How To Jump Higher

ANYBODY can increase their vertical leap and learn how to jump higher!

The key is understanding how your body type affects this. Age, gender, race e.t.c., do not play as important a role. You need to do an assessment of your own individual response to training, as this changes from one person to another. just assigning you exercises simply doesn’t cut it if you want to really jump higher…you NEED a cycle based on exercises for your given body type, aiming at your weaknesses. These exercises should cycle from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.

Some Basic Steps To Get You Started

1. Assess your current level of fitness and your expertise with previous types of training. The best way to experience gains is to build a brand new strength foundation. Then start performing an explosion phase. This will result in further inches.

2. Practice Lifts. Total body strength is the key for such an athlete and there is no better exercise than the full back squat. This gives you progressive increases on spinal loading, which provides stabilization under tension, and also improves stretch-response of hip muscles and hamstrings.

3. Root the squat centrally within most 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, use the same philosophy, 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 effective manner. Undergo 3-5 week strength phases for upper and lower body. Done correctly, 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 utilize explosive and plyometric training as well as your strength training. These are your “field workouts” and are completed pre-weights. 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 gradually lessened to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyometrics.

6. Emphasis on the heavier weights should fade as you progress through the phases.

7. Visualization is important – imagine yourself exploding upwards. Visualize yourself with large leg muscles that are tightened like springs, ready 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 recognized the effectiveness of “mental practice” in improving athletic performance.)

For more information on learning how to jump higher, visit our Vertical Jump Program Reviews.