ANYONE can increase their vertical leap and learn how to jump higher!
The key is learning the role your body type plays. 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 varies 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, concentrated on your weaknesses. This group of exercises should sequence from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Some Essential Steps To Get You Started
1. Assess your present strength and your expertise with earlier methods of training. The best way to experience gains is to build a brand new strength platform. After this start performing an explosion phase. This will result in even more inches.
2. Practice Lifts. Entire body strength is the key for such an athlete and there is no better exercise than the full back squat. This provides you with progressive increases on spinal loading, which, in turn, stabilizes you under tension, and additionally increases 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. For the upper body days, the philosophy is the same, with the central exercises being bench press, overhead press variations, pull-ups and dips. Keep 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 safe and effective manner. Undergo 3-5 week strength phases for upper and lower body. Done in the proper manner, 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. Properly utilize explosive and plyometric training as well as your strength training. These are your “field workouts” and are finished ahead of your weight exercises. That is, 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 around, this will have gradually switched to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyometrics.
6. Concentration on the heavier weights will decrease as you progress through the phases.
7. Visualization is important – imagine yourself exploding upwards. Picture yourself with big leg muscles that are tightened like springs, set to blast you up into the air. 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 documented 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.
