Workouts to Increase Vertical - Learn to Jump Like Jordan!

Ok, just do 500 squats, 250 jumping squats and endless crunches and you'll be jumping higher in no time! Right? Wrong! If you really want to improve your vertical you have to concentrate on explosive workouts to increase vertical jumping power. If you're doing endless amounts of reps there is no way you can get quality reps.

This type of workout is an endurance workout, which improves muscle stamina. Improving muscle stamina is not going to help you get a higher vertical!

The Jump Manual goes into much more detail on why you don't need to bother doing endless reps! I'd recommend checking it out if you're serious about increasing your vertical!

There are many different workouts to increase vertical jumping ability - I'm going to focus on a couple of different methods and then, a little later in the article, I'll give you an outline of the workout I used to improve my vertical.

Weightlifting With A Focus on Explosion! - Strength + speed = explosion. Seems simple enough, right? Well, it's a little more complicated then that. Unfortunately, the stronger you get, the slower you get. BUT, there is a way around this! The key is to focus on doing the positive portion of the lift with an intense explosive burst - for example if you were doing a squat you would slowly lower until you reach the bottom of the motion and then explode upwards and fast as possible!

Plyometrics! - Plyometrics work by training the ability to "load" a muscle and then rapidly contract it, if you're serious about increasing your hops plyometrics should definitely be included in workouts to increase vertical jumping power. An example of a plyometric exercise is a lateral jump. This can be performed over a bench, you hop back and forth over the bench sideways - as soon as you land - you hop to the other side. The key is to pause as little as possible, this allows you to create a faster muscle load which can greatly increase the contraction speed of your muscle. A faster contraction will help increase your explosiveness and vertical jump!

I did my vertical training in conjunction with other weightlifting that I do for strength gain, however, to keep things clear I'm not going to include those portions here - if you would like to see a full example of my workout regiment leave me a comment and I can forward you a copy of the exact type of torture I put my body through! I got a lot of my ideas from the Jump Manual, so if you want to get more in depth workouts to increase vertical jump power make sure you check it out!

I do my vertical training on Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I always do my training before I do anything else - well, I warm up first - of course!

Note: ALWAYS focus on landing softly, I can't stress this enough - this stuff will really hurt you if you aren't careful!

Monday

Heavy Barbell Squats

- 5 sets x 5 reps (slow on the way down, as fast and explosive as possible on the way up!)

Jumping Dumbbell Squats

- 5 sets x 5 reps (landing as softly as possible)

Wednesday

Plyometric Vertical Jump

- 3-5 sets x 10 reps (find an open wall, jump and touch as high as possible, land and immediately repeat)

Kneeling Jump Ups

- 3-5 sets x 10 reps

Friday

One Leg Squat Jumps

- 3 sets x 5 reps (be very careful when jumping onto a bench, make sure it's bolted down - if you can't do one leg, do two)

Bench Jumps

- 5 sets x 10 reps (jump off a bench, land softly and immediately explode upwards - repeat)

There you have it, an example of one of my vertical workouts.
Cheers!