You Can Leap Higher
ANYBODY can improve 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, sex, race e.t.c., do not play as important a role. You need to assess your body’s individual reaction to training, as this varies from one person to another. Giving you a list of 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. This group of exercises ought to cycle from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Some Fundamental Steps To Get You Started
1. Assess your existing strength and your expertise with prior methods of working out. The best way to get gains is to construct a totally new strength foundation. Then start performing an explosion phase. This will result in further inches.
2. Perform Lifts. Entire 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 provides stabilization under tension, and additionally increases 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. Keep 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 secure and efficient manner. Undergo 3-5 week strength cycles for both lower and upper body. Done in the proper manner, you should see gains of 5% each week. 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 completed ahead of your weight exercises. E.g., on Day 1 you start by engaging in a series of tempo runs, sprints and low-intensity plyos (after a dynamic warm-up of course). By the time Phase 3 comes around, this will have slowly lessened to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyos.
6. Emphasis on the heavier weights should fade as you advance 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 again. You should notice a marked increase in your vertical jump. (Sports psychologists have long recognized the usefulness of “mental practice” in increasing 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 a six pack.