Strength Training For The Vertical Jump: What Muscles To Work

When practicing for your stunning basketball dunks, there are certain muscles that you want to focus on. A higher vertical jump is about strength and speed, and these are developed by working your muscles with the following exercises.

Calf: Not the animal, but rather your leg muscle. You can do calf raises to help build up your jumping muscles and reach your vertical limit. Over your days of training, increase the weight on your calves to help get a better work out. Try and find the right weight for you, but don’t overdo it and injure yourself.

Standing squats, or deep knee bends. These will seriously help with your jumping. Keep your back straight with your knee bends, and go as low as you can. Add weights to give you and extra work-out. When you come up, do so slowly, and go up onto your toes at the end. You can even do toe lifts to help get that extra edge.

Jumping rope is a great exercise as well. Combine this with stair runs and you’ll have a great leg and conditioning work out. Run at least seven flights of stairs without stopping. Occasionally jump flights to help get that extra spring.

A final vertical jump takes less than a second, but it takes months of hard training and the right kind of training.