5 Keys To Increaseing Your Vertical Jump
With basketball and volleyball right around the corner many athletes are looking to increase their vertical. Many factors lead to top end verticals; flexibility, proper training, proper jump training, jump technique and enough rest is needed to optimally increase the vertical. What we’re going to do is give you the 5 keys or exercises that we use at Athletic Edge that have helped a dozen d1 volleyball players reach their top verticals in camp this year. Over the summer we get a group of volleyball players that have to attain certain goals most of which have to do with jumping and conditioning. We are going to give some of our keys that have helped them reach their personal bests this year. These are in no specific order and should always be done with a certified sports performance coach to ensure proper technique and coaching ques.
1. Flexibility- Flexibility is key in any program for strength and conditioning. This is because the hip flexors are so important for explosion upward. If we are tight in the hips it is very hard to explode through what is called triple extension (ankles, knees and hip alignment). This triple extension is the power behind the vertical. So we need to be properly warmed up using some various methods: foam rolling, active warm up, muscle activation and cns activation. These four concepts will help improve your vertical immensely.
2. Depth jump landing to depth jumps- learning how to properly land is also key to understanding how to jump. To work on depth jump landing simply stand on a box and step down and land. Making sure your feet are shoulder width and you’re in an athletic position. This is important because volleyball and basketball players all use repetitive jumping and making sure you can land and jump again with the same power is important. We must always learn to land before we learn to jump. Depth jumps are simple and one of the most important exercises to do because of the quick response the body needs and how the cns reacts to this type of training. You start off the same on the box, step down, and then jump up as quickly as possible. This is very intensive on the cns and has been used for many years as a training method to increase verts. To make this even more challenging put some hurdles in front of the box and do depth jumps that way.
3. Resisted jumps- there are many ways to do resisted jumping and some of them are; the Vertimax, resisted cords and vests. These are the basis of resisted methods we use at Athletic Edge. The Vertimax is by far one of the best pieces of equipment you can get. It is one of the few if not only piece that resists the athlete from the waist down. This is important again because of the cns intensive training and triple extension. This resistance makes the body work extremely hard to overcome the interia the weight is putting the body through. Repeated use of resistant training gives the body muscle memory thus increasing the vertical.
4. Strength training specifically squats and posterior chain- squatting, whatever type it may be (back squats, front squats, box squats, safety squats and sumo squats) are one of the best things to do for increasing power in the lower body. Depending on your training history and age you can do anything from bodyweight squatting to heavy band squatting the point is you’re squatting. The muscles used to squat are the same muscles used to jump and explode upward. Again we are talking about overcoming inertia and driving the hips, butt and torso upward. The posterior chain, which is the glutes and the hamstrings, are very important not only in jumping but also acl prevention. This is especially true in women as there is a 5x more likely hood that acl tears will happen compared to men. This is due to poor activation of the posterior chain. Some exercises we do are: bridge series, RDL’s and SL RDL’s.
5. Single Leg training- While duel leg training like squatting and jumping are extremely important we must realize one leg is always stronger than the other. Single leg training (SL) is important to do because we need the most power out of each leg possible. Training in this fashion ensures proper acceleration and power when doing 2 legged jumping. Some exercises we do are lunge walks; rear leg elevated squats, pistol squats and SL RDL’s. These exercises are extremely vital to the athlete and give the athlete not only strength but most importantly power through the whole lower body. These types of exercises also help with prevention of ACL problems as many females suffer from over compensation. We also incorporate SL work into all keys of warm up including SL jump roping, agility ladder drills, mini SL jumps forward and lateral and over objects. We also incorporate SL jumps to double leg landing and Double leg jumps to SL landings.
These 5 keys are very important to incorporate into your training. Remember to always warm up properly and consult with a certified strength and conditioning coach to ensure proper program design and conditioning. Here at Athletic Edge Sports Performance, inc. we make sure that all of our athletes are doing some sort of these 5 keys to jumping. Remember there are many variations we use because of how many different age groups we have. If you have any questions or need descriptions of exercise don’t hesitate to ask. We also do offer on line training now at the Edge in speed, agility, strength training and jump training. Again don’t hesitate to ask. We hope this helps and gives description to how important these 5 keys are to increasing your vertical but also helping secure your ACL.
Coach Brad is a certified strength and conditioning coach under the CSCS with a degree in Exercise Science and owner of Athletic Edge Sports Performance, Inc.
