ANYBODY can improve their vertical jump and learn how to jump higher!
The key is learning the role your body type plays. Age, gender, race e.t.c., are not the deciding factors. You need to do an assessment of your body’s individual response to training, as this changes from person to person. Just assigning you exercises just doesn’t cut it if you want to really jump higher…you NEED a sequence based on exercises for your given body type, aiming at your weaknesses. These exercises ought to cycle from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Some Fundamental Steps To Get You Started
1. Assess your existing level of fitness and your expertise with prior types of training. The most effective way to experience gains is to construct a brand new strength foundation. After this start utilizing an explosion segment. This will result in even more 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 gives you progressive increases on spinal loading, which, in turn, stabilizes you under tension, and also improves stretch-response of both hamstrings and hip muscles.
3. Make the squat the core 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. 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 style. Undergo 3-5 week strength cycles for upper and lower body. Done properly, you should see gains of 5% each week. Following this, you will start to envision 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 before your weight exercises. That is, on Day 1 you start by using a sequence of tempo runs, sprints and low-intensity plyos (after the proper warm-up of course). By the time Phase 3 comes around, this will have steadily lessened to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyometrics.
6. Emphasis on the heavier weights should fade as you advance through the phases.
7. Visualize by closing your eyes, imagining 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 strong and much lighter.” Then jump again. You ought to observe a noticeable increase in your vertical leap. (Sports psychologists have long documented the effectiveness of “mental practice” in increasing one’s performance in sports.)
To get the most out of your vertical jumping exercises, you should think about a vertical jump training program. To find more information on How To Improve Your Vertical, check out these Vertical Jump Program Reviews to see which are rated the best.
