Have you always had a love for sports?  Are you an athlete who works extra hard to keep your body fit to meet the demands of your career?  Then you must be one of those who really put enough effort to be physically health and exercise regularly. However, for regular people like us, achieving that seems to be a heavy task. Athletes seem to have an easier time doing what they do.
People who do not regularly exercise, like us, are already aware of what some of the athletes do to keep themselves extra fit to maintain or improve their skills. They perform cardio exercises on a daily basis.  But, did you know that there are some other exercises that increase their chances of achieving that gold medal? Aside from simple cardio exercises, there is a different kind of workout that they do which a lot of experts call lower and upper body plyometric workouts.
Sports like tennis, volleyball, martial arts and wrestling are sports which could benefit from upper body plyometric workouts while leg sports such as track and field require lower body plyometric workouts.  It can be as simple as doing push ups as explosively as possible and as complicated as using a medicine ball to use stored energy and explosively release them to the other direction.  Plyometric exercises are an athlete’s best coach.

Many people ask if plyometric exercises are for athletes only.  Many of us have the perception that this is only good for superstar athletes who engage in extreme contact sports like wrestling or physically demanding sports like basketball, martial arts and foot ball.
The answer is no. Anyone who wants to have improved strength and power can use this specific exercise if they wanted to.  Experts say that this exercise can also be used for weight-loss programs as well.  Fitness gyms all over the world offer these trainings since there are a lot of people who want it.  Upper body plyometric exercises help improve the power of the upper extremities and lower body plyometric exercises keep the buttocks and legs strengthened.
Also, although there is no specific study giving a direct relationship on the success of therapies for injuries, most doctors and physical therapists recommend low-intensity plyometric leg exercises for rehabilitation of injured lower extremities.  Injured athletes are helped out by their therapists through plyometric exercises with the medicine ball to bring their physical strength and overall fitness back.
If you want to make use of that medicine ball and feel the energy it brings, then why don’t you give it a try.  The healing wonders of plyometric workouts are not just for MVP’s, but for everyone, as well.

Plyometric exercises are made to help athletes increase their speed and agility which leads to them jumping higher.  A properly planned out program will result in increased jump height.  Have you ever wondered how some people jump so high?  Well, some people are naturally a little better at jumping for different reasons.

Some individuals have great form when jumping.  You form can increase your vertical jump by a few inches without any increase in strength.  If you are able to use the force generated by your arm swing to propel you upwards you will jump higher.  Plyometrics are designed to teach you muscles how to be explosive.  You can’t do squats everyday and expect to dunk because you can squat 400 pounds.

Your muscles do what they are trained to do.  If you train them to lift heavy weight slowly then that’s all they will be good at.  You need to combine strength training with plyometrics training for maximum results.  Just doing plyos without strength training or vice versa won’t have nearly the same effect.  Training for strength is easy, it’s exactly what you see every guy in the gym doing.

Squats, calf raises, lunges, etc.  Plyometric traiing is different.  To do plyometriecs you need some boxes to jump onto or off of.  You will be doing movements to train your muscles to react whenever they are stretched.  Bending at the knees stretches the tendon at the knee and this results in a natural muscle contraction to prevent that stretch.  Plyometrics will train that reaction to contract with more force and involve more muscle fibers all firing at the exact same time.  When this happens you will have much more power in your jump which results in jumping much higher.

More here on: exercises to jump higher and jump higher in volleyball

Plyometrics

In this article I am going to explain the top plyometric exercises to slam dunk. In vertical jumping and slam dunking, the main thing you should focus your energies on increasing is your muscular power. Plyometrics are exercises designed to increase this muscular power, which is the force your muscles exert in a short burst of time. These sort of exercises can be extremely effective in increasing your vertical to slam dunk because it increases the explosiveness of your muscles. The following plyometric exercises are designed to increase your muscular power.

On Box Jumps

Find a box, chair, or anything that you can jump on top of. Stand in front of the object and explode up onto it – step off and repeat. There are a few ways you can go about doing this exercise. You can try to have a shorter object and try and jump onto it with as little bend in your knees as possible or you can have a higher object that requires that you really give it your all to jump onto it by bending your knees. Play around with what an optimal height would be for your object. Shoot for about 3-8 reps per set for this exercise.

