How You Can Jump Higher

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., do not play as important a role. You need to assess your own individual response to certain exercise routines, as this varies from one person to another. Just assigning 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, aiming at your weaknesses. This group of exercises should cycle from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.

Some Crucial Steps To Get You Started

1. Assess your present level of fitness and your expertise with prior methods of training. The most effective way to produce gains is to construct a totally new strength foundation. Then start performing an explosion phase. This will result in even more inches.

2. Do Lifts. Entire body strength is important 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 as well improves stretch-response of both hamstrings and hip muscles.

3. Make the squat the core exercise of your lower body workouts. 6-8 quality 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 to work often overlooked muscles at the end of your 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 properly, perceptible gains of 5+% on each lift should be seen weekly. 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 finished prior to your weight exercises. E.g., on Day 1 you begin by engaging in 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 progress through the phases.

7. Visualize by closing your eyes, imagining yourself exploding upwards. Visualize 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 strong and much lighter." Then jump once more. 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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