ANYBODY can improve their vertical leap and learn how to jump higher!
The key 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 do an assessment of your body’s individual reaction to training, as this varies from one person to another. Just assigning you exercises just doesn’t cut it if you want real hops…you NEED a sequence based on exercises for your given body type, aiming at your weaknesses. This group of exercises should sequence from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Some Fundamental Steps To Get You Started
1. Assess your existing level of fitness and your expertise with earlier methods of training. The most effective way to get gains is to construct a totally new strength foundation. Then start performing an explosion segment. This will result in further inches.
2. Practice Lifts. Entire body conditioning is a key factor 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 in addition improves stretch-response of hip muscles and hamstrings.
3. The squat should be the main exercise of your lower body workouts. 6-8 decent lifts gets the best strength developments and vertical carryover. For the upper body days, the philosophy is the same, with the core exercises being bench press, overhead press variations, pull-ups and dips. Keep in mind the overlooked muscles towards 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 secure and effective manner. Undergo 3-5 week strength cycles for upper and lower body. Done in the proper manner, observable gains of 5+% on each lift ought to be seen weekly. Following this, you will start to envision how your jump is guaranteed to increase.
5. Correctly use explosive and plyometric training as well as your strength training. These are your “field workouts” and are completed prior to your weight exercises. That is, on Day 1 you start by using a sequence of tempo runs, sprints and low-intensity plyometrics (after the proper warm-up of course). By the time Phase 3 comes about, this will have steadily lessened to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyometrics.
6. Emphasis on the heavier weights will decrease as you advance through the phases.
7. Visualize by closing your eyes, imagining yourself exploding upwards. Picture yourself with large leg muscles that are tightened like springs, set to blast you up into the air. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more powerful and much lighter.” Then jump again. You ought to observe a noticeable improvement in your vertical jump. (Sports psychologists have long documented the effectiveness of “mental practice” in increasing one’s performance in sports.)
To get the most out of your vertical jumping exercises, you must think about a vertical jump training program. To get more information on How To Improve Your Vertical, check out these Vertical Jump Program Reviews to see which are rated the best.
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