Vertical Jump and Speed Go Hand in Hand

The frequently asked questions are "How do I increase my vertical jump?" and "How do I increase my speed?" If you work to increase one, you will always increase the other. These are areas that take hard work and consistency to improve upon. The following article will give you some insight on where to begin on your quest to improve upon these areas or to find your elusive magic bullet as the author of the article calls it.

This is an article from http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/kelly11.htm
By: Kelly Baggett

One question I'm probably asked more then any other is, "What is the best exercise to improve my vertical jump?" Or, "What is the best exercise to improve my speed?" A lot of people think there's some secret exercise or movement that will turn them into explosive superstars overnight. In truth, there is and that exercise is called consistency and hard work!

If you aren't willing to put forth consistent effort no single exercise will give you what you want. Having said that, there are many quality exercises that will enable you to focus on the specific targets that your workouts must hit and save you gobbles of time in the process of achieving your performance goals.

In this article I'll attempt to shed some light on these questions and help you avoid going round and round playing a game of pin the tail on the donkey searching for that elusive magic bullet. I'll give you some of the top proven exercises for both speed and vertical jump improvement.

Instead of wasting your time I'll break speed and leaping ability down and show you the exact qualities your workouts must target and then give you the secrets, or exercises, that will enable you to hit those targets and make the most of your training time.

A lot of you may wonder if the exercises to improve one area (speed or jump) work to improve the other. In fact, the ability to accelerate quickly and jump high correlate very well with each other.

Any time you train to improve your vertical, you'll nearly always notice you also get faster and vice versa.

This is because the qualities of strength required are very similar. In fact, due to this, you can many times get faster without running, and jump higher without jumping, as long as you're enhancing the type(s) of strength required in each through your training regimen.

To prove this all you have to do is take a look around. Have you ever seen a good sprinter who can't jump high and a good leaper who's slow as molasses? Me neither.

First understand that there really can't be a single best exercise for everyone because different training means have different effects and the type of strength that one person needs to improve his or her speed and jumping ability may be the opposite of what another needs. For example, someone who's lacking in basic strength will get great results with common strength exercises such as the squat.

Another person might have plenty of strength, but not enough "spring", so an exercise like depth jumps will be his best training tool while the squats will do far less.

Understand that different training means have different influences on speed and vertical jumping ability. Speed and jumping ability both require an athlete to display large amounts of power. If you've read the power training article you know that power is a combination of strength and speed.

Power = Strength x Speed

When performing a sprint, you can think of power as the amount of force that you apply into the ground with each stride. Obviously the greater the force, the more ground you're going to cover with each stride. This is what is responsible for your stride length. Your stride length is then combined with your stride frequency, or, the speed at which you cycle your legs when you sprint, to determine your running speed.

So, you can increase your speed by either increasing your stride length or increasing your stride frequency with the largest potential increases coming from an increase in stride length, where power is of utmost importance.

In the vertical jump, you can again think of power as the amount of force you put into the ground at toe-off, which is responsible for the speed at which you leave the ground and the height that you jump. The more power you apply with respect to your bodyweight - the higher you're going to go - And with respect to technique - that's about all there is to it!

Time Of Force Application

Realize in a sprint you have anywhere from .10 to .20 seconds to apply maximal power with each foot-strike. As you accelerate you have about .20 seconds but as you gain top speed and your stride frequency increases your legs naturally move faster so you only have about .10 seconds when running at top speed.

In the vertical jump you only have about .20 seconds to apply max power. This is why the ability to jump high and the ability to accelerate quickly have such a good correlation.


No matter what it all comes down to hard work, consistency and finding the exercises that will work for you. Some exercises that the article talks about are the squat and depth jumps. Other exercises to look into are lateral box jumps, regular box jumps, box blasts, good mornings, depth drops. These exercises will help you increase your leg strength and your overall speed, which will carry over to increase your leg power. (Power = Strength x Speed) With these increases, you will see a higher vertical and a quicker first step.










The above videos are good demonstrations of some exercises that may help you in your quest to jump higher and run faster (acceleration). A lot of these exercises over lap and work some of the same muscle groups, start with working on form of the exercise using light weight, high reps for muscular endurance, and then work your way up to a higher weight with lower reps to build/gain muscle. In the end vertical jump and speed go hand in hand.