Avoiding injury is an important factor that you should look for in your jump training program. After all you want to use your hops on the court right? Not much use if you’re sitting on the bench nursing your legs. Thankfully there are a few things you can do to help prevent your injuries.

ICE: ice any part of your body that starts to get sore… when it gets sore. Don’t wait as playing on sore damaged joints will only make the situation worse. I know since I started icing my knees regularly my workouts and practices feel a whole lot better. At first I shied away from icing since it took so much time out of my day. I mean

45 minutes every day is a lot of time to sit doing nothing. But one thing that really helped me was finding these ice packs that I got a Wal-Mart. They allow me to come home from a practice and just pull it out of the freezer and

strap it to my leg. Since it holds its self there I’m free to do other things. And it doesn’t melt and make a mess either. I would highly suggest getting some if you have troubles with any part of your body after a workout. It can keep you going strong all through the week, which is important if you are going to keep on increasing your vertical

Stay Hydrated: our bodies are more water than anything else. I believe it’s a staggering 95% or so. So that makes sense that you should drink enough water to keep your body happy. A good rule of thumb is if your urine is clear you’re hydrated. So try and keep it that way as much as possible.

Take Your Vitamins: most of us don’t live the healthiest lifestyles. And even though you may be on a nutritional diet for your workouts… which I would strongly recommend. You still might not be getting all your fruits and veggies every single day. For that reason it is a good idea to take a multivitamin every day. That will make sure you get all the crucial ingredients to keep your body nice a strong and make sure it has what it needs to take care of its self. If you’re going to work your body hard you need to give it what it needs so it can keep doing that over and over again.

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So those of us without a gym are stuck doing bodyweight lifts. You might think that this is a disadvantage or that weights are necessary to get extreme vertical hops. Well to tell you the truth they are really not. There are several lifts you can find on here that will help you get the most out of your training even if you don’t have weights.

One thing you can do to increase your workouts intensity is to in fact make your own weights. I know this is kind of around the point of bodyweight training but if you are at the point where you feel like you need some extra resistance to get the results you want then just use some stuff you have around the house to help you improve your vertical.

Doing lunges and one legged squats with two gallons of water in your hands adds a bit of difficulty. Or if you don’t have a medicine ball find an old worn out basketball and cut it open, fill it with sand and glue it back together. If you have anything you can make a sand bag out of then by all means go ahead. Perhaps a old pillow case or any other ruck sack you have laying around.

Just so you know that other people have done it I would like to share a story about myself. My father and myself are automotive enthusiasts and as such seem to always have a ton of parts laying around the garage and stashed away in piles in the back yard. One day I was in the back yard training and I had started to feel my workout was getting a bit to easy for me. So I picked up an old driveshaft from my old truck and held it in my hands while I did squats. Not only was this added weight it made me compensate for my balance and im sure had some benefit in that respect as well. just to go and show you can use anything to improve your vertical.

That just goes to show you can use anything you want to help you train your vertical. Not having weights doesn’t mean you don’t have weights. Go find some! Use some rocks!

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While we all love box jumps, power skipping, squats and dead lifts there is one exercise that will always be a step ahead of the others when it comes to how to improve your vertical jump. This exercise is extremely well rounded and works and strengthens just about every attribute required for jumping higher. And is one of the best exercises for increasing movement efficiency. Also, if you’re working on your hops for your sport, then this is the most sports tailored jumping you can do.

So what is it you might ask? Well it’s quite simple, it’s practicing jumping. Yep, shocking I know, but just like most things in life, practice makes perfect and the best way to get better at jumping, is to jump. If you are practicing for your sports specific goal. You should simply practice just as you would if you were playing your sport. If you are trying to jump higher in basketball, then go find an empty hoop and practice jumping for the rim. Depending on how high you can jump already you might just be touching net or you might be able to grab the rim already.

Wherever you start all you have to focus on is trying to get higher. If you can just touch rim, work your way up until you can grab it. After that you can work up until you can get as much of your hand above the rim as possible. If you can get your wrist over the rim, chances are you can dunk off a lob. And this makes practicing a bit more entertaining.

Proper jumping technique is often overlooked when practicing to jump higher. The focus is often put on extensive workouts or special weight training equipment or fancy programs but in reality the basic art of simply jumping will have a profound impact on your vertical jump.

Make sure you spend some time focusing on just improving your jumping technique. You will recall notice a difference since it is important to helping you jump higher in several ways. The first thing practicing will do for you is it will improve your movement efficiency. This is huge if you want to be able to jump since it requires you to fire all your muscles in the correct order to create a powerful explosion off the ground. If you can’t do this you’ll look

a little janky and won’t go very high either.

The second benefit to increasing your movement efficiency is that it will help you create explosive strength and reactive strength in a manner that is very similar to jumping. Box squats and power cleans are similar and will increase your explosion but they are merely similar to jumping. What you are doing IS jumping, so you can’t get much more actuate replication than that.

Whenever you workout or try to build muscle on your body you do it in one way. It is called adaptive response and it means that your body reacts to the environment you put it in. if you force it to lift heavy weights, it builds muscle to survive that lifting. Only exposing the body to continually heavier loads will make it stronger. So likewise if you would like to be able to jump higher you need to go out and continuously attempt to jump higher. This will tell the body that it must adapt to those conditions.

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Information on how to jump higher in basketball is a very sought after topic in today sporting world. Whichever sport you are in, basketball, volleyball, football, baseball, track or whatever your fancy, being able to jump higher just puts you at an advantage over everyone else. Anyone who wants to play around the rim like the big boys needs to learn how to jump higher. The goal is not merely to jump higher though, the ultimate goal is to be able to slam dunk. Whatever reason you have for wanting to jump higher, you can find it inside one of many vertical training programs.

First off, what is your current vertical jump and how much can it bein improved. That really is the biggest question everyone asks. Well the answer is easy, however high you can jump right now, you can most likely double it. many of these vertical training programs can increase your vertical anywhere from 10-15 inches or more in a few months or even shorter. With an average NBA player that jumps somewhere in the ballpark of 28in, that means they could jump 40% higher. Considering most of us who don’t play basketball professionally can only jump about 10 – 20 inches that means for the average Joe you could add over 100% to your vertical!

Exercises are great for learning how to jump higher. But that’s not everything you need. You need knowledge to go along with the right exercises. It is important to know what you are doing and why. Its true that people have trained themselves and can learn how to jump higher on their own. But what they don’t know is that they are still missing out on several inches that they could gain if they had all the information. You have to learn your potential from other people who know what your potential could be in the first place.

The crucial point to all of this is the proper training

There are programs out there that contain excellent information and knowledge on how to jump higher than you ever thought were possible. And best of all it can happen in a very short amount of time if you work hard at it. However you also must be carful as there are a fair few of scams and time wasters that offer large promises and yet deliver very little in return. I know from first had experience as I fell into of these programs before. So please research your program, you can reference my other articles for a good guide on how to pick the best vertical training program. Good Luck and Happy slam dunking.

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