Jump Higher and Faster and Improve More Quickly Than Your Team and Competitors

Most competitive or social athletes would like to have a large vertical jump. It is essential to so many sports. It is possible to jump higher faster than your teammates or opponents. The key to this is a structured training program which promotes a series of explosive exercises of which the magnitude of the jump or mass of the weight lifted or speed of the movement is increased each session. This principle is called overloading of the muscles.

Another key element of these training routines is rest, for the muscles stressed and for the body in general. While you are undertaking a vertical training program it can be difficult to work on other areas of your sport like fitness and endurance. The most popular method is running, but this can put excessive strain on already fatigued muscles. It is a very high impact pastime.

Swimming as a rehabilitation method or fitness regime is excellent and probably the number one routine in terms of safety. It is not always practical though especially if training for a winter sport like basketball or football. Another exercise to consider is the jump rope.

All boxers and many other athletes rely on the jump rope to promote rhythm, fitness and muscular endurance. It is important to ensure that you can jump just as high at the end of the 4th quarter as you can at the tip off. A jumping session that lasted an hour would very quickly lead to injury and reduced outcomes.

Skipping is excellent because while it does work many of the muscles used during a power jump it is far less of an impact of the tendon and joints and hence is much better for your body. Try to get the rope moving quickly and focus on minimizing the distance you jump, this is not an exercise in height, but in repetition and endurance.

You can vary the number of skips, direction you jump (side to side and back and forth as well as up and down), direction of the rope (go backwards as well as forwards) and just about everything else. Moving from concrete to carpet or turf will make things harder till the point where you can ultimately perform on soft sand; a real killer.

You can find lots of great vertical programs from your coach, gym instructor or books. But to ensure you get the most benefit from the explosive programs or pyometric you need to ensure your body gets adequate rest, you eat well with plenty of protein and you supplement your training with additional non-dynamic non-jumping exercises.

Picking up a good quality jump rope and using it as your fitness and rhythm aid will go along way to help you with getting a higher vertical and ensuring that you can get a competitive edge over those you go up against.

Stephen N Miller was injured doing things the wrong way. He had lots of time to research the best training methods. For the best vertical leap training guide I've found

click here or go to http://www.jumphigherfaster.info/