“The Importance of Flexibility for Higher Jumping Exercises”

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Private summary of flexibility by Daniel Back

For any sports that need higher jumping exercises there are two types of flexibility, static and dynamic. Static flexibility is demonstrated when a body segment is held in a position that stretches a muscle.

Dynamic flexibility is the ability of a muscle to quickly stretch to a length beyond the limit of static flexibility and then shorten immediately rather than be held. Having high static flexibility does not guarantee high dynamic flexibility, and improving one may or may not improve the other.

In higher jumping exercises flexibility is important for being able to place body segments in the best position for force production and for allowing high speed joint movement, but it is never necessary for a muscle to be held in a stretched position.

Flexibility is vital to athletic ability. Muscles need to be able to stretch to allow for fluid joint movement, both when applying high forces and when moving body segments into position for applying high forces. Also, with muscular flexibility comes the ability to stretch and contract.

Most people will benefit from increased flexibility. For athletes, jump higher for basketball dynamic flexibility rather than static is the goal, so simply doing static stretches is not the best way to achieve the ideal level of flexibility.

You can use these steps for flexibility jumping exercises:

1. A dynamic warm up precedes every workout. Hip extension is the target joint movement, with knee extension being the secondary focus. Using a wide range of motion in strength training, since it not only requires that the body segments be placed in a position that stretches the muscles, it requires strength and explosiveness from that position.

2. The same focus on range of motion during the warm up should be applied to strength exercises. Again, pay special attention to the hip joint. The goal of lower body strength lifts should be to stretch and contract the glutes and hamstrings.

Hip extension is the target joint movement, with knee extension being the secondary focus. Using a wide range of motion in strength training, since it not only requires that the body segments be placed in a position that stretches the muscles, it requires strength and explosiveness of jumping higher from that position.

3. If static flexibility needs to be increased, thorough static stretching should be done following the workout, never before. Static stretching can temporarily reduce force production in the muscles. The glutes, hamstrings, hip flexors, groin muscles, and outer hip muscles are the most important.

4. One more flexibility method is proprioceptive neuromuscular facilitation (PNF) stretching. This procedure involves putting the target muscle in a stretched position, then contracting that muscle as hard as possible for 5-10 seconds while it is held in that stretched position, then pushing the stretch even farther as the muscle relaxes from the contraction. If an athlete starts skipping stuff, his flexibility will stop improving or even regress.

Maybe you can try jump manual program if you really want to increase your vertical jump.

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