How To Increase Vertical Jump Height

Posted in sports on 10. Dec, 2009

What can you expect by increasing your vertical jump ? The answer lies in the sport you play and if it’s required to outperform other players. In basketball, your capabilities of strong vertical jumping is everything in relation to your jump shots, blocks, and rebounds. You can be an underdog if you cannot reach up and above competitors for rebounds because rebounds determine the success of a game. Defensive players must block out opponents when creating a solid position; point guards must have a straight vertical in order to get shots over taller players. The world of basketball depends on your vertical jumping; in this article, you’re going to learn three tips to help increase vertical jumps today.

1. Weight Lifting and Plyometric Exercises

You can increase vertical explosion with plyometric exercises. Plyometrics helps develop quick muscle fibers needed to improve vertical by training your muscles to explode quickly. Over time, plyometric training increases the amount of force you can produce and therefore plyometrics are effective in making you more explosive. This leads to improved sports performance, a higher vertical jump, and faster sprinting times.

To clear a myth up, plyometric exercises are not made for improving conditioning or endurance. They are specifically designed for improving reactive and explosive strength. Plyometric training offer a wide array of benefits ranging from improve vertical jump, improved sprinting speed, better explosiveness, improved ability to absorb force, and better agility. Plyometrics are meant to be performed very fast, attempting to reach maximum and with long rest periods in between sets. Too often you see athletes trying to do 5 sets of 10 depth jumps with 1 minute of rest in between. This may help develop endurance, but not explosiveness, which is needed to increase vertical or jump higher.

2. Sprints, Intervals, and Agility Drills

Strong jumps require stability, flexibility, and frequency in monitoring the twitch fibers of your legs and core. The core muscles (upper abdominal, lower back, and lower abs) experience a crunch when you have to move into the air. If you’ve ever paid attention to great jumpers, their core muscles are quite tight. They are able to move in a flexible motion by increasing vertical reaction times to jumps.

Since working on muscle explosion is vital for increasing your vertical , sprints and interval are good exercises to do. When you sprint or run as fast as you can, your quick fiber muscles between the hamstrings, quads, and calves are stressed but also developing. Those are the same muscles used to jump higher.

3. Lose Excess Weight

Common sense tells us that excess weight can make it more challenging to jump higher. Besides putting extra stress on your ankles and knees, excess fat on your body will weigh you down. Simply by changing your diet, reducing sugars, and junk food will assist your body in losing the excess fat thus making you seem to “fly” ever higher. Good nutrition is vital for those desiring to improve vertical and jump higher.

Ben J. Mihajlov is a coach and certified personal trainer who loves helping athletes maximizing their quickness and vertical explosion. Jump training is a science and needs to be done correctly for maximum results. Check out these online resources on how to jump higher and improve vertical jump videos.

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