ANYONE can increase their vertical leap and learn how to jump higher!
The key is learning the role your body type plays. Age, gender, race e.t.c., do not play as important a role. 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 to really jump higher…you NEED a sequence based on exercises for your given body type, concentrating on your weaknesses. These exercises should cycle from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Fundamental Steps To Get Started
1. Assess your existing strength 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. 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 provides stabilization under tension, and in addition improves 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. On the days of your upper body workouts, use the same philosophy, 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. Make sure to use a lifting technique in a safe and effective style. Undergo 3-5 week strength phases for upper and lower body. Done in the proper manner, observable 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 pre-weights. E.g., on Day 1 you start 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 should fade as you advance through the phases.
7. Visualize by closing your eyes, imagining yourself exploding upwards. Visualize yourself with big leg muscles that are coiled like springs, set to blast you up into the air. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more strong and much lighter.” After that jump again. You should observe a noticeable improvement in your vertical leap. (Sports psychologists have long recognized the effectiveness of “mental practice” in improving 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.
