Posts Tagged ‘increase vertical’

Three Easy Steps to Quickly Increasing Your Vertical Leap

Sunday, May 16th, 2010

The majority opinion about increasing your vertical leap is that such goals can’t be obtained quickly; you must pace yourself to achieve success. The problem is, “slow and steady” doesn’t always win the race - after all that hard work, sometimes the vertical leap remains pretty much unchanged. Your vertical leap can be improved, and rapidly, if you follow these steps carefully.  Pay special attention to what you’re doing, and keep in mind that it’s not easy to achieve the goal. A rapid increase in their vertical leap is the goal of many basketball players, but they consistently fail to achieve this goal.   You can possibly increase your vertical jump fast, in as little as a week, if you keep the following in mind:

1. Your Body Needs Balance - Help It Out!

Most people will start by immediately focusing on squats and leg lifts in the hope that their vertical jump will increase in a week. But thats wrong; the goal should be a great, flexible and balanced body that can help you execute the best possible vertical jump, not just great and powerful legs. If you want legs like a weight-lifter, by all means spend all your time developing your legs.  If you want to improve your vertical leap, however, be certain not to ignore any part of your body in your training.

2. Eliminate Unnecessary Fat

You cannot dunk and be overweight at the same time. You have to choose to either get rid of the excess fat in your body or forget the dream of dunking. The body of the professional player who regularly dunks during a match is the body you should be aiming for. Shed a good amount of fat to jump higher than 24 inches.

3. Adopt a Workout Routine

When great armies fight, the winner usually has the better training, the better plan, and the better general.  You are your own general - so get to work on your training plan! When you plan your vertical jump workout routine, you’re making decisions that will have a lasting impact on your body and your health.  An expert can be an invaluable help at this point. Check with your friends if they have good vertical leaps, or anyone else you can.  Find out how they conditioned and if they worked with a pro.If you’re not getting into the gym daily, or if some parts of your body are being trained more than others, then your exercise routine isn’t doing its job.

As you get involved in your training routine, you’ll likely become aware of other factors that you’d like to incorporate into the above three.Do not forget that the most common mistake among people interesting in increasing their vertical jump quickly, is isolating the legs during a workout. There are a lot of other muscles involved in the process of jumping and dunking. While it’s obviously going to take more than a week to achieve the full vertical leap improvement you’re looking for, you should begin to see good results within as little as a week. Discover more on how to increase your vertical fast.

Increase Vertical Jumping Today

Saturday, February 6th, 2010

What can you expect by increasing your vertical jumping? 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 power with plyometrics. Plyometrics is a form of weight lifting that requires quick-fiber punches within your body. Our bodies are built on fiber tissues that determine our reflexes by the snap of the fibers. In jumping, the tissues in your body must work in unison to provide a strong spring. Plyometrics training improves the stability and power of your vertical jumping by building those twitch fibers within your legs.

The plyometric exercises typically are quick reactions to resistance like gravity or weights.  It could be simply jumping as high as you can until you can not reach your maximum jump any more.  Some exercises may include jumping over or on top of boxes, then jumping down off them.  With plyometric exercises, it is important that each rep attempt is quick and attempt to achieve the maximum every time.  Along with strength training, plyometrics provides a perfect complement to increase your vertical jump quickly.

2.  Agility Drills, Intervals, and Sprints

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.

Sprints and interval are also good exercises in your vertical jump training .  These exercises will improve the reaction time of muscles and help build quick fiber muscles.  Sprints forces your muscle to explode quickly, thus developing the hamstrings, quadriceps and calves used in jumping higher.  Have you ever noticed that many strong jumpers are also fast runners.

3. Decrease Your Body 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.

Improve Fitness Level Before Starting Vertical Jump Training Exercises

Sunday, September 20th, 2009

Before you engage in any vertical jump training program, it is recommended for athletes to achieve a basic fitness level. You can increase your vertical jump drastically only if you do the right exercises and know what you are doing.

Your fitness level can only improve if you overload your body, which is pushing your body beyond what you are already doing. You should have some cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength, good nutritious diet, muscle endurance, along with flexibility. After that, you can challenge your body with more advance fitness exercises to increase your vertical. When you reached an adequate fitness level, your will be ready for an intense vertical jump training program.

Training Exercises That Increase Your Fitness Level

1) Cardiovascular (or Aerobic) Exercises

You can achieve cardiovascular endurance thorough regular aerobic exercise, which is a repetitive movement of large muscle groups over an extended period of time. Examples of aerobic exercises include jogging, rope jumping, basketball and swimming.

2) Improve Muscle Strength

By applying resistance to a muscle group, you can increase muscle strength. Lifting weights is a good way of increasing muscle strength. Squats, lunges, calf exercises, are some examples in increasing strength for jumping higher.

3) Boost Muscle Endurance

When the muscle repeats movement over a period of time, muscle endurance is created. Muscle endurance increases in conjunction with muscle strength. With regular exercise, your muscles burn energy more efficiently and endure overloading for longer time. Running long distance for a long period of time is an example for building endurance.

