Need the best training to leap higher? Firstly, you might have to take a look at your own conditioning – your upper and lower body muscle strength. Gaining some strength in your abdominal muscles can really help you to jump higher. In other words you need to get in shape.
And starting place is to try and manage your body weight and increase your strength using various exercises. For exampe, squats, leg squats and other total body workouts like the spider-man pushups, the side plank can develop your overall strength. Overall strength is very important in the safety aspect too – jumping 40 inches into the air is great, but landing and having the force ripple up your body isn’t so nice if your bones and muscles cant take the thousands of vertical leaps your may be doing.
After this, contiune it up with weight training by getting into dead-lifts, bench press, squats and if you like, leg specific exercises.
Though, you may be thinking, how come I need to work on my upper body strength – why not! Not only will you look better you’ll be more importantly proportioned – Full body exericse is fantastic for the entire core. Strong abdominal muscles means a stronger body overall. Just look at the NBA players, their bodies are totally proportioned, and they’re very physically strong – they can really DUNK.
Need more proof? Look at the Aussie Rules Footballers – now this is real football – the players again are physically built, lightening quick and have huge vertical jumps to grab a ‘mark’ or ‘tap’ the ball to their team mates.
Training for vertical jumping and strength training go hand in hand – look into developing your overall strength, try getting into power building sports, track sprinting, hill sprints and stair sprinting – this will build more fast twitching muscles into your legs. Thus it will add power. Sprinters are known to be some of the most explosive and powerful athletes by bodyweight proportion in the world. To assist your training to jump higher, consider Plyometrics like depth jumps, rim jumps, jump squats and lateral hops to increase your vertical jump!
-Will
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Awesome post! I have been searching for a new fitness routine in yahoo and I found your blog. I just started a program and I am pretty clueless.
Hey Will,
Great post about improving the overall strength and fitness level to increase vertical jump. Just so if I may add the reasons on the over strength and conditioning so as to help increase your verticals.
First off, any weak link from your body will “disallow” proper power transfer from your leg up… in other words, any weak “muscles” along the stretch of your jumping flow, from your ankles to the swing of your arms to the balance in the air.
Therefore, it is crucial that you add upper body strength so as to increase your vertical jump.
Great post !
Charles
I’m sustaining a bit of problems reading the end of the article. The last paragraph gets interrupted midway up. You should have a look at that.Nonetheless, the rest of the read was extraordinary!