ANYBODY can improve their vertical jump and learn how to jump higher!
The key is understanding how your body type affects this. Age, gender, race e.t.c., are not the deciding factors. You need to assess your body’s individual response to training, as this changes from person to person. Just assigning you exercises just doesn’t cut it if you want real hops…you NEED a sequence based on exercises for your given body type, concentrated on your weaknesses. These exercises ought to sequence from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Basic Steps To Get Started
1. Assess your current strength and your level of experience 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 segment. This will result in even more inches.
2. Do Lifts. Entire body conditioning is the key 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 in addition increases stretch-response of both hamstrings and hip muscles.
3. The squat should be the main exercise of your lower body workouts. 6-8 quality lifts gets the best strength developments 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 style. 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 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 using 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 progress through the phases.
7. Visualization is important – imagine yourself exploding upwards. Visualize 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 improvement 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.