He has been training all types of athletes for 7 years including many division 1 baseball, football, volleyball and basketball players. Coach Brad also deals a lot with youth athletes and athletes coming off of injury. Coach Troy is also CSCS certified and has a degree in Physical Education. He has been in the field for 15 years training athletes from grammar school to professional.
Contact Coach Brad or Troy at 773-610-FAST (3278) or email at llmb@prodigy.net check out the website at www.athleticedgesports.net and stay tuned for prevention of ACL and Jump Training videos.
————————————————————————————————————————————————
By the way… if you’re a dedicated athlete with a desire to excel at your sport, would you like more tips on how to jump higher?
<== Check out The Jump Manual **Click Here**
Related posts:
Great post! I practice martial arts and a good vertical jump comes in handy. I am going to incorporate several of the jumping combinations you mention into my routine.
I train with kettlebells, sandbags, and use a lot of SL exercises. As you can guess I am interested in speed and explosiveness, so my question to you regards #4 above…at what point does heavy strength training start to limit your speed?
Thanks,
Richard
[Reply]
Elliott
Reply:
September 24th, 2009 at 9:57 am
Richard,
I’m not sure I can give you a definitive answer… Some of the worlds fastest men can squat 700 pounds!
I would imagine that is your strength training begins to interfere with speed by keeping you sore for too long, and
if you include too much hypertrophy work and gain a lot of weight and excess muscle mass.
[Reply]
Brad
Reply:
September 24th, 2009 at 1:57 pm
Richard
With regards to your question, the key to maintaining or even getting stronger while faster is to incorporate foam rolling, myofascial release and flexibility. As Elliott mentioned some of the worlds strongest athletes squat extrememly heavy they do however work the posterior chain immensely. Sprinting is very cns active and requires the same amount of care as if you were squatting heavy or doing any heavy lifting. It is important when implementing speed specifically sprinting into your workouts to have it spaced properly with your lower body training. If you look at guys like Tyson Gay who is extremely fast he is also extremely muscular as well.
So its important to fit speed training in with your lifting but also to make sure your foam rolling, stretching and keeping mobile and flexible. It is also important to get rest for your muslces to recoop properly.
Hope this helps some
[Reply]
How often do you use depth jumps and do you try to limit the number of ground contacts per week to a particular target range when using them?
I’m guessing that these would not be used in-season with athletes who jump a lot, as depth jumps are articular hard on the body, the gains are somewhat transient, and are supposedly best used when you need a bump in peak power.
[Reply]
Brad
Reply:
September 24th, 2009 at 4:35 pm
Jack
Correct while the depth jumps are tremendously taxing on the body they are the best thing to increase vertical without the use of the vertimax which we have. the reason why they work so well is it really focuses on the stretch shortening cycle to help increase elasticity and muscle power. the sequence we use specifically to the depth jump only is this
week 1 and 2 drop down with a squat and hold 3×8
week 3 and 4 typical depth jumps step down and jump up 3×6
week 4 5 and 6 1 set of depth jumps 1×4 then 2 sets of depth jumps of 4 with a hurdle to jump over.
all of these jumps are with pause landings to emphisize stability in landing as with many things if we see an athlete who lands funny they go one a differant program.
this program is really for just 2x a week and we mix up our days as one day is linear jumping ie. jump squats,depth jumps, vertimax and so forth and the other day is single leg work and lateral jump work.
we never pass 120 total jumps in a session per the nsca and over use injuries. we rotate our exercise so they are always fresh for the athletes once they master them. In season unfortunetly in Chicago most kids dont have time to come into the facility becasue of there schedule and practices. I do however advise that you cut the volume down and work a lot on single leg work and do limit the volume of training for them.
If you have any particular questions shoot me an email at llmb@prodigy.net
[Reply]
Elliott
Reply:
September 24th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
You’re the man Brad! Great information, thanks!
We’ll have to get you on one of our monthly call-ins so people can ask you questions directly. Perhaps in November.
I’ll e mail you about it soon.
[Reply]
Brad
Reply:
September 25th, 2009 at 6:38 am
Elliott
It would be my pleasure, anytime
I’m a division 1 volleyball player playing at a top ten nationally ranked university I trained with brad over this past summer and I have to say that my speed and endurance increased greatly, and my vertical jump and explosion dramatically improved, ending the season last year I was around a 29 inch vertical, weight training with brad over the summer, and doing several workouts to increase the vertical jump I ended the summer going into preseason with a solid 36 inch vertical
Training on my own and weight lifting on my own, I don’t think I could be anywhere near the physical shape I am in currently if I hadn’t worked out with brad this summer
[Reply]