You Can Jump Higher
Written by sports blogger on June 12, 2009 – 7:04 pm -ANYONE can improve their vertical leap and learn how to jump higher!
The key to increasing you vertical jump is understanding the role your body type plays. Age, gender, race e.t.c., are not as important as most people think. You need to do an assessment of your body’s individual reaction to training, 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, concentrating on your weaknesses. This group of exercises should cycle from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Basic Steps To Get Started
1. Assess your current level of fitness and your level of experience with previous types of training. The best way to experience gains is to construct a brand new strength foundation. After this start performing an explosion phase. This will result in further inches.
2. Practice Lifts. Total body strength is a key factor for such an athlete and there is no better exercise than the full back squat. This provides you with progressive increases on spinal loading, which, in turn, stabilizes you under tension, and also improves stretch-response of hip muscles and hamstrings.
3. Make the squat the core exercise of your lower body workouts. 6-8 quality lifts gets the best strength improvements and vertical carryover. On the days of your upper body workouts, the philosophy is the same, with the core 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 cycles for upper and lower body. Done correctly, you should see gains of 5% each week. Following this, you will start to envision how your jump is guaranteed to increase.
5. Correctly use explosive and plyometric training as well as your strength training. These are your “field workouts” and are completed pre-weights. E.g., on Day 1 you begin 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 around, this will have gradually lessened to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyos.
6. Emphasis on the heavier weights should fade as you progress through the phases.
7. Visualize by closing your eyes, imagining yourself exploding upwards. Picture 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 leap. (Sports psychologists have long recognized the effectiveness of “mental practice” in improving athletic performance.)
For more information on learning how to jump higher, visit Vertical Jump Program Reviews.
Tags: how to jump higher, improve vertical jump, jump higher, vertical jump
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