| By :
Glenn Devey
Listen up people, I like to keep to things simple. If there's a short-cut, a neat list or a memory trick that's going to help me get something right every time I'm there at the front of the queue. I've always applied that philosophy to my vertical training and my business affairs, and best I can tell it seems to be working. There's lots of components to jump training, so I thought I'd lay some of them out in a simple way for you to use in your own endeavours - whether it's in workout time off the court, or evaluating a new programme. Oh and by the way, they all start with the letter "S". (Told you it was simple.) Strength Strength and Speed are actually linked, but for the sake of breaking them down into useable chunks of information, I'm going to keep them separate. The bottom line is that strength training increases the diameter of your muscle fibre. Larger muscles are able to contract with more force, and yes you've guessed it, more speed. There's a catch though; the best performance improvements come from more strength but with equal or less body mass. Think about it - gaining strength but putting on weight (i.e. the wrong ratio of muscle fibre to body fat) you just negated the effects of the increased strength. An increase in muscle size is probable. More belly fat isn't, and should be avoided. Aim for an increase in strength with some increase in lean muscle mass; this isn't Mr. Universe. Speed We already touched on this, but to re-iterate, you must work on contracting your muscles quicker in order to drive more force back through the ground for an explosive take-off. As I said - increased strength is one way to do this. If you remember our friend Newton from your Physics class, he said that Force was equal to Mass times Acceleration. Mass is equivalent to your body weight and acceleration is the change in speed that you achieve at the moment of take-off. Five points if you made the connection again between strength and body mass in vertical training. Suppleness Supple and flexible muscles expand and contract quicker. (See how this stuff all starts to link up?) The looser and more pliable your muscles are, the quicker the expansion and contraction, the more force you can apply to take off and the higher your vertical jump! Muscle movement is always achieved through the complementary action of two opposing muscles - the working muscle and the antagonist. This essentially means that as one contracts (gets shorter) one must expand (get longer). In the case of a vertical jump, the Quadriceps at the front of the thigh have to shorten and the hamstrings have to lengthen. An increase in flexibility of the hamstring results in an increase in speed of elongation. Think of a rubber band, and how quickly it snaps through the air. Supplementation If you're involved in serious vertical training (and I assume you are if you're still reading) then you know that there's an optimal balance of protein, carbs, fat and fibre in order to keep the body fuelled and maintained. With the modern food chain being what it is however, adding a helping hand in terms of vitamins, minerals and performance enhancements (legal ones only) will speed up the performance improvement process. It's a huge subject, and too large to tackle here. But I'll leave you with one question to ponder; What quantity of protein do you get through in one day? Most players and competitors I speak to simply don't eat enough of the right stuff. If you weigh in at 175 without eating more than 100 grames of protein, you're seriously under egging it... literally.
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