ANYONE can improve their vertical jump and learn how to jump higher!
The key to increasing you vertical jump is learning 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 reaction to certain exercise routines, as this changes from one person to another. Giving you a list of exercises simply doesn’t cut it if you want real hops…you NEED a cycle based on exercises for your given body type, aimed at your weaknesses. This group of exercises ought to cycle from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Some Essential Steps To Get You Started
1. Assess your present level of fitness and your level of experience with previous methods of working out. The best way to experience gains is to construct a totally new strength foundation. After this start utilizing an explosion phase. This will result in even more inches.
2. Perform Lifts. Total body conditioning 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, in turn, stabilizes you under tension, and as well increases stretch-response of hip muscles and hamstrings.
3. The squat should be the main exercise of your lower body workouts. 6-8 decent lifts gets the best strength improvements and vertical carryover. On the days of your upper body workouts, the philosophy is the same, with the central exercises being bench press, overhead press variations, pull-ups and dips. Remember 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 efficient manner. Undergo 3-5 week strength cycles for upper and lower 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 series of tempo runs, sprints and low-intensity plyos (after the proper warm-up of course). By the time Phase 3 comes around, this will have gradually lessened to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyos.
6. Concentration on the heavier weights will decrease as you proceed through the phases.
7. Visualize by closing your eyes, imagining yourself exploding upwards. Visualize yourself with big leg muscles that are coiled like springs, ready to propel you higher. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more strong and much lighter.” After that jump another time. You should observe a noticeable improvement in your vertical jump. (Sports psychologists have long documented the helpfulness of “mental practice” in improving 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 abs.
