ANYBODY can increase their vertical leap and learn how to jump higher!
The key to jumping higher is learning how your body type affects this. Age, gender, race e.t.c., are not the deciding factors. You need to do an assessment of your own individual reaction to training, as this varies 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, concentrating on your weaknesses. This group of exercises should sequence from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Basic Steps To Get Started
1. Assess your current strength and your expertise with earlier types of exercise. The best way to get gains is to construct a totally new strength foundation. After this start utilizing an explosion segment. This will result in even more inches.
2. Practice 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 provides stabilization under tension, and in addition improves stretch-response of both hamstrings and hip muscles.
3. The squat should be the main exercise of your lower body workouts. 6-8 quality lifts gets the best strength developments and vertical carryover. For the upper body days, the philosophy is the same, with the central exercises being bench press, overhead press variations, pull-ups and dips. Keep 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. Make sure to use a lifting technique in a safe and effective style. 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 use explosive and plyometric training as well as your strength training. These are your “field workouts” and are completed pre-weights. That is, on Day 1 you begin by using a series of tempo runs, sprints and low-intensity plyos (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 progress through the phases.
7. Visualization is important – imagine yourself exploding upwards. Picture yourself with large leg muscles that are coiled like springs, ready to propel you higher. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more powerful and much lighter.” Then jump again. You should notice a marked improvement in your vertical leap. (Sports psychologists have long recognized 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 abs.
