ANYBODY can increase their vertical leap and learn how to jump higher!
The key to jumping higher is understanding how your body type affects this. Age, gender, race e.t.c., are not as important as most people think. You need to assess your body’s individual response to training, as this changes from person to person. Just assigning you a list of 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 ought to cycle from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Fundamental Steps To Get Started
1. Assess your existing strength and your expertise with prior types of working out. The most effective way to get gains is to construct a totally new strength platform. Then start performing an explosion segment. This will result in even more inches.
2. Perform Lifts. Total 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 provides stabilization under tension, and additionally 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 improvements 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. Bear 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 manner. Undergo 3-5 week strength cycles for upper and lower body. Done properly, you ought to see gains of 5% each week. Following this, you will start to envision how your jump is bound 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. That is, on Day 1 you start by using a series of tempo runs, sprints and low-intensity plyometrics (after a dynamic warm-up of course). By the time Phase 3 comes about, this will have steadily lessened 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. Visualize by closing your eyes, imagining yourself exploding upwards. Picture yourself with big leg muscles that are coiled like springs, prepared to propel you higher. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more powerful and much lighter.” Then jump another time. You ought to notice a marked improvement in your vertical leap. (Sports psychologists have long recognized the usefulness 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 abs.
