Jumping

[Slayer]

Would you guys happen to know of exercises which can help my jump? I am a big guy so I don't get much height on the jump

Slayer
"I never let my schooling interfere with my education"
- Mark Twain

[IronFist]

Diet :)

Here's something interesting to think about. Many Power and Olympic lifters, while large people, have big vertical jumps. Must be all the explosive power they develop from their style of lifting.

I think Dr. Fred Hatfield (has squatted over 1000lbs) has an article or two on improving you jump at his website, www.drsquat.com

I would check that out. I'm sure other people here will have better info about jumping than I do.

Good luck. If you find something that works, let us know :)

Iron

Edit: I just checked, the article is by Fred Hatfield II, which I assume is his son. But it sounds like a decent article so check it out

[This message was edited by IronFist on 11-03-01 at 12:13 AM.]

[ElPietro]

The primary muscles involved in jumping are your calf and quadricep muscles. So by training these muscles for strength will allow you to facilitate higher jumps. The best thing I'd recommend is to work legs with intensity and then maybe once or twice a week do some plyometrics or in other words just jump like a mofo. Of course other things like swinging your arms also help but that isn't really a driving force in increasing your vertical jump.

If you want to focus on this I'd recommend a warmup of skipping rope for 10 minutes followed by a regular leg routine with loads of weights on your calf raises. And of course as Ironfist stated diet is also key...the less fat you have the less fat that is dragging your a$$ down. ;)

[soy]

Jumprope. With a heavy rope.

[wall]

I've combined my trad CMA training with 15y of wushu and some casual gymnastics training, so I had to work on jumping. The following works for me ( 5'11", 78kg, low fat quite muscular) and most people I know of various sizes and shapes, enabling pretty big improvements in air time.

1 - strenghtpower - the quads, and to a lesser extent hipsglutesabs, do the jumping. Calfs do not, they primarily shock-absorb the landing. Once a week do 4-6 sets of squats (about 20min work including rest), 8-12 reps, full range, to near-failure (meaning put a weight that allows you to just make it to 12 struggling - but keeping good form).

2 - speed - Once a week,do 20min of plyometrics like benchsteps jumps, etc., in 30 sec sets and 1 min rest.

3 - technique - twice a week (on days different from 1&2) practice jumping for 20min. Tips: concentrate on height not distance; drive your non-pushing leg up high with the knee bent, and then when you reach max height in the jump kick it down forcefully and thrust your chest out; swing your arms; feel your abs and every muscle in your body spring, not just your quads; make all of the above come naturally, without thinking.

So that's only about 80 min a week all up and it will boost your air time quite a lot (depending on how advanced you already are and on your age). Don't expect too much too soon, doing it religiously it will still take you two months to build up good levels of 1 and 2, and anything up to 6 months to master point 3. Also, flexibility really helps so strech lightly before and quite a bit after each of these workouts, and always warm up well with light jogs, skipping, etc to avoid injury.

Good luck and sorry for the lenght of the post, measure your jump (jump as high as you can near a wall and mark where you touch) and then tell us how much higher you get after 2 months on the above (if you decide to follow it).

Wall