ANYBODY can improve their vertical leap and learn how to jump higher!
The key to increasing you vertical jump is learning how your body type affects this. Age, sex, race e.t.c., are not as important as most people think. You need to assess your own individual reaction to certain exercise routines, as this varies from person to person. Just assigning you a list of exercises simply doesn’t cut it if you want real hops…you NEED a sequence based on exercises for your given body type, aimed at your weaknesses. This group of exercises should cycle from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Some Basic Steps To Get You Started
1. Assess your existing strength and your expertise with prior types of training. The most effective way to get gains is to construct a brand new strength platform. After this start performing an explosion phase. This will result in even more inches.
2. Perform Lifts. Total body strength is the key for such an athlete and there is no better exercise than the full back squat. This provides you with progressive increases on spinal loading, which, in turn, stabilizes you under tension, and as well improves stretch-response of both hamstrings and hip muscles.
3. Make the squat the foundation exercise of your lower body workouts. 6-8 quality lifts gets the best strength improvements 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 your workout – muscles such as hip flexors, the shins , transverse abdominals e.t.c.
4. Make sure to use a lifting technique in a safe and effective way. Undergo 3-5 week strength cycles for both lower and upper body. Done correctly, you should see gains of 5% each week. Following this, you will be able to see how your jump is guaranteed to increase.
5. Properly utilize explosive and plyometric training as well as your strength training. These are your “field workouts” and are completed ahead of your weight exercises. That is, on Day 1 you begin by using a series of tempo runs, sprints and low-intensity plyos (after a dynamic warm-up of course). By the time Phase 3 comes about, this will have steadily switched to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyos.
6. Emphasis on the heavier weights should fade as you move forward through the phases.
7. Visualize by closing your eyes, imagining yourself exploding upwards. Picture yourself with big leg muscles that are coiled like springs, prepared to propel you higher. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more strong and much lighter.” After that jump another time. You should notice a marked improvement in your vertical leap. (Sports psychologists have long documented the helpfulness 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 a six pack.
