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., are not as important as most people think. You need to do an assessment of 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 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 Important Steps To Get You Started

1. Assess your current strength and your level of experience with earlier 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 further inches.

2. Practice Lifts. Complete body strength is a key factor for such an athlete and there is no superior exercise than the full back squat. This gives you progressive increases on spinal loading, which provides stabilization under tension, and in addition improves stretch-response of hip muscles and hamstrings.

3. Root the squat centrally within most of your lower body workouts. 6-8 decent lifts gets the best strength developments and vertical carryover. On the days of your upper body workouts, use the same philosophy, with the core 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. Ensure that you use a lifting technique in a safe 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 be able to see how your jump is guaranteed to increase.

5. Correctly utilize 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 using 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. Concentration on the heavier weights will decrease as you proceed through the phases.

7. Visualization is important - imagine 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 strong and much lighter." Then jump again. You should observe a noticeable |increase in your vertical jump. (Sports psychologists have long documented the helpfulness of "mental practice" in improving athletic performance.)