Rec and Sports

How To Jump Higher

ANYBODY can improve their vertical jump and learn how to jump higher!

The key 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 do an assessment of your own individual reaction to certain exercise routines, as this varies from person to person. Giving you a list of exercises simply doesn’t cut it if you want to really jump higher…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.

Some Essential Steps To Get You Started

1. Assess your current level of fitness and your level of experience with previous types of working out. The most effective way to get gains is to construct a totally new strength foundation. After this start utilizing an explosion segment. This will result in further inches.

2. Perform Lifts. Entire body strength is a key factor for such an athlete and there is no superior exercise than the full back squat. This provides you with progressive increases on spinal loading, which, in turn, stabilizes you under tension, and additionally increases stretch-response of both hamstrings and hip muscles.

3. Make the squat the core exercise of your lower body workouts. 6-8 decent lifts gets the best strength developments 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. Keep in mind the overlooked muscles towards the end of the 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 style. Undergo 3-5 week strength cycles for both lower and upper body. Done correctly, you ought to see gains of 5% each week. Following this, you will be able to see how your jump is bound to increase.

5. Correctly use 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 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. Visualization is important – imagine yourself exploding upwards. Picture yourself with large leg muscles that are tightened like springs, prepared to blast you up into the air. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more strong and much lighter.” Then jump again. You should observe a noticeable increase in your vertical jump. (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.