How to Jump Higher (STEP BY STEP GUIDE!)

Increase your vertical by training like an athlete

it’s time to learn how to increase that vertical jump but you got to do me a favor stop looking up and start focusing down at the ground cuz that’s where it all happens I’ll explain it all [Music] today what’s up guys Jeff Cavalier athl x. com today we’re going to discuss how to jump higher now even in honor here of his aoness Michael Jordan we know that the guy was a supreme athlete the guy was one of the best basketball players of all time but he went on record as being one of the hardest workers of all time right nobody can outwork him if you’re going to want to jump higher you’re going to have to work there are no short quick gimmicks as I say all the time guys there are no shortcuts period whether you’re trying to get abs or whether you’re trying to jump higher that being said as a trainer to professional athletes I can tell you there are some specific things that we work on that allow these guys to improve their vertical faster because they’re working on the right things in that way guys what I want to show you here is to cover two main principles number one if you want to jump higher you have to learn how to drive your feet into the ground harder and number two how to drive your feet into the ground faster now when we talk about harder we’re talking about your ground force production how hard can you push into the ground so that there’s an equal and opposite reaction in the opposite direction right we know that’s a law of physics secondly we have how do we how fast what is our rate of force production how quickly can we push ourselves into the ground so we could then again push with a more explosive force or a more reactive elastic Force off of the ground what I wanted to do today guys is show you exactly some of the best ways to do that make this sort of a step-by-step video and it starts with learning how to uh stretch ourselves and get ourselves loose and adequately flexible to be able to activate intact into these two major resources okay so let me take you through a couple of the stretches first that I think are necessary and then we’ll start covering some of the strength ideas that you should be focusing on to do this and uh and increase that vertical all right guys so let’s start off with the stretching and let’s start off by first making sure we’re very clear on what we’re talking about when we’re talking about increasing the vertical jump we’re talking about how high you can increase your Center gravity meaning your core how high can you elevate that off the ground because a lot of guys have great flexibility and they can cheat their way to a impressive vertical I’m actually one of those kind of guys I can jump a lot higher doing a box jump because I can lift my knees almost up towards my ears but that doesn’t mean that I have the greatest standing vertical and a lot of guys that are watching this video are probably doing it possibly for combine testing you’re going to need to be able to strictly go straight up in the air and get as high as he can so with that being the focus and even just overall jumping as the focus we need to zero in on a few uh key areas number one first and foremost our Achilles tendon okay here I’m showing you guys a static stretch of the Achilles tendon on a Stairway the key Point here is you’ll notice that I’m doing two different variations of this I’m bending the knee and I’m keeping the knee straight right we have two different muscles that form the uh the calfs right we have our gastrock and we have our Solus they do though come together in a common tendon the Achilles tendon so if you want to hit both of those and get an adequate stretch on the Achilles and we have to make sure that we’re stretching that knee again with it bent and with it straight to make sure we’re hitting both after that guys the key point is also to maintain that stretch okay we can get a little bit deeper into the tendon that muscular tendonous Junction if we hang out and cause a bit more of a prolonged static stretch so you’re going to want to hold this one for about a minute to two minutes if you can on each leg next we move on to the hip flexors and some guys might be thinking how the hell does that really impact my vertical jump especially again combine testing in a very big way here I’m showing you one of my favorite uh hip flexor stretches the reason why we’re doing this guys is because if you think about the explosiveness of the jump when you reach up and you’re in triple extension through your hips through your ankles through your knees you want to make sure that you can extend the trunk as high as you can and the only way you’re going to be able to do that to reach full extension is to not have any restrictions from your hip flexors trying to pull you in your trunk downward okay so spending at least a minute on this stretch as well is going to help you and again forget if this is not just a combine test or a vertical jump test that you’re doing if you just want to become an overall better higher jumper you’re going to want to start working on these stretches on a regular basis thirdly this is one of my favorite I’m actually going to get a chance to combine some of my favorites here as you can see I’m down into a deep stretch I’m trying to stretch out the groin I’m trying to stretch out the hips but what I’m also focusing on here guys is incorporating more of an Achilles stretch with my feet up right my heels down my feet up on something elevated but why am I Reaching Forward because I want to make sure that I’m stretching out my lats at the same time and also working on stretching out my core as I reach out in front of me and a little bit higher the reason being once again when I extend up and I’m trying to get as high as I can if you see a tight lat Mo most guys if they were to reach up overhead kind of reach like this cuz they have tightness through their lats very very common if I can get back just a little bit more I can pick up another 2 in or so where my fingers will ultimately be able to reach therefore again increasing my vertical jump and making me as long as possible so again you want to make sure that you’re spending some time doing these stretches especially that last one CU it kind of hits all of them in one shot okay now with the flexibility in place it’s time to start focusing on the key elements here and that is pushing hard and pushing faster right why so much focus on the ground guys interestingly when they did the vertical jump testing in the combines of the NFL they found that by far NFL players had a more impressive vertical jump than the guys tested in the NBA now why is that one reason guys strength and we’re talking about defensive lineman closing in on 300 lb being able to jump higher than the average NBA player because it comes down to strength the more force that you can exert into that ground with equal and opposite reaction and the quicker you can do it the more you’re going to be able to get up up up so we want to make sure that when we do our training and we start working out we want to focus on these elements so I’ll talk and I’ll show you some of these clips as we go first and foremost we want to push harder we’re going to do that with toe squats as you can see in this version of a squat my focus is not just to come up with the weight but to accelerate up with the weight and not stop when I reach the top I actually want to come all the way through and focus on trying to push up onto my big toe now why is that because there is a muscle called the flexor alicus longus is actually a muscle that crosses the ankle joint and is attached to the big toe and what it does is it flexes that big toe so what we want to do is work on that muscle because that little extra strength that we have to push through that big toe to give us that that one last point of contact to get us up off the ground can mean extra i