ANYONE can improve their vertical jump and learn how to jump higher!

The key to increasing you vertical jump is understanding the role your body type plays. Age, gender, race e.t.c., do not play as important a role. You need to do an assessment of your own individual response to certain exercise routines, 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, aimed at your weaknesses. This group of exercises should cycle from Strength to Explosiveness to Plyometrics.

Fundamental Steps To Get Started

1. Assess your current level of fitness and your expertise with earlier methods of training. The most effective way to produce gains is to construct a totally new strength foundation. Then start utilizing an explosion phase. This will result in even more inches.

2. Practice Lifts. Entire body conditioning is important 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 provides stabilization under tension, and in addition improves stretch-response of both hamstrings and hip muscles.

3. Make the squat the core exercise of your lower body workouts. 6-8 quality lifts gets the best strength developments 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. Bear in mind 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, observable gains of 5+% on each lift should be seen weekly. 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 prior to your weight exercises. That is, 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 lessened to shorter tempo runs, overspeed (downhill) sprints and high-intensity plyometrics.

6. Concentration on the heavier weights will decrease as you advance through the phases.

7. Visualization is important - imagine yourself exploding upwards. Visualize yourself with large leg muscles that are coiled like springs, set to blast you up into the air. Say to yourself "I feel myself getting more powerful and much lighter." Then jump again. You should notice a marked |increase in your vertical jump. (Sports psychologists have long recognized the usefulness of "mental practice" in improving athletic performance.)

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