A deep dive on how to jump higher, today
There are really only two methods that you can use to jump higher.
- Become a physically dominant specimen. Get stupid strong, increase your nervous system’s efficiency, and improve your tendon stiffness/elasticity.
- Use better technique. This allows you to get the most out of whatever your physical capabilities are.
Method 1 takes time. You can’t cheat the process of changing your body’s structure.
Method 2, however, can yield instantaneous results. For some people it might take time to learn the new technique. But, once that new technique clicks, we can see a night and day difference.
There are several different types of jumps, like a standing vert, 1-foot approach jump, and a 2-foot approach jump. Compared to the other two, technique plays the biggest role in a 2-foot approach jump.
Today, I want to dive deep into how you can optimize your 2-foot approach technique to start jumping higher immediately.
We can break down the 2-foot approach vert into 4 phases: approach, penultimate, plant/block, and takeoff.
TL;DR
- Optimize your approach speed. Run too slow and you’ll be leaving momentum on the table. Run too fast and you’ll drift too far forward in your jump.
- Have a big penultimate push. A long penultimate sets the stage to take everything from horizontal to vertical.
- Master the slight turn on your plant/block landings, so you can have a steep angle. You have to be strong enough to handle a steep angle, though. If you’re not strong enough, you could end up hurting yourself.
Approach
The approach is all about building up enough speed, but not too much speed. The faster you run in your approach, the more horizontal force you’ll have.
More force leads to a higher jump, BUT you have to be able to transfer that horizontal force into vertical force in your penultimate and plant/block phases.
If you run too fast, you won’t be able to transfer all of that force into vertical force. You’ll end up jumping forward instead of straight up.
If you run too slow, then you won’t have enough force to really jump high.
Both approaching too fast and approaching too slow can limit jump height.
Penultimate
If you really want to change your jump height today, master the penultimate step.
The word ultimate means “last,” so penultimate means “second to last.” The penultimate step is the second to last step that you take in an approach vert.
The penultimate sets the stage to take all of that horizontal momentum that you built up and redirect it vertically.
The three big factors you want to look for are length, level, and swing.
Length:
A long penultimate sets the shins up to reorient momentum from horizontal to vertical. The shins land horizontally, which gives them time to absorb all of that horizontal momentum and then release it vertically as the shins rock to vertical.
A good rule of thumb is too look to see if your back knee extends passed your hip in the penultimate step. If it doesn’t, you’ll want to work on your penultimate push to gain more ground.
The long penultimate also sets the hips up in a low position, which flows into our next point.
Level:
Staying low allows for you to land with an optimal length-tension relationship of the muscles and tendons of the lower body.
For the muscles, this allows them to operate in the position where they have the strongest contractions. For the tendons, this allows them to have enough of a pre-stretch where they can recoil out like a rubber band.
By landing in the low position, you can have a quick ground contact time. If you didn’t land in that position, then you would have to lower after you land.
The re-lowering process wastes the efficiency of your elastic structures. If you take too much time on the ground, then your elastic potential energy is dissipated as heat (this process is called hysteresis).
It’s important to note that the lowering should not come from the torso. You want to keep your torso/chest vertical. This keeps your center of mass behind your ground contact points, which gives you more room to take turn that horizontal momentum into vertical force.
Swing:
Having a big arm swing gives your arms room to create upward momentum and aid in your take-off. The forward arm swing should begin at the heel strike of your penultimate step.
By timing this up right, your arms can play a role in giving you more lift.
Plant/ Block
The plant foot is the first foot to land- the leg that lands after the penultimate step.
This plant foot angle should be turned outward. The turn-step aids in having more horizontal shin angles to transfer horizontal momentum to vertical force.
If you’re a right-handed volleyball player, you will use a R/L jump (the last two steps are right foot, then left foot). The plant foot will be the right foot and it will be turned rightward.
The block leg is the last foot to land. It will turn inward (so, it ends up being the same direction as the plant leg).
The faster your approach is, the steeper your shin angle will be. That’s because you have more horizontal momentum built up that you need to reorient in a vertical direction.
The block leg has very little ground contact time (around 0.2 seconds) compared to the plant leg (0.4 seconds).
Takeoff
Your jump height is determined by your velocity at takeoff. The higher your velocity is at takeoff, the higher you will jump.
Cue the summation of speed principle. You want the big, strong, powerful muscles at the center of the body to transfer all of their momentum down the body.
Let’s focus on these three principles:
- The law of conservation of momentum states that momentum can neither be created nor destroyed within a system.
- The equation for momentum is mass * velocity (p = m*v)
- Your body is a system. (It’s not a true isolated system, but the law of conservation is still applicable to a large degree.)
If your big body parts (those with higher mass) transfer all of their momentum down to the smaller body parts lower down the leg, then those smaller body parts will move at a higher velocity to conserve momentum and compensate for their smaller mass.
If your smaller body parts delay moving until the larger body part above it has reached its maximal velocity, then more momentum will be transferred.
How this plays out in a jump is with delayed plantar flexion. You want your body to wait until the very last moment to spring your ankle to maximize the amount of momentum that’s transferred all the way down.
This is how you ensure your body is moving at the fastest velocity possible at takeoff.
Big picture
That’s a lot of information to work through. Some of it’s straight-forward practical information, some of it’s background science that you don’t necessarily need to know.
The big takeaways are:
- Optimize your approach speed. Run too slow and you’ll be leaving momentum on the table. Run too fast and you’ll drift too far forward in your jump.
- Have a big penultimate push. A long penultimate sets the stage to take everything from horizontal to vertical.
- Master the slight turn on your plant/block landings, so you can have a steep angle. You have to be strong enough to handle a steep angle, though. If you’re not strong enough, you could end up hurting yourself.
A quick thought on how no one cares
At some point, your athletic career is going to be washed away into oblivion.
No one will care about what you accomplished. This happens to everyone; some just delay it longer than others.
I don’t say that out of nihilism. I say it to remind you to play because you enjoy it.
Don’t chase athletic greatness because you want to impress everyone with a bunch of scholarship offers.
Do it because you love it.
Enjoy the moment just for the sake of the moment. Enjoy working hard to accomplish a difficult task.
The best part? If you truly love what you do, you’ll end up being great at it anyways.
More from me…
- 2024 is geared toward pumping out more educational content on social media. Follow me on Instagram @gtperformance_ to learn all about athlete development.
- If you think this newsletter doesn’t suck (or maybe you even enjoy reading it), I would really appreciate you sharing it with some other parents that might benefit from reading it. You can just send them to gtperformance.co/free and they can subscribe there!
Thanks so much for your help in spreading the word about long-term athlete development!
Be >,
Zach
Dr. Zach Guiser, PT, DPT, CSCS