ANYBODY can improve their vertical jump 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., do not play as important a role. You need to assess your own individual reaction to certain exercise routines, as this varies from person to person. Just assigning you 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, concentrated on your weaknesses. This group of exercises should cycle from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Basic Steps To Get Started
1. Assess your existing level of fitness and your level of experience with previous methods of training. The most effective way to experience gains is to construct a totally new strength foundation. Then start utilizing an explosion phase. This will result in further inches.
2. Practice Lifts. Entire body conditioning is the key for such an athlete and there is no superior exercise than the full back squat. This provides you with progressive increases on spinal loading, which provides stabilization under tension, and additionally increases stretch-response of hip muscles and hamstrings.
3. Make the squat the foundation exercise 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, 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. Ensure that you use a lifting technique in a secure and efficient manner. Undergo 3-5 week strength cycles for both lower and upper body. Done in the proper manner, perceptible gains of 5+% on each lift should be seen weekly. Following this, you will be able to see how your jump is bound to increase.
5. Correctly 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 plyometrics (after a dynamic warm-up of course). By the time Phase 3 comes around, this will have gradually 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. Visualize yourself with big leg muscles that are tightened like springs, ready to propel you higher. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more powerful and much lighter.” Then jump another time. You ought to observe a noticeable improvement in your vertical jump. (Sports psychologists have long documented the usefulness 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.