Paused Jump Squat

Put about 10% – 15% of your max squat on a barbell and load it on your shoulders as if you were going to be doing a squat. Perform a squat just as you normally would until your thighs are about parallel with the ground. Explode upward and jump as high as you can. This is more of an advanced exercise so be careful when doing this. Shoot for about 5-10 reps per set for this exercise.

Important Things To Note:

These are just one of the many plyometric exercises I personally used to slam dunk. I used on box jumps and paused jump squats in relation with numerous other key exercises. Collectively, these various exercises helped me to increase my vertical. My training was effective because the plyometric exercises I used were tailored to my specific body type which helped me to make my gains greater and faster. Although the two exercises explained above can be powerful in your training, certain body types will benefit more from these and other body types will benefit less.

Many outside of the athletic field are not really sure what plyometrics are and why they are even important. They are primarily used by elite athletes to improve agility and explosiveness in their sports motion. This of course is important in basketball because it applies directly to improving explosiveness in your jumping ability and agility. This article is about using plyometrics to improve your basketball performance.

Plyometric Exercise #1 – Bounding

This exercise is performed just like running except with every step you will jump/push off the ground. This motion is called bounding and will greatly improve leg strength.

Plyometric Exercise #2 – Knee Tuck Jumps

This exercise is performed by getting into a squat position but doing it from a standing position. This is performed from a standing position and jumping in the air while bringing your knees up as high as possible. The idea behind this exercise is to only let your feet touch the ground for a slit second and go right back into the motion.

Plyometric Exercise #3 – Squat Jumps

Begin this exercise with you feet planted firmly and comfortably apart. Begin the motion by squatting down until your thighs are almost parallel to the ground. Then you want to immediately jump up and at the same time raise your arms above your head as high as you can. You ca take a brief rest between repetitions (i.e. 1 or 2 seconds). Then get right back into it while remembering to extend your ankles first right before you leave the ground.

This article has briefly touched on exercises if performed consistently will increase your basketball performance as far as jumping is concerned. These exercises included bounding, knee tuck jumps and squat jumps. You will need to create a plan that will institute these into something you do 2-3 times a week and measure your progress. If you are diligent with this you will definitely find an increase in your jumping ability.

You need to focus on three things when you design your plyometric workout and not your jumping exercise workout: exercise intensity, exercise duration, and what muscle you want to improve during the workout. If you can abide by all three of these parts, then you should increase your vertical by a lot of inches.

When doing a plyometric training program, you should focus on the intensity so you do not overwork yourself. If you workout has a lot of really intense workouts, maybe you should add in a less intense workout between every few intense workout. Doing this will help you have enough energy to finish off every workout in your program instead of being to tired to finish the last ones.

If you want to design your own plyometric training workout, then you should pay close attention to the duration for each exercise. Unless the exercise is supposed to go for a certain time or distance, you should determine the time. The harder the workout, the shorter the time should be.

It can be hard to increase vertical leap if you do not know what muscles you want to work. That is why you should decide what muscle or muscles you want to work each day and choose exercises that will do that. It is completely alright to decide that you want to work every leg muscle on certain days as long as you plan ahead and know what you are going to do.

Do not get upset if you do not get the results you wanted immediately. Over time these workouts and tips are designed to help you increase your vertical. Some people will see results immediately, while others may take a little while longer. Whichever one you are, keep working to jump higher.

Just because these tips may tell you to do one thing, does not mean you should ignore what the exercise description tells you to do. The exercise description should be the primary thing to tell you how to do the workout. Only follow some of these tips when the exercise description does not say something specific to do.

Follow all of these tips to help you design your plyometric training workout. If you can design it correctly, then you should start to see results pretty quickly. Do not be discouraged if you do not start seeing results quickly, though. It will come in time.

You can learn more about how to jump higher on various articles written by Blake Helton on increasing vertical jump for basketball.