What’s the best way to train vertical jump?
Bar none. The best way to train a vertical jump for athletes is utilizing Olympic lifts: snatch, clean, and jerk. So to be specific, full snatch, full clean, and also jerks, partial lifts, power snatch, power clean, power jerks.
Bar none other than if you are a long jumper, triple jumper, high jumper, and that is your job, that is your sport. Other than those specific triple jump activities or training for it to be a better triple jumper, a better long jumper, a better high jumper.
I’ve used all kinds of different methods and those Olympic lifting methods. Those variations, rep sets, and so on and so forth when done properly, increases jump, vertical jump ability, period.
I don’t want to hear this all Olympic weightlifting is too hard to learn. No, it’s not. We have taught athletes how to lift in one session.
The biggest thing is, teaching these methods is mobility, flexibility, and coordination, obviously, but these things can be taught easily in a week. So on average, most of our athletes learn how to utilize Olympic lifts properly, proper sequencing patterns within a week.
The biggest problem why most strength coaches, other than they don’t want to teach it, they’re too lazy to teach it, or they think it’s too complicated to teach, is they don’t have the patience or the right system to help the athletes grasp these methods properly or they don’t want to take the time to go learn it themselves.
So for me to be proficient in Olympic lifts, I had to go learn to do these methods and then apply it to my athletes. There’s no way that I could get around it because I knew the benefits and across the board for my hockey players, sprinters, football players, soccer players, baseball players, they will tell you they have increased their vertical jump.
For example, I’ve had a football player. He was out of the league for a while, he came to me to train. He trained with me for a season. He went to a combine and he basically blew away his numbers that he had at a combine three to five years prior to that. He was an older athlete and he couldn’t believe it. So many times I’ve had athletes say to me, Wow! I feel more powerful on the ice.
Example: PK Subban. I’ve been training PK for about eight years. About year four, year five, I started to introduce Olympic weightlifting. I’ve always used Olympic weightlifting, but I didn’t use it as much as frequently. I would use it once a week, you know, one lift and so on and so forth. But it’s all about how you apply it, how frequently, and so on. He said, bar none. His power output was tremendous. His first step, tremendous. When he grabbed that ice and took off, he said like wow, he can directly correlate that to Olympic weightlifting.
I’ve had athletes do standing long jump, vertical jump, and so on and so forth. And Olympic weightlifting produces so much power in the athlete. It’s incredible.
I don’t care what people say. They try to duplicate this with, you know, just using jumps and so on and so forth, but it’s impossible.
One of the problems in Olympic weight lifting makes you apply force quickly in different angles. So your joints, ligaments, tissues, and fascia have to be able to adapt quickly—apply and combat and deal with these forces at these different angles to commit to a certain lift. The transfer, the storing of elect strain energy, reactive ability, jumping, cutting force—the application is bar none.
So when Olympic weight lifting is done correctly—implemented with the right sequence in your reps and sets—produces tremendous vertical jump power.
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