Plyometric Jump Training
May 20th, 2009 by Dibbs
Before you can learn how to jump higher you need to understand a couple of things about muscles. Our muscles are actually able to store energy in them for very short period of time and you can learn how to use this stored energy as fuel to jump higher.
Think of your legs as springs, when you compress a spring is has a lot of stored energy ready to release as soon as you let go of it. The exact same thing happens in our legs as we drop our center of gravity right before take-off.
So when your knees bend you are essentially loading a spring. The muscles in our body can feel any stretch and they want to counter that by contracting the opposing muscles which will cause us to jump.
This is where plyometrics come in. Plyos and proper training will make that counter reaction fire with much more power. It’s not the size of the muscle that determines power, or your would see bodybuilders hitting their heads on the rim from jumping so high.
To jump high you need all the muscles to fire at the exact same time and you can train them to do this. It is important to have strong legs before starting a plyometric training program.
1. If you can’t squat your weight comfortably then you need to get stronger legs before starting plyos. Aim to do 125% your weight 8 reps in 8 seconds.
2. Okay, so once you are ready to do plyos you need to make sure to do them when your legs aren’t tired or sore. Don’t do a leg workout and then plyos. You need to jump your highest each time if you want to be able to jump higher.
