subject: Vertical Jump Exercises - Explosive Weight Lifting Will Train Your Fast Twitch Fibers To Jump Higher [print this page] Using the Principle of Fast Twitch Fibers
With the principles of fast twitch muscle fiber in mind, what I recommend you do: (and please don't be afraid to alter your current jump training program. Don't be afraid to alter it, if this makes sense to you. If it doesn't make sense to you, keep doing what you're doing). But I recommend you do your heavy lifting with five sets. The first three sets should be very heavy weight. Keep your reps below ten, and do them very explosively. If you do it explosively, that's what you're trying to train: your explosion. So you're going to be following the pattern of doing explosion to gain more explosion. And so the first three sets, reps below ten, and then high explosion.
Vertical Jump Exercises: Squats
If you're doing squats, you're doing it like you're exploding. If you don't approach each exercise like this (you're going to do it with more intensity than you've ever done), then you may be lacking results because you're not pushing yourself to a higher explosion. You're just pushing yourself at a lower level of explosion. So you've got to get fired up during the training, if you've got to play some music in your head, or whatever you've got to do, you need to be exploding.
If you change your workouts to doing five sets, the first three should be explosive, and you've got to get fired up, and you've got to explode like you've never exploded before. Do make sure you're warmed up so you don't have any muscle injury, and that you're well-stretched.
But those first three-explosion. The fourth one, slowly but thoroughly straining the muscle. The last one slowly but surely straining the muscle and then taking off and then going to failure again; and then one more time going to failure and having someone help you do two to four more repetitions. That's the way to completely train your muscles to get stronger and focus on the explosion that's going to help you jump higher.
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Jacob Hiller is the creator of an ESPN-featured jump program and is considered one of the world's foremost authorities on vertical jump training.
