Lower Body Plyometric Exercises

Drop Jumping: - This exercise involves the athlete dropping (not jumping) to the ground from a raised platform or box, and then immediately jumping up. The drop down gives the pre-stretch to the leg muscles and the vigorous drive upwards the secondary concentric contraction The exercise will be more effective the shorter the time the feet are in contact with the ground. The loading in this exercise is governed by the height of the drop which should be in the region of 30-80 cm. Drop jumping is a relatively high impact form of plyometric training and would normally be introduced after the athlete had become accustomed to lower impact alternatives, such as two-footed jumping on the spot.

Bounding and hurdling: If forward motion is more the name of your game, try some bounding. This is a form of plyometric training, where over sized strides are used in the running action and extra time spent in the air. Two-legged bounds reduces the impact to be endured, but to increase the intensity one legged bounding, or hopping, can be used. Bounding upstairs is a useful way to work on both the vertical and horizontal aspects of the running action. Multiple jumps over a series of obstacles like hurdles is a valuable drill for athletes training for sprinting or jumping events.

Examples of lower body plyometric exercises with intensity level:

• Standing based jumps performed on the spot (low intensity) - Tuck Jumps, Split Jumps
• Jumps from standing (low-medium intensity) - Standing long jump, Standing hop, standing jump for height
• Multiple jumps from standing (medium intensity) - bounds, bunny hops, double footed jumps over low hurdle, double footed jumps up steps
• Multiple jumps with run in (High intensity) - 11 stride run + 2 hops and a jump into sandpit, 2 stride run in + bounds
• Depth jumping (high-very high intensity) - jumps down and up off box (40-100cm), bounding up hill
• Eccentric drop and hold drills (high-very high intensity) - hop and hold, bound/hop/bound/hop over 30m (athletes stops and holds on each landing before springing into the next move), drop and hold from a height > one metre

Upper Body Plyometric Exercises

A variety of drills can be used to make the upper body more explosive:
Press ups & hand clap: Press-ups with a hand clap in between is a particularly vigorous way to condition the arms and chest. The pre-stretch takes place as the hands arrive back on the ground and the chest sinks, and this is followed quickly by the explosive upwards action. Once again, to get the best training effect keep the time in contact with the ground to a minimum.
Medicine Ball: Another means of increasing upper body strength popular with throwers is to lie on the ground face up. A partner then drops a medicine ball down towards the chest of the athlete, who catches the ball (pre-stretch) and immediately throws it back. This is another high-intensity exercise and should only be used after some basic conditioning.

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Tip #1: Try to visualize.it’s a great trick for instant vertical jump increases. Test your jump by seeing how high on the backboard you get. Now close your eyes and vividly imagine yourself exploding upwards to a goal you have. Next, imagine all the muscles in your legs getting stronger, bigger and more explosive. Then you should focus on feeling lighter, loose & springy. Think about it for a moment. Finally repeat this out-loud or in your head “I feel myself getting more powerful & much lighter”. Now your ready to try that jump again. Everyone I’ve taught this method so far has experienced an immediate gain no less than 2 inches & some as much as 5 inches and it is really that simple!

Tip #2: Powerful, forceful arm-swing. This is a commonly neglected jump factor that can account for upto 15% more lift. Try this, next jump you go up for I want you to deliberately concentrate on swinging your arms up fast, timing it with the jump.

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Tip #3: Flexibility. Those elite gymnast that I’ve worked with can generate a lot of total body power. How else do you pull off a Triple back-flip? Well all of them have awesome total body flexibility, which has too many benefits to mention here, but one is a role in the stretch-reflex-shortening cycle. Start stretching at least 3x a week. One final thought here, that is stretch only after your work-outs as research indicates stretching before an event or work out actually decreases power output. Pay special attention to the hip flexors, hamstrings and glutes.

