How To Quickly Increase Your Vertical Leap

The ability to jump high off the ground is an important part of the skill set required for many modern sports. Basketball is perhaps the most obvious sport where a high vertical jump is advantageous, since it allows for better rebounding ability, higher jump shots, better blocking ability and the ability to dunk the ball. Less intuitively, a vertical leap is also very important in a multitude of other sports, including as football, volleyball, soccer, tennis and baseball.

Instructions

    • 1

      Lift weights to increase raw leg power. Strong legs are required to have a great vertical jump; common leg strengthening exercises like squats, quad presses, calf raises and hamstring curls are a good way to increase overall leg strength. Aim your workouts to target raw strength, by doing sets between 70 and 90 percent of your maximum at 15 reps or less. Muscular endurance is great, but to pull out one very high jump, you need as much raw power as possible.

    • 2

      Do jumping exercises, especially ones that relate to your sport. Intense jumping drills are a common way to improve agility and jumping ability fast. Jumping side to side, and forward and backward over an elevated platform or box is one common training method. Jumping rope is also a good way to tone the legs and increase endurance to keep the high of jumps up even when you are tired. Defined technically, a vertical leap is a leap taken from a standstill off both feet, straight up, but this is not always the type of jump you will use in your sport. In basketball for instance, one often runs, and leaps off one foot to achieve better height. Practice the type of jump that applies to your sport repetitively, and add weight resistance like heavy clothes or wrist and ankle weights.

    • 3

      Cut weight by exercising and eating a healthy diet. Increasing any part of one's physical aptitude quickly is exceedingly difficult, but a vertical leap is something that can be improved more quickly than other things because there are two ways to improve it: by increasing physical prowess of the legs and by lightening the load the body carries. Every pound of extra fat the body carries takes millimeters off a vertical jump. Losing weight, while maintaining or increasing muscular strength will increase vertical most dramatically.

    • 4

      Work out your core and upper body regularly. It might seem counter intuitive, but the core and arms play an important role in jumping. Fit arms enable a more powerful downward swing which enables the legs push off the floor with more force. Keep in mind that a very muscular upper body can have a detrimental effect on jumping, since muscle mass is even heavier than fat. For this reason, body resistance exercises like push ups, crunches and pull ups are a good way to get fit, since they tend not to build overly large muscles as lifting very heavy weights does.