Stop looking up and start focusing down at the ground because that's where it all happens.

I'll explain it all today.

What's up, guys? Jeff Cavaliere, ATHLEANX.COM.

Today, we're going to discuss how to jump higher. Now, even in honor here of his Airness,

Michael Jordan, we know that the guy was a Supreme Athlete.

The guys was one of the best basketball players of all time, but he went on record as being

one of the hardest workers of all time, right.

Nobody could outwork him. If you're going to want to jump higher, you're going to have

to work.

There are no short, quick gimmicks. As I say all the time, guys, there are no shortcuts.

Period.

Whether you're trying to get abs or whether you're trying to jump higher. That being said,

as a Trainer to Professional Athletes,

I can tell you, there are some specific things that we work on that allow these guys to improve

their vertical faster because they're working on the right things.

In that way, guys, what I want to show you here is to cover two main principles.

Number 1. If you want to jump higher, you have to learn how to drive your feet into

the ground harder.

And Number 2. How to drive your feet into the ground faster.

Now, when we talk about harder, we're talking about your Ground Force Production.

How hard can you push into the ground so that there's an equal and opposite reaction in

the opposite direction?

Right? We know that's a law of physics.

Secondly, we have how fast, what is our Rate of Force Production?

How quickly can we push ourselves into the ground so we can then again push with a more

explosive force, or a more reactive, elastic force off of the ground?

What I wanted to do today, guys, is show you exactly some of the best ways to do that,

make this sort of a step-by-step video.

And it starts with learning how to stretch ourselves and get ourselves loose and adequately

flexible to be able to activate and tap into these two major resources, ok.

So, let me take you through a couple of the stretches first that I think are necessary,

and then

we'll start covering some of the strength ideas that you should be focusing on to do

this and increase that vertical.

Alright, guys, so let's start off with the stretching. Let's start off by first making

sure we're very clear on what we're talking about when we're talking about increasing

the vertical jump.

We're talking about how high you can increase your center of gravity, meaning your core.

How high can you elevate that off the ground? Because a lot of guys have great flexibility

and they can cheat their way to an impressive vertical.

I'm actually one of those kind of guys. I can jump a lot higher doing a Box Jump because

I can lift my knees almost up towards my ears.

But that doesn't mean that I have the greatest standing vertical. A lot of guys that are

watching this video are probably doing it, possibly for Combine Testing.

You're going to need to be able to strictly go straight up in the air and get as high

as you can.

So, with that being the focus, and even just overall jumping is the focus, we need to zero

in on a few key areas.

Number 1. First and foremost, our Achilles Tendon, ok. Here I'm showing you guys a static

stretch of the Achilles Tendon on a stairway.

The key point here you'll notice is that I'm doing two different variations of this. I'm

bending the knee, and I'm keeping the knee straight, right.

We have two different muscles that form the calves, right. We have our gastroc, and we

have our soleas.

They do, though, come together in a common tendon, the Achilles Tendon. So, if you want

to hit both of those and get an adequate stretch on the Achilles,

then we have to make sure that we're stretching that knee, again, with it bent and with it

straight to make sure we're hitting both.

After that, guys, the key point also is to maintain that stretch, ok. We can get a little

bit deeper into the tendon,

that muscular, tendonous junction, if we hang out and cause a bit more of a prolonged static

stretch.

So, you're going to want to hold this one for about a minute to two minutes, if you

can, on each leg.

Next, we move on to the Hip Flexors. Some guys might be thinking, 'Well, how the hell

that does that really impact my vertical jump?'

Especially again, Combine Testing in a very big way. Here I'm showing you one of my favorite

Hip Flexor Stretches.

The reason why we're doing this, guys, is because, if you think about the explosiveness

of the jump,

when you reach up, and you're in triple extension-through your hips, through your ankles, through your

knees

you want to make sure that you can extend the trunk as high as you can, and the only

way you're going to be able to do that,

to reach full extension, is to not have any restrictions from your Hip Flexors trying

to pull you, and your trunk, downward, ok.

So, spending at least 8 minutes on this stretch as well is going to help you. And again, forget

if this is not just a Combine Test or a Vertical Jump Test that you're doing.

If you just want to become an overall better, higher jumper, you're going to want to start

working on these stretches on a regular basis.

Thirdly. This is one of my favorites. I'm actually going to get a chance to combine

some of my favorites here.

As you can see, I'm down into a deep stretch. I'm trying to stretch out the groin. I'm trying

to stretch out the hips.

But what I'm also focusing on here, guys, is incorporating more of an Achilles stretch

with my feet up, right.

My heels down and my feet up on something elevated, but why am I reaching forward?

Because I want to make sure that I'm stretching out my lats at the same time, and also,

working on stretching out my core as I reach out in front of me, and a little bit higher.

The reason being, once again, when I extend up, and I'm trying to get as high as I can,

if you see a tight lat.

Most guys, if they were to reach up overhead, kind of reach like this because they have

tightness through their lats. Very, very common.