Tip #4: Increasing your inner abdominal strength. I’m not referring to the rectus-abs you get from sit-ups, you already know they’re important. I’m talking about the transverse abdominal wall, underneath them, which plays a key role in every power movement & you can make them stronger. Suck in your stomach with a deep breath, try to imagine sucking into the spine. Hold this position for 20 seconds. Repeat 4 more times, do these 3-4 times a week.

Tip #5: The Overspeed Jump. You will not find this jump drill in any manual, ebook, or training programs. If you ever get bored of doing the same old plyometrics here is a completely new exercise to add to the mix. Plyometrics seek to train the nervous system to speed up reflex action for jumps, or any explosive movements for that matter at the take off. Maximum power training, along with traditional weight training seek to add to the strength side of the equation. But what can we do about raw muscle speed? Here’s a brand new drill for just that: What you will first need is a small jogging trampoline, if not a makeshift ramp about 6ft. in length may do. Next what you need is a target that you jump at like say a basketball hoop. Now what you are going to do is place the trampoline 1-2 strides away from the goal, run and make your last step before you plant to jump a stride off the tramp (note: your not doing actual jumps off the mini tramp). This will overspeed your run just before the actual take-off, making your legs jump quicker as well! When done correctly you will make a noticeably higher leap! This is what you will gain when you teach your muscles to move faster through the jump.

Tip #6: You can also strengthen the Tibialis Anterior. Here’s one many athletes have used with great results. This muscle is located on the shin & commonly referred to as the Dorsi-Flexors. Build these & you will add inches to your jump, eliminate shin splints, and have awesome take-off speed. The Dorsi-Flexors stabilize the lower leg allowing maximum take-off force. You won’t target this group using the Proprioceptor plugs. The reason this works is because each muscle group has a counter-balancing group of muscles. You can only be as strong as the opposing muscles, so hundreds of weighted calf raises will soon plateau if you don’t develop these stabilizers. One way to start working them, is try walking around on your heels without letting the ball of your foot touch. Do this until you feel a good burn.

Tip #7 Build fast twitch muscle fibers, speed up slow twitch fibers. If you want to make leaps and bounds first we have to stop the bleeding! By this I mean no more slow-twitch inducing exercises like aerobics. Ask yourself does the sport your involved with require power or endurance? If you’re a football player, gymnast, or sprinter (I think you get my point) you have NO need for aerobic training. When would you use it? The more you do long duration endurance training the more your muscles will learn oxygen consuming low output slow-twitch characteristics. You want muscles that are becoming more efficient at using the creatine phosphate energy system! So without sounding like I’m hating on aerobics here, you really need to focus on those high-intensity/short duration drills like sprinting. Interestingly enough sprinters have the highest % of fast-twitch muscles of all athletes. Who do you think jumps higher the sprinter or the marathoner? One final though on this subject is recent research in Nitric Oxide (NO) supplements seems to indicate that they speed up fast-twitch muscles and seem to make slow-twitch fibers act more like the fast as well. This may make this the ultimate in vertical jump supplementation possibly rivaling with Creatine Monohydrate!

Tip #8: Waveloading, here’s another good instant vert. Trick you can play on the nervous system. Load your body with some weight before jumping, with a medicineball for example. What happens is your body will recruit more motor units in the working muscles, allowing the work to seem much easier when you don’t have the weight because you are now using more of them! This trick works with any exercise & is great for breaking plateaus.Another variable to this method is what i call an “unloading jump”. To perform this all you need to do is grab a pair of 10lb dumbells(or any weight) hold them at waist level, quick step up to the rim to do a rim jump (counter movement jump) at the peak of crouch just before you’d take off for the rim drop the weights and blast off. One set of 5-10 reps with this new drill will give instant as well as residual leap increases!