4) Increase Joint Flexibility

Joint flexibility refers to the range of motions (ROM) the joint can undergo as limited by the joint’s structure and surrounding connective tissues. Warming up and then stretching your calves, hamstring and quad muscles are important activity in preventing injuries and increasing your fitness level. Joint flexibility can also give dramatic increases in vertical leap height.

5) Proper Nutritious Diet

A good healthy diet promotes faster recovery and is important for your body to repair itself. Avoid eating junk food or sugars, and make sure you diet includes protein, good carbs and fats, along with vitamins. Drinking plenty of water will also enhance your growth and ability to handle an increase load of exercises.

6) Reduce Your Body Fat

If your body fat index is less than 10%, you can increase your potential in jumping higher. You need to concentrate on building muscle and limit your caloric intake. A nutritionalist will be able to design the proper diet that makes sense for you specific needs. Vigorous exercises like running will also help you to lose those extra pounds and condition your lungs.

Remember, obtaining a good fitness level is the start of your jumping higher program. After that, you can begin to do exercises to increase your vertical explosion. Plyometric exercises, along with the previous steps, will help you jump higher. Plyometric training develop quick twitch muscle fibers needed to increase your vertical. Many athletes omit these exercises, resulting in them not drastically increasing their vertical jump.

Increase Vertical Jump Success

Sunday, September 20th, 2009

Before Training To Increase Your Vertical Jump, Here Are Some Prerequisites.

Before you attempt to start your training exercises to increase your vertical, these three steps are necessary. They can be summarized as one, Set Realistic but Challenging Goals, two, Design a workout plan, and three, Take Action on what you have planned. In order to see real change or improvement in anything, these steps are a great place to start.

Determine Realistic Ambitious and Measurable Precise Goals

Once you determine your goals, they need to be specific, measurable, realistic and stimulating. For a few, these could make up a fair goal. Once determining goals, bear in mind your actual fitness level, and how often you are willing to spend in conditioning. Example: I would like to gain 10″ in my vertical jump in 12 weeks. As you are able to see, this goal is specific, the progression can be evaluated, and could be both realistic and challenging for a few athletes. Some athletes who possess a advantageous fitness level could determine a more ambitious goal like doubling their vertical jump in 10 weeks. Some inferior examples could be: I would like to leap higher, I desire to slam dunk a basketball. Yet tho’ slam-dunking is zealous incentive to keep conditioning, it’s advisable to do particular and measurable goals.

For example, if you know you are 9″ from touching the rim, your goal should be increasing your vertical by 14″ to insure you will be able to dunk. You can measure this progress, and reaching this goal results in dunking.

Design A Workout Plan

In succeeding lessons, I’ll present you thoughts on setting up a good program. For now, you merely need to recognize some kind of program is needed. Successful folks from all walks of life hold this in common; they all had a strategy or plan in mind to abide by. It’s better to have your program written down and reexamined on a regular basis, so you will be able to keep concentrated on what your made plan.

Implement Your Created Plan

Once you have a goal and have created a workout plan then ALL you need to do is Do it! Eliminate all excuses, sacrifice, and get an accountability partner. Change is never easy, but when you accomplish your goals, it will be worth it

For best results, keep track of your initial performance, workout statistics and on-going performance. With this information you can make the decision to alter your plan to make it easier or harder based on your initial goal constraints and how you are coming along in accomplishing it.

The goal of this lesson was for you to realize the importance of determining goals, making a program and working it to culmination. If you’re in the situation capable of using the same information that the pros use, go to the Online Vertical Jump Training Program called Jump Manual.

Increase Your Vertical Jump With Plyometric Training

Saturday, September 19th, 2009

Plyometric training can give you an enormous edge over your competitors. Plyometric training programs are effective for increasing your speed and explosiveness in movement. Plyometrics is gaining popularity because of the tremendous benefits for both the competitive and non competitive athlete. For those interested in increasing their vertical jump, plyometric exercises is a must.

Plyometric training is simply exercises involving jumping in order to enhance certain muscle developments of speed and explosiveness. Even though jumping does help strengthen your legs muscles, there are other factors needed to increase vertical jump abilities. Besides the legs, the rest of your body also need to be challenged to enhance the full body workout. Thats why plyometric exercises are necessary to get the full benefit in jumping higher.

Plyometric exercises focuses on the development of explosive movements in order to develop muscular power and quickness. Most plyometric training programs are intense and not for those people out of shape or beginners. So even though plyometrics are not used by the novice athlete, the competitive athlete will discover tremendous benefits and enhancements to their physical attributes.

There are a variety of plyometric exercises you can do. Jumping on and off a chair can be a very simple exercise. Plyometric boxes can be purchased as a tool to be used in different exercises of jumping onto, off, or over those objects. As the athlete works on with every rep going at maximum, the highest you can jump or the quickest you can go, this will develop other muscles used to jump higher. Strength along with quickness will enhance explosiveness, helping the athlete jump higher.

