ANYBODY can increase their vertical jump and learn how to jump higher!
The key is learning the role your body type plays. Age, sex, race e.t.c., do not play as important a role. You need to do an assessment of your body’s individual response to certain exercise routines, as this varies from one person to another. Giving you exercises just 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 should sequence from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Fundamental Steps To Get Started
1. Assess your current strength and your expertise with earlier methods of exercise. The best way to get gains is to construct a totally new strength platform. Then start utilizing an explosion segment. This will result in even more inches.
2. Do Lifts. Entire body conditioning is a key factor for such an athlete and there is no superior 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 hip muscles and hamstrings.
3. Root the squat centrally within the majority of your lower body workouts. 6-8 decent lifts gets the best strength developments and vertical carryover. For the upper body days, 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. Ensure that you use a lifting technique in a secure and efficient style. Undergo 3-5 week strength phases 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 guaranteed to increase.
5. Properly utilize explosive and plyometric training as well as your strength training. These are your “field workouts” and are finished before 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 lessened to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyometrics.
6. Concentration on the heavier weights will decrease as you move forward through the phases.
7. Visualize by closing your eyes, imagining yourself exploding upwards. Picture yourself with big leg muscles that are coiled like springs, prepared to blast you up into the air. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more powerful and much lighter.” After that jump once more. You ought to observe a noticeable improvement in your vertical leap. (Sports psychologists have long recognized 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 a six pack.