Tip #9: Springbak speedsoles. Former L.A. Laker Bill Crow is the genius behind these micro thin shoe inserts, made of patented material, that are being used by U.S.A. Olympic volleyball teams. Remember the old saying “It must be the shoes”, well it is if you have these speedsoles in them! When I first saw them I thought the claims were a farce, so I had to buy some to put them to the test. We at Bionic Plyometrics found with the inserts in an immediate 2 inch increase in vertical jump & drop in 40 yard dash times of 1/10 of a second. These springbak rubber shoe inserts are gradually becoming more popular and retail for about £15. Try - http://Springsoles.co.uk

Tip #10: Strengthen the toe muscles. Flexor Hallucis Longus are the small muscles that start in the lower leg & come down to the big toe. Work this for an added inch by trying to curl in/or crunch the toes. Another drill is to push up onto the tip toes and hold that for at least 10 seconds. After as little as 6 weeks with this you can easily add an inch to the top!

When you go through this phase you will definitely have the answer to how to jump higher. After a long day what the body needs is a good nights rest. According to science a normal human being requires 6 to 8 hours of sleep daily. This time allows the body to regain the lost strength and become better prepared for the next days challenges.

Some people will avoid this because of which they will get exhausted much faster than before. this will lead to a decline in their progress. So adequate rest will solve the problem and give new strength.

Before starting any rigorous exercise you should do a warmup for about 10 min which will help to stretch the major muscles. A good warm up will prepare you for the specific exercises that follow. Here, as you want to do exercises which help to jump higher, so warming up the legs is most important. After doing a warmup you should feel flexible with heart pumping faster and the temperature of your body should increase. There are two types of warmups, one is static and the other is dynamic. In static, as the name suggests, you will do exercises standing on one place whereas in dynamic warmup, simple movements are done to prepare for the real exercise.

Which is better - Static or Dynamic? “

A study [7] compared the effect of dynamic warm up (DWU) with static-stretching warm up (SWU) on power and agility. Subjects aged 18-24 years performed one of the two warm up routines (DWU or SWU) or performed no warm up (NWU) on 3 consecutive days with the process lasting 10-minutes in each case. After 1-2 minutes of recovery, subjects performed 3 tests of power or agility i.e. T-shuttle run, underhand medicine ball throw for distance and a 5-step jump. Repeated measures revealed better performance scores after the DWU for the three performance tests relative to SWU and NWU. There were no significant differences between the SWU and NWU for the medicine ball throw and the T-shuttle run, but the SWU was associated with better scores on the 5-step jump. The authors concluded that because the results of this study indicate a relative performance enhancement with the DWU, the utility of warm up routines that use static stretching as a stand-alone activity should be reassessed. It would be interesting to see this experiment repeated following a general warm-up process in all cases since this may be more analogous to many sports situations.”

Safety is one of the most important things which should be considered when doing exercises. Many injuries occur as a result of wrong exercises or just due to lack of attention. While doing exercises for improving vertical leap you will face some injury or the other. When you don’t know how to jump higher correctly then it will be a problem. A simple thing that you can do is exercise in slow motion to get all the things correctly. Then gradually increase the intensity when you can do the exercise correctly. Many a times people just start with complete power but this will eventually go down and there will be no improvement. Do you want this to happen to you? I will certainly not wish for such thing.

The common complaints of people trying to jump higher are some sort of pain in the
toes
ankles
knees
calf muscles
back
shin

These problems can and should be avoided so that you do not injure yourself badly. Some of the things that you can do to avoid unnecessary problems are

1) Do not do workouts like crazy. Keep a limit according to your body’s strength.
2) The moment you feel some pain in any part of the body, you should stop and see whether the injury is small or big.
3) There are some reports that using ankle weights will cause damage to the foot. So better to avoid it.
4) Do the exercises in a good open place.
5) Don’t do awkward jumps. Many teens will try some stupid things and the only thing they do is injure themselves. Trust me you dont want this.
6) Do not push beyond limits.
7) Work on the whole body and not just one or two parts.
8) Last but not the least, take adequate rest to rejuvinate yourself.