You Can Leap Higher

ANYONE can increase their vertical leap and learn how to jump higher!

The key to increasing you vertical jump is learning how your body type affects this. Age, sex, race e.t.c., do not play as important a role. You need to do an assessment of your own individual reaction to training, as this changes from one person to another. Giving you a list of exercises simply doesn’t cut it if you want to really jump higher…you NEED a sequence based on exercises for your given body type, concentrated on your weaknesses. This group of exercises should sequence from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.

Basic Steps To Get Started

1. Assess your current strength and your expertise with earlier types of working out. The best way to get gains is to construct a brand new strength platform. Then start performing an explosion phase. This will result in further inches.

2. Do Lifts. Total body conditioning is a key factor for such an athlete and there is no superior exercise than the full back squat. This gives you 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 foundation exercise of your lower body workouts. 6-8 decent lifts gets the best strength improvements and vertical carryover. For the upper body days, the philosophy is the same, with the central exercises being bench press, overhead press variations, pull-ups and dips. Bear 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 way. Undergo 3-5 week strength cycles for both lower and upper body. Done in the proper manner, 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 pre-weights. That is, on Day 1 you start by engaging in a sequence of tempo runs, sprints and low-intensity plyos (after a dynamic warm-up of course). By the time Phase 3 comes around, this will have steadily switched to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyos.

6. Emphasis on the heavier weights should fade as you advance through the phases.

7. Visualization is important - imagine yourself exploding upwards. Picture yourself with big leg muscles that are tightened like springs, prepared to blast you up into the air. Say to yourself "I feel myself getting more powerful and much lighter." Then jump another time. You should notice a marked improvement in your vertical leap. (Sports psychologists have long recognized the helpfulness 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 abs.