What is the best way to train your vertical jump? Bar none, it is the Olympic lifts: the snatch, the clean and the jerk, along with their power and partial variations. The only exception is the athlete whose sport is the jump itself. Long jumpers, triple jumpers and high jumpers have to train their event. For every other athlete, nothing builds jumping power like the Olympic lifts.
A vertical jump is force, produced fast. That is the quality we build. Not a collection of impressive exercises. Not endless jump circuits. Power you can take into your sport.
Build the foundation first
If you cannot control your own body or hold the positions your sport demands, more jump work is not the answer. Build the base.
Squats and carefully selected strength exercises build that foundation. We match the load and range of motion to the athlete. Depth is earned and controlled, never forced.
The Peterson step is one example of the controlled, knee-focused work we use. No single exercise is a vertical jump hack. Every exercise earns its place by addressing what the athlete needs.
Stop Focusing on Landing Mechanics
Parents, coaches and athletes: stop focusing on landing mechanics. It is one of the biggest misconceptions in athletic development. Too much time goes into drilling how to land, over and over, as if technique alone will fix the problem.
It will not. Landing mechanics do not matter if you have not taken care of the meat and potatoes: the foundation of strength, power and explosiveness. The real issue is your body’s ability to handle the load and forces of landing, to absorb force and redistribute it. Without that strength and power, no amount of landing drills will help.
Coach Clance has never taught landing mechanics in 30 years as a strength coach. He gets athletes stronger and more athletic, and the landing takes care of itself.
Think of it as a meal. Strength, power and explosiveness are the meat and potatoes. Landing mechanics are the dessert. Too many people are eating only the dessert.
Build the raw foundation first. Once the athlete can take the load, we add landing work to fine-tune what is already there and take a little more load off the body. Meat and potatoes first. Dessert later.
Why we use Olympic lifts
The snatch, the clean and jerk and their variations make the athlete apply force quickly, at different angles, while coordinating the whole body. Joints, ligaments, tissue and fascia have to adapt fast to produce and handle those forces. That is exactly what jumping, cutting and reacting demand.
Jumps alone cannot duplicate it. When the Olympic lifts are done correctly, with the right sequencing, reps and sets, they produce tremendous vertical jump power.
Do not tell us the lifts are too hard to learn. They are not. We have taught athletes the lifts in a single session, and most learn proper sequencing within two weeks. The difference is coaching. We teach the positions, check every athlete’s movement and select the variation and load they can execute properly.
There are levels to it
Plenty of programs include cleans. That does not mean they are building power. Doing the lifts and doing them right are two different things.
Technique, loading, progression, frequency and coaching decide whether a lift develops power or just fills a line on a program. That is what most programs are missing. For more on how we apply this with hockey players, see Olympic lifts for hockey.
What our athletes tell us
We trained P.K. Subban for about eight years. Olympic weightlifting was always part of his program, but around year four or five we made it a bigger and more frequent part of his training. His power output and his first step were tremendous. When he dug into the ice and took off, he connected that power directly to Olympic weightlifting.
A football player came to us after time out of the league. He trained with us for one season, went to a combine and blew away the numbers he had posted at a combine three to five years earlier, as an older athlete.
Volleyball player Helen Yuan trained with us four times a week for 12 weeks and gained six to eight inches on her vertical. Read Helen’s full volleyball success story.
Denzel Clarke, who plays for the Athletics in MLB right now, trained with us too. He gained about six to eight inches on his vertical, the same jump Helen made.
Blake Simpson came to us as a 16-year-old high school kid with a 26-inch standing vertical. One year later, he jumped 36 inches. That is ten inches in a year. He went on to be named Player of the Week for Little Rock Baseball.
Think you are too short to jump? Donnie is 5’4″. He trained with us five times a week, and Olympic weightlifting was his routine. His training centered on the Olympic lifts and the explosive power they build. The result: he box jumped a 63-inch box, about an inch away from the Guinness World Record at the time, a record set by someone who stood 6’5″. Height is not the limit. Power is.
Our hockey players, sprinters, football players, soccer players and baseball players tell us the same thing: their vertical jump went up. And we hear it again and again from athletes on the ice: they feel more powerful.
Small lifters, huge jumps
Still think you need to be tall, or need endless jump drills, to jump high? Look at Olympic weightlifters. They are not jump specialists. They spend their training on the snatch and the clean and jerk. Yet watch the Korean national team finish a session by jumping onto stacked plates.
It is the same with Liao Hui, a Chinese Olympic gold medalist and world champion weightlifter at 69 kg. Watch him jump onto boxes and plates with the same explosive power he brings to the platform.
Korea’s Sa Jae-hyouk, the 2008 Olympic gold medalist, was measured with a 100 cm (39-inch) vertical. These athletes are not built for jumping. They are built for power, and the Olympic lifts are what build it. That is what lets small athletes jump huge.
Practice the jump
The lifts build the power. Your sport teaches you to use it. If jumping matters in your sport, practice the jump itself. A standing jump, a countermovement jump and an approach jump are different tasks. Arm action and timing matter.
A volleyball approach has demands a standing combine test does not. A basketball player has to jump while dealing with the ball, opponents and decisions. That is why our volleyball strength training in Toronto and basketball strength and conditioning programs build power that supports sport practice instead of competing with it.
Keep every jump rep purposeful. Turning a jump session into a fatigue test does not develop power.
Earn the next level of work
In the Athlete Activation System, Phase 0 is Balancing the Body. Build the foundation. Once the athlete has earned the right, they qualify for higher intensity and volume work.
That work places significant stress on the central nervous system, so recovery and the rest of the athlete’s week are planned around it. The system generally runs 12 to 16 weeks, and athletes progress when they are ready, not on a set date. Training age matters more than copying what an older or more experienced athlete does.
For children, the Athlete Activation System Kids Foundation program is for ages 8 to 13, with no TRUE 1RM testing. The priority is learning and building the foundation. Readiness depends on training age, not the birthday on a registration form.
Measure what matters
Compare results with the same test setup every time: the same warm-up, jump type, surface and measurement method. Change the device or the approach and the comparison means nothing.
One good attempt is not progress. Is the athlete moving better? Can they repeat quality efforts? Are they recovering? Is their sport practice still sharp? Our athlete strength and conditioning program tracks all of it. We are not here to win one gym test. We are here to build the athlete.
What to do now
Build strength. Build the power to absorb and redistribute force. Develop explosiveness with the Olympic lifts, coached properly. Practice the jump. Recover so you can do the work right again. That is how you build a vertical jump that shows up in your sport.
Want to go deeper? Watch Coach Clance break down the best way to train your vertical jump on Dominate Discussions.
About the Author: Clance Laylor
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