Before We Begin

Some of the information given to help you train to jump higher will be about about plyometrics. Plyometrics is "Jump Training" and is a high impact exercise. Although effective in adding height to your jump, They are high impact and can cause injury.

So anything with plyometrics make sure you land soft on the balls of your feet. This will help you absorb the impact evenly throughout your body. Make sure you have proper shoes and a plyometrics mat is recommended.

If you have any injuries, health problems, questions, or feel pain during any exercises quit immediately and consult a doctor.

Train To Jump Higher

First-Warm Up Properly

Warming up is vital to any workout program, as it gets the blood flowing and oxygen pumping to your body. It helps prevent injuries and prevents you from tiring out too quickly as it carries oxygen to the muscles.

To warm up properly, do a light jog to warm up the entire body, then focus on the targeted muscles. For plyometrics after jogging, I personally do 30 deep prayer squats and 90 seconds of lunges and then stretch.

Second-Stretch

Flexibility is key for any athlete. Being flexible can be useful so many different situations. It helps prevent injuries, sometimes it just looks cool, and it relaxes the muscles.

Relaxed muscles is critical if you want to jump higher. If you have tight muscles, when you go to jump the muscles will actually work against each other, causing you to lose valuable height in your jump. So make sure you focus on stretching so that they can be relaxed, work together and add height to your vertical jump.

Third-Jump Exercises

When you workout out the legs to jump higher, you don't want to necessarily focus on building large amounts muscle in your leg. The main thing you want to focus on explosive strength. This is where plyometric training comes into play.

Plyometrics is jump training and focuses on body weight exercises and explosive jumping power. This is exactly what you need if you want to train to jump higher.

Here are some examples of jump training exercises:

1. Jump Knee Tucks
2. Hot Foot
3. Jump Squats
4. Mary Katherines

Do each exercise for 30 seconds, hot foot you do for 30 seconds on each foot.

Jump Knee Tucks are where you jump as high as you can while bringing the knees to the chest.

Hot foot is where you jump in a circle on one foot, 30 secs, per foot.

Jump Squats are squats, with no weights, and when you come up you jump as high as you can and repeat.

Mary Katherines are lunges. You go into a right leg lunge, and from there you jump, and switch into a left leg lunge and keep going back and forth.

What If I Plateau?

It is common for athletes to plateau. This is because the muscles grow accustomed to the workout and are no longer working as hard. So you don't want to be doing the previous exercises forever, you want to find a complete plyometrics training program that mixes it up.