How To Use Plyometric Training Exercises To Increase Your Vertical Jump

Plyometrics training exercises appear to be like it's one of those things that so many athletes talk about however nobody really grasps exactly what it is. So today, we're going to get into plyometrics training exercises for your vertical jump and get you a real understanding of what it is and how it can benefit you and your explosiveness and your vertical jump.

To Begin, let's start with what's really going on when you jump.

What's really happening when you jump is that your calves and thighs are fully extending causing your skeletal system to get as vertical as possible (well, at least ideally)

And your bones pretty much perform like little levers throughout your body and your muscles are like the motors that move the levers. They're actually really similar to rubber bands because they hold a lot of elasticity.

And what plyometric training exercies do is train the elasticity of your muscles to become more explosive so you can end up jumping higher and faster.

So here's how everything ends up working

The first phase that you go through is called a loading phase. During this phase your using your own body weight and gravity to squat down and prepare your body for the jump. As you do this, your body is going through something that's called eccentric contraction and all that really means is that you're lengthening your muscles.

Second you have an amortization phase which is the phase right in the middle of your jump. This is when you are literally at a complete stop just before you explode up. You want this phase to be as short as you possibly can to help your body explode upward.

The last and final phase of your jump is the explosion phase which is the point where you actually explode and jump upward.

In more simple terms, what's happening is that your body is squatting down in the loading phase, gathering up as much energy as possible to use to explode up during the explosion phase and that small time in between where you aren't moving at all is called the amortization phase.

Which is why it's incredibly important to limit that amortization phase. The more time you spend at a complete stand still, the more your muscles will lose their elasticity.

But before you do any plyometric training exercises, here are the things that you need to avoid at all costs:

1) Pacing yourself or doing too many reps|

There's a huge misconception that the more that you workout, the better results you're gonna get and I just want to debunk that myth right now. Instead, you want to make sure that you are doing proper training so you are training effectively and not over training your muscles.

And in order to do that, you want to make sure that you do each rep with explosiveness and with as much intensity as possible.

2) Having an extra loading phase or bounce step

Shockingly, there are some people that tell you to do this but it isn't an effective way of training for your vertical jump but it simply doesn't work. What it actually ends up doing is screwing up the flow of the load and explode phase which is terrible for your vertical jump.

You MUST explode with full intensity and by adding that extra loading step, you won't be able to achieve that.

Here's what a proper plyometric training workout entails:

Proper loading phase

Don't use any weights when you first start doing plyometric training. Just use your own body weight

A Brief Amortization Phase

Have this phase be as short as humanely possible. You should be focusing on shortening that amortization phase as much as you can when you train

Explosion Phase

If you do the other steps correctly, this is the phase that you will have a ton of energy and be able to explode upward. This is the most intense of the phases