What To Focus On In Order To Increase Jumping Ability?

If you want to stand any chance of increasing your vertical leap, you have to be willing to put in the hard work and long hours. 

However, no matter how many hours you dedicate to your workout, you will see little to no results if it is not the right method. Here are some things to focus on when trying to increase jumping ability.

The first thing you will want to strengthen is the Tibialis Anterior. 

This is the muscle that is located on the shin and can actually have a drastic impact on your jumping ability. 

In addition, it will improve your quickness when jumping from the ground. This muscle helps stabilize the lower leg thus allowing you to jump with far greater force.

So how can you strengthen the Tibialis Anterior? 

One method is to simply walk around on your heels without touching the ground with the ball of your foot. 

This is a starting point that can be done anywhere at any time, but there are countless other ways to increase the strength of this muscle.

Next, focus on building the strength of your toe muscles. Become familiar with Flexor Hallucis Longus, which are small muscles that go from the lower leg down to the big doe. 

You can work these muscles by curling in or crunching your toes. 

Or pushing up onto the tip of your toes and staying like that for 10 seconds. Few recognize how much of an impact this can have on their leaping ability.

If you really want to increase jumping ability you need to build fast twitch muscle fibers. 

In order to do this properly, you have to build the workout according to your needs. 

Determine whether you are looking to build power or endurance which will help determine how to build fast twitch muscle fibers.

Typically, you are best off focusing on high-intensity drills that are short like sprinting or box jumps. 

This trains your muscles to react quickly while taking on the force that is required to lift yourself into the air.

The last tip to help increase jumping ability is to actually trick your nervous system into thinking your body is lighter than it is. 

Baseball players do this before every bat by loading a weight on their bat and taking some practice swings. 

When it comes time to step up to the plate, they feel the bat is much lighter than it really is allowing them to swing quicker.

You can do this by jumping with a medicine ball, wearing weighted shoes, or wearing a weighted vest. 

When you remove the weighted shoes or vest you will feel lighter than a feather making you think you can jump higher than usual.