from all the heavy lifting earlier in the program.
Bounce Kit Phase 1 – 4 Weeks
The first few weeks of Bounce Kit are aimed at quickly blowing off the cobwebs and building your work capacity with moderate volume and surprisingly high intensity right out the gate.
Bounce Kit Phase 2 – 3 Weeks
In the second phase we’re really ramping up our lifting intensity while massively increasing our plyometric volume.
You can expect to be doing tons of jump volume on the jump days here as we’re trying to get those tendons used to high impact movements.
Bounce Kit Phase 3 – 5 Weeks
In the final phase of Bounce Kit we’re tapering down the jump volume and also reducing our volume in the gym to help reduce some of that systemic fatigue.
Each week we’re decreasing reps until we’re doing heavy doubles and we’re adding in some additional deload days towards the end of the program to prepare us for testing on the final day of the program.
Bounce Kit Program Format
The Bounce Kit workouts are delivered in a super easy-to-read format within a well organized dashboard.
The presentation of the workouts is super clean compared to most jump programs.
The video library is excellent and Jordan does a fantastic job of explaining exactly how to do each exercise.
My only criticism here is that the exercises listed in the workouts aren’t hyperlinked to these videos: you have to manually navigate to the video library and look up each movement.
Do I Need Equipment For Bounce Kit?
You will indeed need access to a fully equipped weight room to complete Bounce Kit.
Bounce Kit does not have a bodyweight version and doesn’t offer any alternative exercises if there’s a certain movement you can’t perform or equipment you don’t have access to.
What I Liked About Bounce Kit
There’s plenty to like about Bounce Kit and I personally think it’s a really underrated program!
Lots Of Jump Volume
If you ask Jordan Kilganon what the key to jumping really high is, he’ll tell you it’s to jump really high, really often.
This guy is famous for doing 5+ hour dunk sessions and this ‘jump til you drop’ mentality really shines through in Bounce Kit.
As such, you can expect large amounts of max intensity jumping throughout Bounce Kit – there’s no extensive plyometrics in the BK program: the jump volume comes purely from lots of max effort approach jumps.
I’m personally a big fan of this approach and think too many programs put too much of a focus on the extensive stuff like pogo jumps and line hops, and not enough on max intent jumping.
Great Exercise Selection & Programming
Kilganon’s done a great job of picking really solid exercises that translate exceptionally well into vertical jump inches.
This program reminds me a lot of the type of thing we see in PPA’s Jump Training Membership: zero faffing about with unnecessary exercises and very little in the way of mobility/preventative work.
Bounce Kit really gets down to business right from the word go but still follows a logical progression from strength -> speed strength -> reactiveness.
You should see your vertical nice and peaked by the end of week 12!
Fantastic Overall Presentation
I’m a big fan of how the information is packaged within Bounce Kit.
The website is extremely easy to use, the format/structure is easy to understand, the programs are easy to read, and the videos are easily accessible and concise.
The user interface reminds me a lot of what we see in PJF’s Vert Code Elite which unquestionably has the best formatting of any jump program ever.
After the PJF programs, Bounce Kit is probably the prettiest and easiest to interact with and won’t leave you pulling your hair out like BoingVERT or some of the real old school programs will!
What I Disliked About Bounce Kit
Although I am definitely a fan of Bounce Kit, there was a few things I think could be improved upon…
Doesn’t Include Vertical Jump Physics/Theory Guide
Bounce Kit doesn’t provide any educational material explaining anything about the scientific principles involved in increasing your vertical jump.
Prescribing exercises is all well and good, but helping athletes to really understand how vertical jump training works is something I think is really important.
Even just covering the basics like ‘Power = Strength * RFD‘ or discussing a bit about tendon conditioning would go a long way I think.
A program like Jump Manual does a really excellent job of this and I think that makes it a better overall introduction to vertical jump training than Bounce Kit.
Doesn’t Ease Into Heavy Lifting & Intensive Plyos
Literally on Week 1 Day 2, after completing your 2 minute dynamic warm up, you’re diving head first into 3x5s on back squats, deadlifts, and Bulgarian split squats. You’re told perform these with 1-2 reps in reserve for your last few sets.
Personally, if I tried this workout right now my knees would explode!
While I’m all for getting right down to business and lifting heavy, I think it’s usually a good idea to take the first week or so to brush off the cobwebs and ease into things with some less challenging movements.
A lot of athletes starting Bounce Kit are going to be detrained and so diving straight into a tough workout like this is going to leave them really sore for the following jump workout.
Bounce Kit also has the shortest dynamic warm up of any vertical jump program I’ve reviewed, taking just 2 minutes to complete!
Again, 17 year old me would have absolutely loved this, but 27 year old me thinks it would be wiser to do a slightly more comprehensive warm up!
Jump Workouts Are Excessively Long & One Dimensional
One of the major criticisms of Bounce Kit is the repetitiveness of the jump workouts…
Here’s an example jump workout where we’re essentially just performing jumps off different length approaches.
The jumping portion of this workout alone takes more than half an hour to complete and is extremely repetitive.
I think the 50 and 60 second rest times could probably be truncated to about 25-30 seconds and it wouldn’t make too much of a difference.
