ANYBODY can improve their vertical jump and learn how to jump higher!
The key to jumping higher is understanding the role your body type plays. Age, gender, race e.t.c., are not the deciding factors. You need to do an assessment of your own individual response to training, as this changes from person to person. 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, concentrating on your weaknesses. This group of 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 earlier types of training. The most effective way to experience gains is to construct a totally new strength platform. Then start performing an explosion phase. This will result in even more inches.
2. Practice Lifts. Total body conditioning is a key factor for such an athlete and there is no better exercise than the full back squat. This gives you progressive increases on spinal loading, which, in turn, stabilizes you 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 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. Remember 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 cycles for both lower and upper body. Done correctly, perceptible 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 completed ahead of your weight exercises. That is, on Day 1 you begin by using a series of tempo runs, sprints and low-intensity plyometrics (after the proper warm-up of course). By the time Phase 3 comes around, this will have slowly switched to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyometrics.
6. Concentration on the heavier weights will decrease as you proceed through the phases.
7. Visualization is important – imagine 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 powerful and much lighter.” After that jump again. You ought to notice a marked improvement in your vertical leap. (Sports psychologists have long documented the helpfulness of “mental practice” in increasing one’s performance in sports.)
To get the most out of your vertical jumping exercises, you must think about a vertical jump training program. To get more information on How To Jump Higher, check out these Vertical Jump Program Reviews to find out which are rated the best.
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