Originally Posted by aclinjury

How tall are you? How much do you weigh?

20", in general, is a good height (but not exceptional) for a 16yo who has never trained to jump or who has never played a sport (eg, basketball) that involves a lot of jumping.
If you start to train, I think you can hit 25-28" within a year. But to go past 30", you need some talent. There are plenty of guys on the boys highschool basketball team who can't hit 30". To get to 33", you'll need more talent, and most guys 33" is where it ends. I knew a guy in highschool who could hit 33" in his sophmore year but then he never progressed further. To go past 33", you definitely need some natural ability. At 35", there's probably only 1-2 guys per highschool who could do this.

But I consider jumping as having more "natural ability" in it than many other aspects of sporting. I know plenty of guys who could out sprint me in the 100 and 200m but cannot out jump me (they would come close). The younger you start, the better you are. That's why I always advise kids to play team sports before they get in endurance sports. Endurance sports can be played all the way into your old age, look at all the "age-groupers" out there. But explosive sports is something you can only do when you're young. When I see a cycling dad so wanting to train his teenage kids to be good in cycling, I say, why do it unless the kid has a natural VO2max freak, then he ain't gonna be a cycling pro, but he'd missing out a lot of the team sporting aspect of his youth, reason is because cycling requires a lot of your time, look at all the aspiring amaetur competitor cyclists, all they do is talk about training and numbers. I wouldn't want my kid to do that in his teenage years unless I know for sure has a freaky aerobic engine that has potential to go pro.