by Robert Matthews

Created on: February 10, 2010

Do you need to dominate under the boards? Snag extra rebounds? Dunk it? Positively you do. That's why you are executing squats until your thighs bulge like oak trees.

Stop it! Consider it for a minute. Is it your aim to lift extra pounds? Or have you been working to enhance vertical leaping? If your purpose is to develop vertical jumping then your tree trunk thighs aren't going to do it for you personally. How high can a tree leap? A lot more significantly, how higher can a weight lifter jump? Even the strongest of the strong?

In case you answered, "Not incredibly high," you win a prize. Now, do you understand why? It took years of analysis for somebody to figure this out nonetheless it boils down to this uncomplicated formula: vertical leap = strength + quickness.

Consider for just a moment the elephant along with the gazelle. Which would you say is stronger? Which can jump higher? Why? The gazelle is clearly not as good as the elephant but it really adds the magic ingredient to its energy, quickness. Its muscles contract and explode quite quickly and it's this fast burst of energy that provides it its leaping capacity.

Now let us get back to you. If you emphasize power training in your workouts and neglect quickness, do you think you're gonna increase vertical leaping? Probably a tiny bit. That's several athletes fall into a trap. They sense the burn. After all, no pain, no gain, correct? Then they see some betterment in their vertical jumping. Maybe an inch. Maybe two inches. They say, "Great! I'll do much more squats with heavier weights and really take off." Wrong.

One more analogy. Let's compare the weight lifter to some marathon runner. Who is going to do a 100 meter dash a lot more swiftly? The runner, 95 instances out of a hundred. Are his legs as solid. Nope. But he's been targeting his workouts to running fast. Now, who's likely to be quicker doing the 100 meter, the guys who trains for marathons or the guy who trains for sprints? They're both runners, right?

The marathoner trains for endurance. His race is twenty-six miles plus. A top class marathoner runs that in around two hours. With some arithmetic we see that's about 15.6 seconds for every hundred yards. A first class sprinter will do a hundred yards in about nine seconds. And even if the marathoner runs only the shorter distance, he'll nevertheless certainly not be competitive. If he was he'd enter equally events to begin with.

So how does all this relate to your exercise? Are you exercising for power with heavy weights, pushing toward muscular exhaustion? Have you been performing endless reps at 50% effort to build endurance? If your efforts are trending toward either of these extremes you are by no means going to boost vertical jumping, at least not really significantly and definitely not to the extent of your potential.

Learn the nine improvable aspects of jumping and how to get better at all of them.  Watch the video at The Jump Manual and see how to reach your goals.  Do you know who was the shortest player ever to win the NBA Slam Dunk Contest?  Find out and watch his dunk at Learn to Jump Higher.

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