Today we are going to talk about some areas you can make sure you are addressing before you get to actually do your vertical jump training. By properly preparing your body before jumping, you will be able to give your best efforts and in turn get better results. The simple version is that we are looking to increase your core temperature, get increased blood flow to the legs and knees, mobilize the hips and legs, and build up in intensity over the warmup. There are lots of ways to do these, but let me give you an example.
Mobility Flow
I love to start with a mobility flow, something simple you can try is a down dog to prone press up combination, followed by lunged or kneeling t-spine rotations, then by some slow tempo body weight squats. This serves to get the blood moving, and also to mobilize and stretch the areas we are about to use.
Muscles and Joints Warm Up
After moving a bit, we move into warming up the muscles and joints. A few I like are single leg bridges, lunge isometrics, single leg balance holds, lateral lunges, and reverse lunge to knee drives. Each of these will be done with lower reps and a controlled tempo. 8 or so reps each side, or about 20-30 seconds of doing them for time. If you are a bit stronger or more advanced, or if you generally take longer to warm up, I’d add a 2-3 second pause at the working depth of each rep. These movements will further warm up the muscles and connective tissues. This will help us perform better, but will also help to keep us healthy and our joints feeling great.
Intensity Build Up
Then we will build up the intensity of contacts before going all out with jumps. This is a great time for a single leg hop variation. I generally mix in hops in a variety of directions, rather than just up and down. This is a great place to get some extra push/punch technique reps in as well. Some skips, light bounds, jogs, reverse jogs, arm swings, jumping jacks, lateral skips, etc are all great options here. Building up the intensity and speed of movement will get your mind and body ready for full effort jumping. These are also building up volume of lower intensity contacts, which is great for our long term results.
Your Best Jumping Style
Once to jumping, I would start with the weaker of your techniques early, and build up intensity to your best jumping style. This helps get in quality reps that will bring your weaker style of jumping up to par with the dominant style. Remember, we always recommend jumping with a variety of styles. This will help to make you a more well rounded athlete, able to move and perform well in any scenario sport throws at you. It also spreads out the total volume over different muscle groups and movement patterns. This will keep you healthier, pain free, and able to train and compete.
Give this a go and watch not only your vertical jump training get better, but more importantly your results. As always, we are happy to help you jump higher, and also get more athletic. We aim to help you surpass your goals. Thanks for tuning in to Project Pure Athlete.
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