ANYBODY can increase their vertical leap and learn how to jump higher!
The key to increasing you vertical jump 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 own individual reaction to certain exercise routines, as this varies from one person to another. Giving you exercises just doesn’t cut it if you want to really jump higher…you NEED a cycle based on exercises for your given body type, aiming at your weaknesses. These exercises should cycle from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Basic Steps To Get Started
1. Assess your present level of fitness and your level of experience with earlier methods of exercise. The best way to get gains is to construct a totally new strength foundation. After this start performing an explosion phase. This will result in even more inches.
2. Do Lifts. Entire body conditioning 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, in turn, stabilizes you under tension, and also increases stretch-response of both hamstrings and hip muscles.
3. Make the squat the foundation exercise 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 the overlooked muscles towards 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 secure and effective way. Undergo 3-5 week strength cycles for upper and lower body. Done properly, observable 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 start by engaging in a sequence of tempo runs, sprints and low-intensity plyometrics (after the proper warm-up of course). By the time Phase 3 comes around, this will have slowly switched to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyometrics.
6. Concentration on the heavier weights will decrease as you move forward through the phases.
7. Visualization is important – imagine yourself exploding upwards. Picture yourself with big leg muscles that are coiled like springs, set to propel you higher. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more powerful and much lighter.” Then jump once more. You should notice a marked improvement in your vertical leap. (Sports psychologists have long recognized the effectiveness 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 a six pack.
