I cannot possibly emphasize to you enough on the importance of doing the correct and best exercises, if you are seeking to improve your vertical leaps. For me, it is absolutely tragic to see so many misleading information out there, most of which written by people that have absolutely no idea about playing basketballs, or by greedy marketers who are trying to sell something.

I am currently playing for my local basketball team, took on the forward position, frequently in the first choice line up for matches, owing to my vertical jumps. Years before, I wasn’t like this though, I am a 5’8 male, which clearly is a disadvantage in basketball, plus, my vertical jumps used to sucks big time, could hardly leap up to 30 inches.

At that time, I was rather naïve thinking that there were no specific exercises to improve my vertical leaps, instead, I wasted money on dozens of new sneakers, claiming to be able to help me greatly increase the height of my jumps. Well, in order not to say that they don’t work, they do, but gave me a few inches more and that’s all, no long term results.

Again and again I was dropped out of my school basketball team. Having to live with the disappointment, I spent 3 long months doing research on jumping. Honestly speaking, I haven’t read so much of books before, and never since then. My hard work paid off, I discovered the science of jumping.

Most people, when it comes to jumping, assume that the only part working is the leg, and therefore concluded that, in order to improve jumps, all a person has to do is more leg workouts. While they are not entire wrong nor right, they don’t see the big picture. Imagine this, if it is the case that, the higher you jump, the bigger your legs must be, well then is it therefore that the best basketball players are those with legs as big as pillars?!

Picture yourself jumping, are the legs the only part of the body moving? Absolutely not, your arms swing up, while chest and abs tightens, for upper body maneuvers give you stability when you jump. So now, does it sound logical to incorporate exercises of all body parts in addition to the vigorous leg exercises when you want to improve your jumps?

I strongly suggest to you great exercises like squats and dead lifts to build up your legs, combine with upper body trainings like bench press and bicep curls. Do intense workouts, but let it be no more than an hour.

You may have heard of many great exercises that can make you jump higher, but without the correct principle about jumping itself in your brain, they won’t be as effective as you expect them to be.