ANYBODY can improve their vertical jump and learn how to jump higher!
The key is understanding how your body type affects this. Age, sex, race e.t.c., are not the deciding factors. You need to do an assessment of your own individual reaction to training, as this changes from person to person. 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, concentrated on your weaknesses. These exercises should sequence from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Some Crucial Steps To Get You Started
1. Assess your present strength and your expertise with previous types of exercise. The most effective way to experience gains is to build a totally new strength foundation. After this start performing an explosion phase. This will result in even more inches.
2. Perform Lifts. Total body strength is a key factor for such an athlete and there is no better exercise than the full back squat. This gives you progressive increases on spinal loading, which provides stabilization under tension, and in addition increases stretch-response of hip muscles and hamstrings.
3. Root the squat centrally within the majority of your lower body workouts. 6-8 quality lifts gets the best strength developments and vertical carryover. For the upper body days, use the same philosophy, with the core exercises being bench press, overhead press variations, pull-ups and dips. Bear 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. Make sure to use a lifting technique in a safe and effective way. Undergo 3-5 week strength cycles for both lower and upper body. Done properly, you ought to see gains of 5% each week. Following this, you will be able to see how your jump is bound 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 begin by using a series of tempo runs, sprints and low-intensity plyos (after a dynamic warm-up of course). By the time Phase 3 comes about, this will have gradually lessened to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyometrics.
6. Concentration on the heavier weights will decrease as you advance through the phases.
7. Visualization is important – imagine yourself exploding upwards. Picture yourself with big 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 increase in your vertical jump. (Sports psychologists have long recognized the usefulness of “mental practice” in increasing 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.
