If you are a basketball, volleyball, or football player, you would need the ability to sprint faster, and know how to jump higher in order to compete against the other players in the arena. The coaches of these games are constantly in search of ways and means to add those few inches to their players’ leap, thus giving them that very needed edge. It is firmly believed that exercises such as strength training and power exercises, tone the different muscles in an athlete’s body, providing the strength and the thrust to jump higher. There are various plyometric exercises that you would need to go through, such as, the power clean, medicine ball training, and others in order to gain that extra height when you are jumping. While doing these exercises, the power that you develop will contribute directly to the specific sports skill that you are trying to improve.
Let’s have a brief look at the kind of exercises that you would need to go through for jumping higher.
Plyometrics Exercises – increase your explosive power:
Every athlete wants to add those few inches to their jump. Plyometrics exercises have been especially designed for any sports that involves jumping. This type of exercise helps develop the ‘explosive’ ability in the athletes, which helps them to sprint faster and take big leaps as they jump, as for example a basketball player would do. The easiest way that you could do Plyometric exercise at home is to get a strong looking sturdy bench, or any kind of step. What you need to do is to jump on top of the step with as much power as you can gather, and then immediately jump back down. If it is too easy for you, you would need to increase the height of the step and by that make the exercise more effective for your purposes. This exercise is one of the very basic Plyometrics exercises, but has proven to be very effective in providing power build-up for jumping higher.
Improving Your Jumping Technique and keeping track of it:
Taking the example of a basketball player, many of these players do not have a proper jumping skill, though they can dunk or jump over volleyball net. Exercises, pertaining to strengthening of leg muscles, provide notable improvement to your jumping, and you can add 1 to 4 inches to your vertical jump – and this could be achieved in one week. While you undergo the exercise training, you could start by recording your jump before initiation of the work-out, and mark your progress during and after you complete the training session. As you go ahead with the exercises, you will notice an improvement in your capability to jump higher.
Stretching The Right Muscles:
There are many muscles in your body which go to work as soon as you take a leap with the intent of jumping as high as you possibly can. It becomes necessary that you’ll be as limber as possible, as otherwise you may end up with having a pulled muscle in your quadriceps. For this reason it is absolutely necessary for you to be in good shape, in terms of flexibility, too. In order to have a smooth jumping leap, without any strain coming to your muscles, you should always stretch your back and legs to maintain the muscles in a proper condition for you to jump higher.
The above three elements would help you to improve your vertical jump, and enhancing your capability to jump higher. You should carry on doing the exercises continuously to keep your muscles toned and fit to help you to jump higher, on a continued basis.
Dave Green is a fitness expert. You can find his fitness experiences and recommendations posted at the How to jump higher blog. Just follow along as he posts his thoughts about the subject, and learn how to apply them to your life. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dave_Green |