ANYONE can increase their vertical leap and learn how to jump higher!
The key to jumping higher is learning 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 certain exercise routines, as this changes from one person to another. Giving you a list of 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 ought to sequence from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Some Fundamental Steps To Get You Started
1. Assess your present level of fitness and your expertise with prior types of training. The most effective way to experience gains is to build a brand new strength platform. After this start performing an explosion segment. 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 additionally improves stretch-response of both hamstrings and hip muscles.
3. Make the squat the core exercise of your lower body workouts. 6-8 quality lifts gets the best strength improvements and vertical carryover. For the upper body days, the philosophy is the same, 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 safe and effective manner. Undergo 3-5 week strength phases for upper and lower body. Done properly, perceptible 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 pre-weights. E.g., on Day 1 you start by engaging in 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 gradually switched to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyos.
6. Emphasis on the heavier weights should fade as you proceed through the phases.
7. Visualize by closing your eyes, imagining yourself exploding upwards. Visualize yourself with big leg muscles that are coiled like springs, ready to blast you up into the air. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more strong and much lighter.” Then jump another time. You should notice a marked improvement in your vertical leap. (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 abs.
