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When my son first joined the high school basketball team, I enjoyed going to the practices and watching as player after player would try to out-jump their team-mates. It was sort of a cool thing to be able to bound from the floor and hook your fingers around the basketball hoop and make the backboard quiver. Some could leap higher than others, and for many, no matter how hard they tried, it seemed like there was a height plateau they could never exceed.

However years later when I learned the best way to actually improve explosive speed and vertical jump abilities using a truly scientific method of

It was a coache I had back in my bob-sledding days who steered us toward "plyometric" training.

Plyometrics involve exercises that focus on open-ended movements in the area we'll call "free space." For instance, if you lift a barbell, it involves jerking of the weight quickly, and then suddenly stopping the movement. With plyometrics, you don't have this sudden stop and the motion is continuous.

Just imagine how a kangaroo jumps. The kangaroo has no sudden stops and starts. If he jumped at 100% for each jump he would soon run out of energy. Instead the jumps are fluid. His muscles are trained to store energy from the jump before much like a spring and as a result needs only a fraction of his energy to perform a jump. It gives that kangaroo not only the ability to jump often, but very high as well.

So just imagine a basketball player who is able to train his muscles to act like springs that give him more vertical jump ability and at the same time, don't tire him out. The benefits would be huge over the duration of a basketball game.

There are specific plyometric exercises that improve the elasticity of muscles and tissue to jump higher or throw further, depending on the training goals.

First of all, on day one you will be tested for explosive speed over 30 meters or so, and a standing vertical jump. Your speed over the distance and height of your initial jump will be recorded.

The exercises were actually pretty amazing and challenging. The trainer took us to where squares numbered one to four were painted on the floor. We had to hop in a pre-determined sequence for a duration of one minute and complete as many repetitions as possible. The sequence might be box one to box two and back again. Over and over for one minute. Then it might be box one to box two to box three which involves an entirely different set of movements because of the direction change. Every exercise is done continuously with no sudden stops.

That's just one exercise, but every different one we performed worked on the same principle. By the end of the first few weeks, it was quite incredible how our muscles reacted and just how much more proficient we became at jumping higher and running faster from a dead stop.

When we were re-tested at the end of six weeks our results were really impressive. I could almost jump a full foot higher from a dead stop on the vertical jump test.

Can you just imagine one of those high school basketball players adding an entire 12 inches to the height of his jump?

There is no doubt in my mind, that if a basketball player wants to improve his jumping ability, full consideration should be given to implementing plyometric training into his pre-season conditioning program.

Learn more about this author, Ray Fauteux.
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