A message for the Athletes: Why You Need to Improve Your Vertical Jump

Honestly, I’ve never been one.

Sure, I’ve played on teams, and I train in Krav Maga and I rock climb, but I am the farthest thing from ‘athletic’.

Interestingly, I’ve been the strongest guy on the team on more than one occasion. But being strong and looking strong doesn’t always translate into athletics (Just ask the guys who played on my rec hockey team).

From my experience, if you want to make money betting on UFC fights, always bet against the guy who looks like a bodybuilder (with the exception of Georges St. Pierre).

If you want a tip for picking which NHL hockey players are going to have horrible seasons, look for the guys who had special TV coverage of their ‘unique off-season workouts’…usually these guys spent too much time ‘sciencing’ through their workout plans instead of working on hockey skills.

The same goes for the NFL…a sport were being strong is vitally important…but if you get the ‘gym bug’ and concentrate too much on your in-gym performance instead of improving at your sport, bad things happen.

So here’s a little truth that most trainers don’t talk about nearly enough – Bench Press, Squat, and Deadlift performance translate very POORLY into predicting overall athletic performance.

In other words – When it comes to predicting athletic performance these three lifts are ‘mediocre at best’.

Look, I love these 3 lifts as much as the next gym rat, and this is NOT to say that a good athlete who improves these lifts wont become a better athlete, it’s just that they are poor predictors of
overall athletic performance.

In fact…when it comes to predicting athletic performance there is one test that trumps all possible ‘gym tests’.

Your vertical jump (followed closely by your long jump). And yes.. this is the same for men and women.

My understanding is that if you improve these, you have a good chance of improving your athletic performance.

Of course, to improve your vertical jump you may need to use exercises like the squat and deadlift, the difference is in having the proper goals.

In my opinion, jumping, and jump training should be a large component of any athlete’s training program.

Key word being ‘athlete’.

For the average person jumping may not be high on your training priority list (You’re not going to catch me doing jump training any time soon..it just doesn’t fit into my goals).

Now to be clear, I am far, far from an expert in vertical jump training. The same goes for my usual training info go-to-guy John Barban.

However, since jump training is extremely important for athletic performance I was hoping to find a great jump training product that I could endorse, but I’ll be honest, the pickings are slim in this field.

(Considering how important jump performance is to Athletic performance it’s a shame more people haven’t developed jump-training programs).

Luckily, I did find one program that has some great testimonials and solid feedback – The Jump Manual.

It may not improve the way you look, but might help your game.

So remember – for athletic improvement look at your jumping ability, if it’s lacking seek out a jump specific training program like the JumpManual.com.

It won’t guarantee that you become a better athlete, but there is a strong correlation between jumping ability and athletic performance.