How I Learned to Increase My Vertical Jumping Ability
I have been playing volleyball and basketball since I was a kid and I have always wanted to learn how to jump higher so that I could be better. I played a lot of basketball when I was younger and I was short so I was immediately at a disadvantage to other taller players. I was only 15 at the time and I knew nothing about vertical jump training. I thought that if I could build up some leg muscles I would learn how to dunk a basketball because I would be jumping so much higher.
I had always worked out my upper body with weights but I never really focused on my legs because I didn’t care how they looked. Well, now I still didn’t care how they looked, I just cared about how they performed. So I started doing squats and after a little while I was squatting 225 pounds while I only weighed 135 pounds.
So for sure now that I was squatting so much more weight I would be able to dunk. But what surprised me is that there was practically no increase in my vertical jump height. Why would I not increase my vertical leap after gaining so much strength in my legs?
Well I didn’t find out the answer until years later when I was studying for my biomechanics class in college. I was only focusing on one aspect of jumping-strength. I was completely ignoring the other half of the equation-speed.
To train the speed of your legs you need to do plyometric training. This was completely foreign to me and the concept took some getting used to because I had always studied muscle growth and everything was to be done with slow controlled movements. So to train with speed and to increase performance rather than focus on building muscle mass was very hard to comprehend.
I knew I couldn’t figure out all of this stuff on my own, so I tried a vertical jump training program, to see it-Click Here.
This program gave me results in 2 weeks than I could get from training for 3 months on my own. I was sold! I started making goals for myself that I had given up on years ago. I thought I was just not made to be a good jumper but I was just training incorrectly.
Click Here to check out the jump program that got me 2 inches on my vertical in the first 2 weeks.
