ANYONE can improve their vertical jump and learn how to jump higher!
The key to increasing you vertical jump is understanding how your body type affects this. Age, gender, race e.t.c., are not as important as most people think. You need to do an assessment of your own individual reaction to training, as this varies from one person to another. Giving you exercises simply 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 should sequence from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Some Fundamental Steps To Get You Started
1. Assess your current level of fitness and your level of experience with prior types of exercise. The most effective way to experience gains is to construct a totally new strength foundation. Then start utilizing an explosion phase. This will result in further inches.
2. Do Lifts. Total body strength is a key factor 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 provides stabilization 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 improvements and vertical carryover. On the days of your upper body workouts, use the same philosophy, with the central 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 manner. Undergo 3-5 week strength phases for upper and lower body. Done correctly, you ought to see gains of 5% each week. Following this, you will be able to see 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 completed prior to your weight exercises. That is, on Day 1 you begin by engaging in a sequence of tempo runs, sprints and low-intensity plyos (after a dynamic warm-up of course). By the time Phase 3 comes about, this will have steadily switched to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyometrics.
6. Concentration on the heavier weights will decrease as you advance through the phases.
7. Visualize by closing your eyes, imagining yourself exploding upwards. Visualize yourself with large leg muscles that are tightened like springs, prepared to blast you up into the air. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more strong and much lighter.” Then jump another time. You ought to observe a noticeable improvement in your vertical jump. (Sports psychologists have long documented the effectiveness of “mental practice” in improving one’s performance in sports.)
To get the most out of your vertical jumping exercises, you ought to think about a vertical jump training program. To get more information on How To Improve Your Vertical, check out these Vertical Jump Program Reviews to find out which are rated the best.
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