ANYONE can increase their vertical leap and learn how to jump higher!
The key is learning how your body type affects this. Age, sex, race e.t.c., are not the deciding factors. You need to assess your own individual response to training, as this changes from person to person. Giving you a list of exercises just doesn’t cut it if you want real hops…you NEED a sequence based on exercises for your given body type, aiming at your weaknesses. These exercises ought to cycle from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Some Crucial Steps To Get You Started
1. Assess your current level of fitness and your expertise with earlier methods of exercise. The most effective way to experience gains is to build a brand new strength foundation. Then start performing an explosion phase. This will result in even more inches.
2. Do Lifts. Total body strength 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 as well improves 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, use the same philosophy, with the core exercises being bench press, overhead press variations, pull-ups and dips. Remember the overlooked muscles towards the end of the workout – muscles such as hip flexors, the shins , transverse abdominals e.t.c.
4. Ensure that you use a lifting technique in a safe and effective style. Undergo 3-5 week strength cycles for both lower and upper body. Done in the proper manner, perceptible gains of 5+% on each lift should be seen weekly. 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 ahead of your weight exercises. E.g., on Day 1 you start 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 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, prepared to blast you up into the air. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more powerful and much lighter.” Then jump another time. You ought to observe a noticeable increase 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 a six pack.
