You Can Learn To Jump Higher
ANYONE can improve their vertical jump and learn how to jump higher!
The key to increasing you vertical jump is learning the role your body type plays. 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 varies from person to person. Just assigning you a list of exercises simply doesn't cut it if you want real hops...you NEED a cycle based on exercises for your given body type, concentrated on your weaknesses. This group of exercises should cycle from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Some Essential Steps To Get You Started
1. Assess your existing level of fitness and your expertise with earlier methods of training. The most effective way to observe gains is to construct a totally new strength foundation. Then start utilizing an explosion phase. This will result in further inches.
2. Perform Lifts. Complete body strength is the key for such an athlete and there is no superior exercise than the full back squat. This provides 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 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. Make sure to use a lifting technique in a secure and effective style. Undergo 3-5 week strength cycles for upper and lower body. Done correctly, you ought to see gains of 5% each week. Following this, you will start to envision how your jump is guaranteed to increase.
5. Correctly utilize explosive and plyometric training as well as your strength training. These are your "field workouts" and are completed ahead of 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 switched to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyometrics.
6. Concentration on the heavier weights will decrease as you progress through the phases.
7. Visualize by closing your eyes, imagining yourself exploding upwards. Visualize yourself with big leg muscles that are coiled like springs, set to propel you higher. Say to yourself "I feel myself getting more powerful and much lighter." Then jump another time. You should observe a noticeable |increase in your vertical jump. (Sports psychologists have long recognized the usefulness of "mental practice" in improving athletic performance.)
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