Personally, I love the fact that Bounce Kit really only prescribes max effort jumping for the jump/plyometrics portion of the routine.
The single best plyometric exercise to increase your vertical jump is… doing vertical jumps!
I definitely appreciate the simplicity of this approach and I know a large part of Kilganon’s vertical came from simply jumping a ton…
I do think however that vertical jump programs should have just a little more variety baked into them so that peoples’ eyes won’t glaze over when they see they’ve got 35 sets of max jumps to get through again!
Maybe throw in some unilateral jump volume, maybe some depth jumps, maybe some overspeed jumps, etc.
Exercises Aren’t Hyperlinked To Demonstration Videos
One small gripe I had with Bounce Kit was that the exercise names in the workout planner weren’t hyperlinked to the video demonstrations.
This means if you’re unsure of how to do an exercise, you have to manually navigate away from the workout view to the video library to see the demo.
Obviously this is a super simple fix, but would make a big difference as far as user experience goes.
No Exercise Alternatives Supplied
One other thing I didn’t like about Bounce Kit is that there’s no alternative exercises included, in case you’re unable to do a certain movement or don’t have access to a certain piece of equipment.
This definitely isn’t a deal breaker by any means, but it’s a small detail that would be really helpful for a lot of users.
Inactive Facebook Community
As part of Bounce Kit, you’re promised direct access to Jordan Kilganon himself via a private Facebook group.
Unfortunately this Facebook community seems about as dead as a doorknob as there hasn’t been a single post in the last month.
My application to join has also been pending for over a week now!
Again, definitely not a deal breaker by any means. I’m sure you could pretty easily contact Jordan directly via email if you had any questions.
I was able to get in touch with him via IG and he responded pretty quickly.
Who Created Bounce Kit?
Jordan Kilganon is pretty widely regarded as being one of the greatest professional dunkers in the game right now.
He’s known for his incredible creativity and has had dunk videos go viral more times than I can count.
Jordan has something like a 49.5″ vertical and is known for practicing dunking for hours on end.
I just dunked every day, even if the day after, I collapsed trying to get out of bed because of how sore my legs were.. I went dunking no matter what, I’ve screamed in pain and continued to make myself keep dunking for hours on end. I even dunked in -35 degrees Celsius, inches of snow, in the rain at midnight till 4 in the morning, dunk after not sleeping for 3 days, you name it, I did it.1https://www.just-fly-sports.com/interview-with-jordan-kilganon/
Jordan definitely isn’t the most experienced jump coach in the world, but anyone who can jump their way to a 50″ vertical is more than qualified to teach others about vertical jump training in my books!
Bounce Kit Results
As we see more people going through the Bounce Kit program, I’ll be updating this section with a few more testimonials.
Kade Gained 5.5″
Kade went from being barely able to grab the rim (before Bounce Kit) to getting half his forearm above the rim and even throwing down some 2 handed dunks after 12 weeks of Bounce Kit.
Kade already had a decent base of strength before beginning the program which makes 5.5″ all the more impressive!
Unfortunately I couldn’t find many other public case studies/testimonials for Bounce Kit at this time…
How Does Bounce Kit Compare To Other Vertical Jump Programs?
Bounce Kit’s latest version unquestionably has a place on my list of the top vertical jump programs, but certainly won’t be the right choice for every athlete…
Since BK is a weight room program which has a dedicated upper body day, it’s already more comprehensive than a number of other popular programs like Vert Shock.
Bounce Kit’s heavy focus on strength development is also fairly unique – most other programs tend gravitate towards the jumping/plyometrics side of things whereas BK prioritizes heavy lifting.
Bounce Kit is definitely not a beginner friendly program as you’re kind of just thrown right into the deep end with heavy lifting. No alternative exercises are listed at any point and there’s also no introduction to the theory behind jump training.
Beginners should opt for something more like Jump Manual, whereas Bounce Kit is far better suited to more experienced athletes who already have exposure to resistance training.
As far as price goes, Bounce Kit is roughly middle of the range at $77.
For a very similar, yet more affordable Bounce Kit alternative, consider PPA’s Project: Vertical program.
Who Should Do Bounce Kit?
I think Bounce Kit is a decent option for more experienced athletes who have been training for a while already.
As I mentioned earlier, I think it’s a little too rough and tumble for beginners and I think there’s definitely better options for less experienced athletes.
If however you’re a serious athlete who wants a challenging program with intense exercises right from the word go, Bounce Kit is definitely worth looking at…
If this is you, also consider the following programs…
Both of these programs are similar in nature to Bounce Kit and might be superior choice for you, despite Bounce Kit being the most affordable option of the 3.
What’s The Verdict?
Overall I was actually really impressed by Bounce Kit.
Bounce Kit has a pretty bad rap in reviews on other blogs and I think a lot of that is because the first version was quite different to its current iteration.
Make no mistake, Bounce Kit is solid and I am 100% positive you’ll get fantastic results doing it.
I’ve also got word from Kilganon himself that he’s working on a new vertical jump program which will be released in a few months, so stay tuned for that!
Bounce Kit FAQ
As I receive more questions regarding Bounce Kit, I’ll be updating this FAQ section.
Does Bounce Kit Offer Refunds?
Bounce Kit offers a 60 day no questions asked refund if you’re unhappy with the program!