Depending on your goal or your physical abilities, you can adjust you plyometric exercise workout. For the novice athlete, perhaps the number of reps are less and with less intensity. But to fully benefit from plyometric training, each rep should be done with intensity and at the maximum effort.

To help ensure your plyometric training is safe and effective, it is important to listen to your body. If you are in pain or your knees become achy, take a break. Allow time for your body to recuperate and do not over do it especially if you are just starting out.

Plyometrics is one of the keys in learning how to jump higher. Practice these tips, and you will increase your vertical jump drastically.

How to Jump Higher Successfully

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

If you really want to jump higher then you have to become more knowledgeable about the subject. Better vertical jumping means your game can improve dramatically in whatever sport you play. However, it doesn’t take an athlete to work on these exercises. To be honest, as long as you want to build leg strength and power, we suggest everyone giving it a try.

Part of the basis for learning how to jump higher is building strength in your legs. Increasing the power and strength in your legs will allow you to get the push off the ground and thus increase your jump. During strength training it is important to work all the muscles in the legs, from the quads to the calves.

There are many ways to go about doing it like running, jogging, and biking, but those aren’t the only ways to work the body. We do suggest that you start by adding a few squats, lunges, and calf raises to your program. However, in the beginning stages you may want to do something in the comfort of your own home to get you started. Try sitting in a seated position and pop up with your legs. You will strengthen them like crazy the more you do it.

We do suggest you go out and find someone that can help you. It doesn’t have to be a difficult transition, but it’s a good idea to have some help. If you can get someone, then you’ll be able to stay free of injury and build the leg strength you desire without harm. If you can’t find anyone, then make sure your exercises are fit for a solo session.

The first thing you need look for is a way to approach your jumping higher exercises. Even though you could get results doing one muscle at a time, you’ll be better off taking a multi-faceted approach. In the end you will find yourself more agile.

However, over anything else you have to find something that teaches the right form. People can do any exercise, but without the proper form you won’t get the results you desire. In fact, by fixing your vertical jumping form alone, you can easily gain two to four inches on your jumping.

Even though the exercising is important, it’s not the only thing that will help you jump higher. A good diet is definitely something that will compensate your exercising. The nutrients that go into your body can bring on massive gains when you actually do the exercises. Plus it’s a great way to take care of yourself.

Then of course the healthier you are, the easier it will be to do them correctly. If you don’t the positive results that could have been, may wind up to be negative ones.

Proper technique includes an understanding of plyometrics. Plyometrics is basically jump training, so you can see why it is important to understand. A good program will ensure you understand proper plyometrics.

A good program will also include resistance training that will work those muscles, as explained earlier. You have to increase muscle to increase your jump.

Lastly, you have to understand your muscles and how they work. This involves understanding flexibility and learning how to train them. This will help you to understand the best way to use your muscles and work your muscles to get a good vertical jump.

Just keep in mind that the program must be a good one. It should include all the information we spoke about today, and a whole lot more if you’re lucky. Above anything else, if you desire to learn how to jump higher, just make sure you do the exercises right. You’ll end up working less and gaining more strength.

Increase Vertical Jump

Sunday, July 12th, 2009

Initiatives Necessary Before You Start Your Increase Vertical Jump Training

These three steps are necessary before you attempt to start your training exercises to increase your vertical jump. One, set challenging but realistic goals, two, construct a workout plan, and three, Do the workout you have planned. This will be a great start in order to see improvement or real change in your vertical jumping.

Lay out Pragmatic Ambitious and Measurable Goals

When you set your goals, they need to be specific, measurable, realistic and challenging. For some, this might be a reasonable goal. When setting goals, keep in mind your current fitness level, and how much time you are willing to spend in training. Example: I want to increase my vertical jump by 10″ in twelve weeks. As you can see, this is specific, the progress can be measured, and could be both realistic and challenging for some athletes. Some athletes who have a good fitness level might set a more challenging goal like doubling their vertical in 10 weeks. Some poor examples might be: I want to jump higher, I want to slam dunk a basketball. Even though slam-dunking is great incentive to keep training, it is better to set specific and measurable goals.

For example, if you know you are 9″ from touching the rim, your goal should be increasing your vertical by 14″ to insure you will be able to dunk. You can measure this progress, and reaching this goal results in dunking.

Design A Workout Plan

If you fail to plan, plan to fail. Those who are successful in all walks of life have this in common, they write out a plan on what they want to accomplish. In order to keep focused on your plan, it should be written down and reviewed regularly.

Implement Your Created Plan

Once you have a goal and have created a workout plan then ALL you need to do is Do it! Eliminate all excuses, sacrifice, and get an accountability partner. Change is never easy, but when you accomplish your goals, it will be worth it!

For best results, keep track of your initial performance, workout statistics and on-going performance. With this information you can make the decision to alter your plan to make it easier or harder based on your initial goal constraints and how you are coming along in accomplishing it.

I hope you realize the importance of setting goals, writing them down, making a plan, and then taking action until you reach your goals. For those in a position to take it to the next level and drastically increase their vertical, go to Jump Manual, an online vertical training program.