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

The key is understanding the role your body type plays. Age, gender, race e.t.c., are not the deciding factors. You need to assess your own individual response to certain exercise routines, as this varies from person to person. just assigning you a list of exercises just doesn’t cut it if you want real hops…you NEED a cycle based on exercises for your given body type, concentrating on 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 most effective way to experience gains is to construct a brand new strength platform. After this start utilizing an explosion phase. This will result in even more inches.

2. Practice Lifts. Total body conditioning 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, in turn, stabilizes you under tension, and also improves stretch-response of hip muscles and hamstrings.

3. The squat should be the main exercise of your lower body workouts. 6-8 decent lifts gets the best strength improvements 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 your 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 manner. Undergo 3-5 week strength phases for both lower and upper body. Done correctly, you should see gains of 5% each week. 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 completed before 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 gradually lessened to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyometrics.

6. Emphasis on the heavier weights should fade 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 propel you higher. Say to yourself “I feel myself getting more powerful and much lighter.” Then jump again. You should notice a marked increase in your vertical leap. (Sports psychologists have long recognized the effectiveness of “mental practice” in increasing athletic performance.)

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