Increasing Vertical Jump
How Training Works
Similar to any other training in sports, the regimen for improving vertical jump will involve the muscles— particularly, the muscle type called the fast twitch response muscles. There are two broad categories of muscles: the slow twitch muscle fibers and the fast twitch muscle fibers.
Slow twitch muscles have the capability to contract for longer period of times but provide relatively smaller force. This type of muscles does not tire easily and they are the ones you need to work out if you are building endurance (they’re the ones you use for jogging or running on electric treadmills). The fast twitch muscles, on the other hand, contract for very short period of times and provide explosive force when you need them to. They, however, tire and fatigue easily and won’t provide the same amount of power for long periods. These muscle type is what you will go after in you training for increasing vertical jump. Exercises for the fast twitch muscles is referred to as plyometrics.
But training will not merely concentrate on the fast twitch muscles. The best training out there on how to jump higher are those that target not one or two aspects of the vertical jump but many aspects of sports training— both physical and mental. You could start doing plyometric exercises right now to improve your leg fast twitch muscles but you will not achieve your maximum if you do not take care of the other facets of your muscle training. You need to understand that if you wish to be able to jump higher, you will need to look after other concerns such as injury prevention and nutrition.
Multi-faceted Approach to Jumping Higher
If you wish to maximize your gains then the you will need to train using a multi-faceted approach. The rationale for this is simple and can be described by a good analogy: If you want to make your car run faster you do not just go right after replacing the engine. You will also need to ensure that the other facets of a car are taken care of. You will also need to change the air intake and the exhaust system along with the safety aspects like the breaks, roll-bars, engine supports, etc.
Same with vertical jump training, you will need to develop the other aspects besides muscle training. Listed below are the other equally important facets of your training which I lifted off from this jump training website. I suggest that you choose only the training programs that use multi-faceted approaches to maximize your gains and minimize the risk of failure (and injury).
One very distinct advantage of the multi-faceted approach is that it fast tracks your improvement because the effect of working on all the aspects is cumulative and will give you very noticeable and positive results in at least 2 weeks!
The different aspects of jump training:
Form – targeted improvements on form will increase your jump 2 to 4 inches.
Diet – there are some aspects of your diet that are commonly neglected but are essential to your muscles’ ability to recover. Proper diet will allow you to improve muscle recovery by about 15%, which will help gain faster while minimize chances of injury.
Correct Core Training – understanding the principles isn’t the same as applying them. For this you will usually need guidance from experts to tell you if you’re doing the right exercises to jump higher the wrong way. Correcting this mistakes will improve your success rate significantly.
Correct Understanding of Plyometrics – most people are doing this aspect of the training wrong. A good training program must tell you how to implement plyometric exercises correctly and how other people are doing it wrong.
Resistance Training – this is an often neglected aspect of training but is very important to further your improvement.
Targeting Often Untargeted Muscle Groups – a good program must teach you how to take advantage of the fact that there are muscle groups that many other programs are neglecting.
Flexibility – improve flexibility and you will see more power in your muscle’s contractions— explosion of strength = explosive jump! Target this very important aspect!
Science – understand how your muscles work and how their elastic nature helps in your training and performance.
Mental Aspect – you need to be strong-willed, disciplined and consistent. Your mental attitude plays big into your success.
Photo credit: akapron
