How You Can Leap Higher
ANYONE can improve their vertical leap and learn how to jump higher!
The key to increasing you vertical jump is learning the role your body type plays. Age, sex, race e.t.c., are not as important as most people think. You need to assess 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 to really jump higher...you NEED a cycle based on exercises for your given body type, concentrating on your weaknesses. This group of exercises should cycle from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.
Fundamental Steps To Get Started
1. Assess your existing level of fitness and your level of experience with prior types of exercise. The most effective way to experience gains is to construct a totally new strength foundation. Then start performing an explosion phase. This will result in even more inches.
2. Perform Lifts. Entire body conditioning is an important factor for such an athlete and there is no superior exercise than the full back squat. This provides progressive increases on spinal loading, which provides stabilization under tension, and in addition 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. On the days of your upper body workouts, use the same philosophy, with the central exercises being bench press, overhead press variations, pull-ups and dips. Keep in mind the overlooked muscles towards 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 manner. Undergo 3-5 week strength phases 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. Properly utilize explosive and plyometric training as well as your strength training. These are your "field workouts" and are finished pre-weights. E.g., on Day 1 you begin by engaging in a sequence 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 gradually switched to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyometrics.
6. Emphasis on the heavier weights will decrease as you proceed through the phases.
7. Visualize by closing your eyes, imagining yourself exploding upwards. Picture yourself with large leg muscles that are tightened like springs, ready to blast you up into the air. Say to yourself "I feel myself getting more strong and much lighter." After that jump once more. You should notice a marked |increase in your vertical jump. (Sports psychologists have long recognized the effectiveness of "mental practice" in improving athletic performance.)