ANYONE can increase their vertical jump and learn how to jump higher!
The key to increasing you vertical jump is understanding how your body type affects this. Age, sex, race e.t.c., are not as important as most people think. You need to do an assessment of your body’s individual response to certain exercise routines, as this changes 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. These exercises should sequence from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Some Basic Steps To Get You Started
1. Assess your present strength and your expertise with previous methods of training. The most effective way to experience gains is to build a brand new strength foundation. Then start performing an explosion segment. This will result in further inches.
2. Practice Lifts. Total body conditioning is the key for such an athlete and there is no superior exercise than the full back squat. This gives you progressive increases on spinal loading, which provides stabilization under tension, and additionally improves stretch-response of hip muscles and hamstrings.
3. Root the squat centrally within the majority of your lower body workouts. 6-8 decent lifts gets the best strength improvements and vertical carryover. For the upper body days, use the same philosophy, with the central exercises being bench press, overhead press variations, pull-ups and dips. Bear in mind to work often overlooked muscles at the end of your workout – muscles such as hip flexors, the shins , transverse abdominals e.t.c.
4. Ensure that you use a lifting technique in a secure and efficient way. Undergo 3-5 week strength cycles for upper and lower body. Done in the proper manner, you should see gains of 5% each week. Following this, you will start to envision 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 finished ahead of your weight exercises. That is, on Day 1 you begin by using a series of tempo runs, sprints and low-intensity plyometrics (after a dynamic warm-up of course). By the time Phase 3 comes around, this will have steadily lessened to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyos.
6. Concentration on the heavier weights should fade as you move forward through the phases.
7. Visualization is important – imagine yourself exploding upwards. Visualize yourself with large leg muscles that are coiled like springs, ready to blast you up into the air. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more strong and much lighter.” Then jump another time. You should observe a noticeable improvement in your vertical leap. (Sports psychologists have long recognized the usefulness of “mental practice” in increasing athletic performance.)
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.
