I will give you some workouts that will help strengthen your muscles and increase your vertical leap so that you can be ready to get a true jump program like the J.M.

First off, you have to be strong enough to even begin a plyo workout routine because it will put a lot of stress on your body. I recommend losing some weight if you are overweight right now because your knees will not enjoy it if you don’t.

To start a vertical jump training program you need to be able to squat you weight 8 times in 8 seconds. If you are a female, then you should be able to squat your weight 5 times in 5 seconds. If you have a very hard time squatting your weight then you need to do some leg workouts in the gym to build up enough strength to start a jumping program. When I say your weight, I don’t mean to squat your own body weight, I mean if you weight 150 pounds, you put 150 pounds on the squat bar and squat with that. Some trainers think you should be able to squat twice your weight before starting jump training but that is not necessary.

You will continue to build strength as you build speed and this will result in great results for your vertical jump.

The first thing you need to do is mark how strong you are on each leg lift. You will notice a direct correlation between your strength increases and increases in your jump height.

Never train with jumping exercises and weights at the same time or even on the same day. You will have a day for working out with weights and a day to do vertical jumping exercises.

You want fresh, strong legs when doing any kind of jumping training because you want to get as high as you can on each and every jump. Never jump so much that you can barely jump off of the ground. This will do you no good! Stop jumping when you feel that you aren’t getting within an inch or 2 of your highest jumping ability with fresh legs.

Plyometric boxes are a great way to build some fast twitch muscle. You will use them often, but be careful of the impact that landing will have on your knees.

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Squats are a great leg workout that will increase the strength of your legs without question. You must understand that jumping is not solely based on how strong your legs are. You must realize that strength+speed=Power and you need power to jump high.

So proper vertical training will have exercises to increase both the speed and strength of your legs. One of the best exercises to increase your leg strength are squats. So you can see that squats are good for jumping higher but only when they are combined with plyometric exercises.

Squats aren’t the only leg exercises you need to do for strength. You should also do hamstring curls and calf raises. These will help provide extra strength and muscle that will result in an increased vertical.

So will squats make you jump higher? The answer is yes, when combined with proper jump training exercises.

Click here to see a vertical jump training program that guarantees to add 10 inches to your vertical leap.