Strength
It is the strength of your legs you need to concentrate on the most, see them as the 2 rockets you have to propel your body. When you build muscle strength it’s important to warm up with some gentle exercise first. As you go through your training program progressively increase resistance, meaning each time you do that particular exercise again, add more weight to the equipment you are lifting, to increase the difficulty. You would normally increase to weight of your dumbbells or bar, but this can be hard to handle if you are doing jumping exercises. Instead you could use a weighted vest which frees your arms, allowing them to be used to propel yourself higher. In addition to slightly increasing the weight, you should increase the amount of repetitions you are doing on each exercise.
There are various exercises you can do, and you should vary them to use different muscles. Concentrate on jumping exercises. One of the best working jumping exercises is jumping squats to build your lower body, but also to work the upper body. The best way is to go from a squatting position to reach the best height you can. Using the power from your legs, with also your upper body and arms to propel yourself. Other jumping exercises you could try are step ups, box jumps and scissor jumps.
Training both legs together is good, but another way to increase resistance is to
rest one leg and use just exercise each leg individually. Exercising one leg alone
is important as in most of your sporting activities you will be using 2 legs to gain
speed, but one leg to propel yourself. Stair climbing, and big step ups are good
ways to exercise each leg alternately, and also to work on your speed -
Sprinting is good for many sports training, but when it comes to jump training doing short fast sprints is best, pushing yourself to beat new times. Sprinting exercises the whole body well, but again to put more work on the legs you need to create resistance. This can be done by using a body weight as before, or wrist bands. Another method is parachutes, or have a person hold you back creating resistance.
Remember the main areas you need to work on are your lower body, and your main core. You need to build strength, then power which comes fast muscle movements. Slowly building in levels of resistance will increase your physical strength and power, in the build up to the ability of higher jumps.
I recently just finished my college course and graduated. I studied sports science and have a keen interest in sports like basketball and soccer. Through what I’ve learnt and my experience I’m passing on great tips to other people to help them better their game by gaining a higher leap.
When it comes to the training to increase your vertical strength is very important. A goo vertical leap is not only handy for basketball but for other sports such as volleyball and soccer.
Your training regime needs to include strength training from the start. The strength is about the amount of power your muscles can exert, but also important is the speed they can exert that force for the best leap.