ANYONE can improve their vertical jump and learn how to jump higher!
The key to jumping higher is understanding how your body type affects this. Age, sex, race e.t.c., are not the deciding factors. You need to assess your body’s individual response to certain exercise routines, as this varies from person to person. Just assigning you exercises just doesn’t cut it if you want real hops…you NEED a cycle based on exercises for your given body type, aimed at your weaknesses. These exercises should sequence from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Basic Steps To Get Started
1. Assess your existing strength and your expertise with prior methods of exercise. The best way to experience gains is to build a brand new strength platform. Then start utilizing 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 gives you progressive increases on spinal loading, which, in turn, stabilizes you under tension, and in addition increases stretch-response of both hamstrings and hip muscles.
3. Root the squat centrally within the majority of your lower body workouts. 6-8 decent lifts gets the best strength developments and vertical carryover. On the days of your upper body workouts, 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 the 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 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 should 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 before your weight exercises. That is, on Day 1 you begin by using a series of tempo runs, sprints and low-intensity plyometrics (after the proper warm-up of course). By the time Phase 3 comes around, 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 progress through the phases.
7. Visualization is important – imagine yourself exploding upwards. Picture yourself with large leg muscles that are coiled like springs, prepared to propel you higher. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more powerful and much lighter.” Then 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 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 abs.
