Ok, so I lied...maybe not that high, Adrian Wilson's vertical leap is freakishly ridiculous. What I can promise you though is that if you follow this routine once, or better yet twice a week in place of your leg workout, it'll help you develop lower body power, explosiveness, and flexibility that'll translate into a higher vertical leap. I've used this for about three months now and I've added over a foot to my vertical. A few months back I could barely touch the bottom of the backboard, now I can hit rim. Another three months and I'll be dunking!
The Routine
Flexibility!
The first major component of my vertical leap routine is developing lower body flexibility. This means opening up your hip flexors, lengthening your hamstrings, and further developing the range of motion of your quads, glutes, and calves. When your range of motion is limited, especially in the hips, it limits the amount of power and force that you can generate with your lower body. Think about it, if you wanted to punch something as hard as humanly possible, I'm talking an angry punch, would you bend your arm only slightly and punch, or cock your elbow all the way back past your chest and explode forwards? I think the latter. It'd probably hurt a lot more. By increasing the flexibility of your lower body it'll increase your range of motion, let you squat lower, and ultimately enable you to more powerfully explode upward.
As a means of increasing flexibility, I'm a big fan of using both static stretching and dynamic stretching. Static stretching is simply when you stretch a muscle and hold that stretch for 20-60 seconds, think a typical quad stretch. This type of stretching is really advantageous in the long run because it allows muscles to elongate plastically, or stay stretched/lengthened permanently. Static stretching is ideal right after your workout because of that fact that the core temperature of muscles is elevated, which allows them to more effectively become stretched permanently. Not only that, but static stretching post-workout can help decrease soreness. Static stretching is also the ideal way to increase flexibility when you're not working out (i.e. in your home).
Dynamic stretching is often known as an active warm-up, which involves short bursts of deep stretches that temporarily expand the body's range of motion (e.g. high knees or walking lunges). Dynamic stretching is ideal as a warm-up pre-workout because it helps decrease the risk of injury and increases the strength of muscular contractions. One noted study at Wichita State University concluded that dynamic stretching allowed athletes to jump significantly higher than those who stretched statically before their workout. On average participants jumped 56.70 cm when they stretched statically, whereas they jumped 61.48cm when they stretched dynamically. That's pretty ridiculous...athletes jumped 8.5% higher just by changing the way they stretched!
The Stetching Plan!
- Pre-workout Dynamic Stretching (this should only take about 5 minutes)
- High Knee Hugs - 60 seconds
- Walking Heel to Butt - 20 per side
- Leg Cradle Walks - 20 per side
- Spiderman Stretch - 10 per side
- Inchworms - 10 reps
- Post-Workout & Off Day Static Stretching (Do this after your leg routine, and as many days as possible separate from your workouts)
If you wanna jump like MJ, developing explosive power is critical. One of the best ways to do that is through a combination of intense, heavy strength training and plyometrics. I'm sure you're familiar with strength-training, but plyometrics is a less well-known training technique. Plyometrics, also known as "jump-training," is a popular method of training primarily used to improve sports performance, especially in basketball, soccer, and track & field, which focuses on developing power, explosiveness, and acceleration. Plyometric training is based off of the idea that muscles that are stretched immediately before they contract concentrically (flexing a muscle is considered a concentric contraction, e.g. curling a dumbbell) will contract faster and with more force. Think of it like a spring, if you push a spring down as far as possible it's gonna explode upwards with tremendous force and velocity...now apply that principle to your legs. By squatting down and immediately jumping up as high as possible, again and again, you generate a ton of force.
As for the strength training component, all of the exercises should be done at low reps (4-8) with heavy loads. Lifting heavier weights for fewer reps is the primary way of increasing muscular power, strength, and explosiveness. Here goes, get ready, it's intense!
- Barbell Squats - 1x8 reps, 2x6 reps, 1x4 reps. Lower slowly, explode upwards quickly.
- Romanian Deadlifts - 4x6 reps. Make sure your knees are bent slightly, don't let your back arch.
- Weighted Wall Squats w. Ball- 2x8 reps. Hold dumbbells in your hands, your lower back should touch the exercise ball. Go parallel to the ground, get low!!
- Standing Calf Raises - 2x8reps, 1x6 reps, 1x4 reps
- Leg Press - 2x6 reps. Don't lock your knees.
- Weighted Plyometric Jump Squats - 3x10 reps. Start with no weights until you learn the form, gradually make it more difficult by holding dumbbells and jumping.
- Box/Step Jumps - 3x10 reps. If you have Step equipment start by raising the step up to a comfortable height. The goal is to keep progressing by gradually making the step higher and higher. If you don't have access to a Step equipment you can use a bench or box (the step equipment is the colorful boxes + platform in the video below).
- Lateral Box Jumps - 1x8 reps per side. Use a low step or box and move quickly from side to side.
Your legs might hate you after this, but trust me, you'll be well on your way to jumping much higher than you've ever been able to before. Even if you don't care about increasing your vertical leap, this is still a kick-ass leg workout that'll build your quads, hamstrings, calves, and butt, increase your flexibility, and shred off a ton of body fat.
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