ANYBODY can improve their vertical jump 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 do an assessment of your own individual response to training, as this varies from one person to another. just assigning you exercises simply doesn’t cut it if you want real hops…you NEED a cycle based on exercises for your given body type, aiming at your weaknesses. These exercises should cycle from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Some Basic Steps To Get You Started
1. Assess your current level of fitness and your level of experience with previous methods of training. The best way to get gains is to construct a totally new strength foundation. After this start utilizing an explosion phase. This will result in further inches.
2. Practice Lifts. Entire 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 increases stabilization under tension, and also improves stretch-response of hip muscles and hamstrings.
3. Root the squat centrally within most 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. Remember to work often overlooked muscles at 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 manner. Undergo 3-5 week strength phases for upper and lower body. Done correctly, visible gains of 5+% on each lift should be evident weekly. Following this, you will be able to see 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 before your weight exercises. That is, on Day 1 you begin by using a series of tempo runs, sprints and low-intensity plyos (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. Concentration on the heavier weights will decrease as you progress through the phases.
7. Visualize by closing your eyes, imagining yourself exploding upwards. Picture yourself with large leg muscles that are coiled like springs, ready to blast you up into the air. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more powerful and much lighter.” Then jump again. You should observe a noticeable increase in your vertical leap. (Sports psychologists have long recognized the effectiveness of “mental practice” in increasing one’s performance in sports.)
For more information on learning how to jump higher, visit Vertical Jump Program Reviews.
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