ANYBODY can improve their vertical jump 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 as important as most people think. You need to assess your body’s individual response to certain exercise routines, as this varies from one person to another. Just assigning you exercises simply doesn’t cut it if you want to really jump higher…you NEED a cycle based on exercises for your given body type, concentrating on your weaknesses. These exercises ought to sequence from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Fundamental Steps To Get Started
1. Assess your existing strength and your expertise with prior types of exercise. The best way to experience gains is to build a totally new strength platform. Then start performing an explosion phase. This will result in even more inches.
2. Perform Lifts. Total body conditioning is a key factor for such an athlete and there is no superior exercise than the full back squat. This provides you with 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 decent 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 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, observable 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. 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 plyos.
6. Emphasis on the heavier weights should fade as you progress through the phases.
7. Visualization is important – imagine yourself exploding upwards. Picture yourself with large leg muscles that are coiled like springs, ready to propel you higher. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more powerful and much lighter.” After that jump once more. You ought to observe a noticeable increase in your vertical jump. (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.
