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., are not the deciding factors. You need to assess your own individual response to certain exercise routines, as this varies from person to person. Giving you a list of exercises simply doesn’t cut it if you want real hops…you NEED a cycle based on exercises for your given body type, concentrated on your weaknesses. These exercises ought to cycle from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Some Crucial Steps To Get You Started
1. Assess your present level of fitness and your expertise with prior types of exercise. 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. Perform Lifts. Entire 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 provides stabilization under tension, and additionally improves stretch-response of hip muscles and hamstrings.
3. The squat should be the main exercise of your lower body workouts. 6-8 quality lifts gets the best strength improvements and vertical carryover. On the days of your upper body workouts, use the same philosophy, with the central exercises being bench press, overhead press variations, pull-ups and dips. Bear 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 safe and effective manner. Undergo 3-5 week strength cycles for upper and lower body. Done correctly, visible gains of 5+% on each lift should be seen weekly. Following this, you will start to envision 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 finished pre-weights. E.g., 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 about, this will have slowly switched to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyos.
6. Emphasis on the heavier weights will decrease as you advance through the phases.
7. Visualization is important – imagine yourself exploding upwards. Visualize yourself with big leg muscles that are tightened like springs, prepared to blast you up into the air. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more strong and much lighter.” After that jump another time. You should observe a noticeable increase in your vertical jump. (Sports psychologists have long recognized the usefulness 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 a six pack.
