In order to enhance your vertical jump training and learn how to jump higher, you must know what you are doing and do the right exercises. Until you have achieved a certain fitness level, you should not engage into an intense jump training program.
You should have some cardiovascular endurance, muscular strength, muscle endurance, good nutritious diet, along with flexibility. After that, you can now challenge your body with more advanced fitness exercises to improve your vertical. Fitness can only improve if we overload the body. Overloading means pushing your body to do more than it is already doing. However the overload must be appropriate to the person's fitness level. If you're reasonably fit, you can overload more than an obese, sedentary person. It all depends on your body. After attaining an adequate fitness level, you will be ready for an intense vertical jump training program.
Training Exercises That Increase Your Fitness Level
1) Cardiovascular Exercises
You can achieve cardiovascular endurance thorough regular aerobic exercise, which is a repetitive movement of large muscle groups over an extended period of time. Examples of aerobic exercises include jogging, rope jumping, basketball and swimming.
2) Increase Muscle Strength
You can increase muscle strength by applying resistance to a muscle group. Lifting weights is a good way of boosting muscle strength. Squats, calf exercises, lunges, are some examples in increasing strength for jumping higher.
3) Boost Muscle Endurance
Muscle endurance is the ability of the muscle to repeat that movement over a period of time. Muscle endurance improves in conjunction with muscle strength. With regular exercise, your muscles burn energy more efficiently and endure overloading for longer time. Rope jumping, running long distance or for a long time, are some examples for building endurance.
4) Increase Joint Flexibility
Joint flexibility refers to how much the joint can undergo as limited by the joint's structure and surrounding connective tissues. Warming up and then stretching your calves, hamstring and quad muscles are important activity in preventing injuries and increasing your fitness level. Joint flexibility can also give dramatic increases in vertical jump.
5) Daily Nutritious Diet
First, you need to have a good diet and avoid junk food. Get plenty of protein; whey protein drinks are my favorite. Chicken or turkey is a good substitute. Also, get plenty of water and don't cut out carbohydrates. They're good for energy. Take a multivitamins and a supplement to protect your joints. A healthy diet means faster recovery time. Your body needs a chance to repair itself after going through the workouts.
6) Reduce Body Fat
Concentrating on building muscle if you are overweight. You must be as lean (less than 10%) as possible to dunk. You may have to limit your daily caloric intake to 2000, 1500, or even just 1000 calories a day. It is safe as long as those are calories from healthy foods. Speak to a doctor or nutritionalist for more information on that. Running is good for losing weight, as is any vigorous aerobic activity. You lose weight and at the same time condition your lungs.
Remember, this is the start of your jumping higher program. After you have reached a good fitness level, you can begin to do exercises to increase your vertical explosion. Those exercises are called plyometrics. Plyometric training will develop quick twitch muscle fibers needed to increase your vertical. Many athletes omit these exercises, resulting in them not drastically increasing their vertical jump.
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