Do Calf Raises Increase Vertical Jump?
Most leg workouts will be beneficial to your jumping ability but if you only have enough time to do one exercise what would it be? Many people depend more on their calf muscles than they really need to.
If you film yourself jumping you will most likely notice something very important. You will see that you don’t bend very much at the knees. So many people train with squats and go all the way down to 90 degrees but when do you squat that low before you jump? The problem most likely is in your jumping form.
When you don’t bend your knees very much you are relying more heavily on your calf muscles to do most of the work. While you will benefit from doing calf raises and other calf workouts, you will benefit more from learning to bend more at your knees.
I am not saying that if you have good form you will not need strong calf muscles because your calves will always play a very important role in jumping.
Squats are very good to develop muscles in your legs so that when you do bend more at the knees before take-off you will have sufficient strength to support your weight.
So do calf raises increase vertical jump? Yes they do but they aren’t the ideal way to go about learning how to jump higher, this has a lot to with form.
Form is not the only thing that will determine your jump height. You need enough strength and speed in your legs to really benefit from proper jumping form.
A vertical jump training program will have all the workouts that you need to do in order to increase your vertical. Click Here to see such a program.
An exercise that really emphasis bending more at the knee requires a chair and a box. You could have 2 plyo boxes and that would work just fine. The idea is that you will start the jump from a seated position. This way you are starting with you knees bent at a 90 degree angle. The jump should be all 1 movement, this means that you will not begin to stand and then jump.
The more force you can put against the ground, the higher you will jump. The longer you can be putting that force against the ground will in turn result in more force against the ground. When you bend your knees more, you will be applying more force against the ground which will make you jump higher.
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