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Increase Vertical Jump

October 29th, 2009 Ama No comments

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.

Take Action On The Plan You Made

Make no excuses once you have your plan. Real change comes with sacrifice and perseverance. It is also helpful to have someone come along aside you as an accountability partner. Even though training may get difficult, it will be worth it once you accomplish your goals.

It is also helpful to write down your initial performance and workout stats. You can make better adjustments on your original plan if necessary, making it harder or easier.

The goal of this lesson was for you to understand the importance of setting goals, creating a plan and working it to completion. If you are in the position to be able to use the same information that the pros use, go to Online Vertical Jump Training Program called Jump Manual.

Prerequisites For Any Vertical Jump Training Program

September 30th, 2009 Ama No comments

In order to enhance your vertical jump training and learn how to jump higher, you must know what you are doing and do the right exercises. Until you have achieved a certain fitness level, you should not engage into an intense jump training program.

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.

Improve Your Fitness Level With These Exercises

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) Enhance 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) Improve Joint and Muscle Flexibility

Joint flexibility refers to the range of motions, 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 increase your vertical jump dramatically.

5) Proper Nutritious Diet

First, you need to have a good diet and avoid junk food. Get plenty of protein; whey protein drinks are my favorite. Chicken or turkey is a good substitute. Also, get plenty of water and don’t cut out carbohydrates. They’re good for energy. Take a multivitamins and a supplement to protect your joints. A healthy diet means faster recovery time. Your body needs a chance to repair itself after going through the workouts.

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, these steps is only the beginning for your vertical jump program. After you have reached a good fitness level, you can increase your vertical explosion by doing plyometric exercises. Plyometric training will develop quick twitch muscle fibers needed to increase your vertical. Many athletes omit these exercises, resulting in them not drastically increasing their vertical jump.

Plyometric Training To Increase Your Vertical Jump

September 21st, 2009 Ama No comments

Plyometric training is growing in popularity because of the many benefits. Plyometric training can greatly increase your speed and explosiveness in movement. This will give the competitive athlete an enormous edge over his competitors. There are very few exercise program as effective as plyometric training, even for the non competitive athlete, they benefit with enhanced physical conditioning.

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.

Plyometrics exercises are typically intense and focuses on the development of explosive movements thus enhancing the athletes muscular power and quickness. Although plyometric training is not used by the novice athlete, competitive athletes are gaining enormous advantages by applying the exercises in the workouts.

There are many different plyometric exercise you can do. A simple exercise could be jumping up and onto a box and then jumping off of it. Typically, they are just jumping onto, off, or over an object. Each rep repeated should be done to full maximum to insure increase in explosiveness and quickness. Endurance or fatigue of the muscle is not necessary the goal, but working on jumping higher and quicker. It helps develop the quick twitch muscles used in speed and explosiveness.

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.

During your plyometric exercise, it is important to listen to your body. If you start experiencing pain or your knees get achy, rest. Allowing time for your body to recuperate and listening to your body will ensure your plyometric training is safe and effective.

Yes it is possible to learn how to jump higher, and plyometrics is one of the keys to your success.