If I can get back just a little bit more, I can pick up another 2 inches or so where

my fingers will ultimately be able to reach

therefore, again, increasing my vertical jump and making me as long as possible.

So, again, you want to make sure that you're spending some time doing these stretches,

especially that last one because it kind of hits all of them in one shot.

Ok, now, with the flexibility in place, it's time to start focusing on the key elements

here, and that is pushing harder and pushing faster, right.

Why so much focus on the ground? Guys, interestingly, when they did the Vertical Jump Testing in

the Combines of the NFL,

they found that by far, NFL players had a more impressive vertical jump than the guys

tested in the NBA. Now, why is that? One reason, guys, strength.

And we're talking about defensive linemen, closing in on 300 pounds, being able to jump

higher than the average NBA player because it comes down to strength.

The more force that you can exert into that ground with equal and opposite reaction, and

the quicker you can do it, the more you're going to be able to get up, up, up.

So, we want to make sure that when we do our training and we start working out, we want

to focus on these elements.

So, I'll talk and I'll show you some of these clips as we go.

First and foremost. If we want to push harder, we're going to do that with Toe Squats. As

you can see in this version of a squat.

My focus is not just to come up with the weight, but to accelerate up with the weight, and

not stop when I reach the top.

I actually want to come all the way through and focus on trying to push up onto my big

toe. Now why is that?

Because there is a muscle called a flexor hallucis longus, it's actually a muscle that

crosses the ankle joint and is attached to the big toe.

And what it does is, it flexes that big toe. So, what we want to do is work on that muscle

because that little extra strength that we have

to push through that big toe to give us that one last point of contact to get us up off

the ground can mean extra inches, guys, inches onto your vertical jump.

Most guys never even focus on these small intrinsic muscles of the feet, and that's

one of the reasons why they don't jump as high as they could.

And the fact that this muscle crosses the ankle joint is even more reason for us to

focus on strengthening it so we can push harder.

Secondly, we want to work Kettlebell Swings. Absolutely, if you don't have a Kettlebell,

use a dumbbell.

Here, we're working a heavier version of a Kettlebell Swing, and the focus is on getting

triple extension, right.

Extending powerfully through our ankles, our knees, and our hips. So we work on getting

more explosive, right.

It's very, very key, and we know how important that extension is to getting higher at a jump,

but

mostly on coordinating those three joints together since they're stacked and they like

to work and explode together.

That's going to be key for you getting a higher Vertical Jump.

Lastly, we have Heavy Sled or Prowler Pushes. Now, you may not have access to a Prowler

where you are or a sled, Weighted Sled, where you are.

In that case, you can do what I'm doing here. Take a heavy stack of plates and try to push

them as fast as you can against this surface.

Doesn't have to be indoors. You can push them outdoors on the grass. It works. They slide.

You know, you're going to have to push as hard as you can to overcome that ground force

and that inertia.

But if that's something that you focus on, you will get better at it. And if it's something

that you're not working on now, you're definitely going to want to work on that.

Because that will translate to more Force Production, being able to push harder into

the ground and therefore propel your body with that equal and opposite reaction.

Next thing you want to do, guys, is you want to focus on pushing faster.

And you'll see that we'll use a lot of the same exercises, but we'll start with a little

different take on the Squat. Here, we're going to turn it into a Box Jump.

And we're going to focus once again on not just pulling our knees up to our head, but

elevating that center of gravity.

So, we'll control that by making sure that you don't land with your knees any higher

than a 90 degree bend, ok.

You're not allowed to pull them all the way up here, and land. We want to make sure that

you're landing by getting your body up off the ground.

But the important point you''ll see as I demonstrate this exercise is, I am actually attacking

my descent into my jump.

If you want to jump higher, you have to increase the speed at which you are attacking the ground,

and you do that by

actually increasing the speed at which you lower your body to create that stretch reflex

to give you that Rate of Force Production that will propel you up, up, and higher, right.

So, we want to make sure that we're doing that, and we translate that not just to the

time you're actually executing your vertical jump in testing, but

when you're doing it here in your training because it will translate from one to the

other.

Next, we want to now take our Kettlebell Swings, but lighten the weight. And we also want to

do our Prowler Pushes, but lighten the weight

because the focus here now is on not just trying to overcome a strong force to increase

our ability to push harder, but

now we want to be able to translate that to be able to push faster, ok, so we're going

to lighten that load and allow us to more explosively get into and through our Kettlebell

Swing.

And again, more explosively be able to push and do our Prowler or whatever version it

is that you're doing that you have access to.

So, there you have it, guys. This is how you start to jump higher by training the right

way.

We have to train for strength, but we can't have an over-reliance on just jumping, right.

We have controlled bodies of jumping.

We can't have an over-reliance on trying to bring all this out just during the sport or

competition.

We have to make sure we're preparing by training the right way all the time.

And that's exactly what we do, guys, over at ATHLEANX.COM, with my ATHLEANX Training

System.

I train you like an athlete. I treat you just like one of my pro athletes by giving you

the exact same protocols,

the exact same approaches that we use to enhance performance, whether that be jumping higher,