ANYBODY can increase their vertical leap and learn how to jump higher!
The key to jumping higher is learning the role your body type plays. Age, sex, race e.t.c., do not play as important a role. You need to assess your body’s individual response to training, as this changes from one person to another. Giving you a list of exercises simply doesn’t cut it if you want to really jump higher…you NEED a sequence based on exercises for your given body type, aimed at your weaknesses. This group of exercises ought to sequence from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Basic Steps To Get Started
1. Assess your current level of fitness and your level of experience with earlier methods of exercise. The most effective way to get gains is to construct a brand new strength foundation. After this start performing an explosion phase. This will result in further inches.
2. Do Lifts. Total body strength is a key factor for such an athlete and there is no better exercise than the full back squat. This gives you progressive increases on spinal loading, which provides stabilization under tension, and in addition improves stretch-response of both hamstrings and hip muscles.
3. Make the squat the core exercise of your lower body workouts. 6-8 decent lifts gets the best strength developments and vertical carryover. For the upper body days, use the same philosophy, with the core exercises being bench press, overhead press variations, pull-ups and dips. Remember to work often overlooked muscles at the end of the workout – muscles such as hip flexors, the shins , transverse abdominals e.t.c.
4. Ensure that you use a lifting technique in a safe and effective way. Undergo 3-5 week strength phases for upper and lower body. Done in the proper manner, visible gains of 5+% on each lift should be seen weekly. Following this, you will be able to see how your jump is bound to increase.
5. Properly use explosive and plyometric training as well as your strength training. These are your “field workouts” and are completed before your weight exercises. That is, on Day 1 you begin by using a sequence of tempo runs, sprints and low-intensity plyos (after a dynamic warm-up of course). By the time Phase 3 comes around, this will have slowly lessened to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyometrics.
6. Emphasis on the heavier weights will decrease as you progress through the phases.
7. Visualization is important – imagine yourself exploding upwards. Visualize yourself with big leg muscles that are tightened like springs, prepared to blast you up into the air. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more strong and much lighter.” After that jump again. You ought to observe a noticeable improvement in your vertical leap. (Sports psychologists have long documented the usefulness of “mental practice” in improving one’s performance in sports.)
One final thought – the core of improving performance in any sport is the core (center) of your body…your midsection. To improve your midsection check out this information on how to get abs.
