Before we look at how to construct the perfect leg workout for jumping higher, it’s really important that you understand what factors that will contribute to your vertical improving.
You can’t simply walk in the gym and start lifting weights randomly and expect it to be a particularly effective vertical jump workout.
This type of training is fairly nuanced and requires some understanding of a number of training principles to get the most from your workout.
This article will cover the vertical jump training concepts you need to grasp as well as offer some actionable workouts you can get started with today.
Leg Workout Principles To Increase Vertical Jump
Before you set foot in the gym, you need to have a solid understanding of the following 6 vertical jump training principles if you’re going to make any progress on your vert.
Once this stuff makes sense to you, you’ll have a much better idea of what you’re trying to accomplish when it comes time to actually perform your workout.
1. Understand The Power Formula
The vertical jump is all about developing power.
Power = Strength x Speed.
The more powerful you are as an athlete, the higher you’ll jump.
It’s really quite simple.
The vertical jump can be broken down into its strength component and its speed components.
You can train each of these aspects individually or at the same time, but you’ll need both strength and speed (speed we’ll often refer to as ‘rate of force development’) to increase your vertical.
Some athletes need to work more on their strength than their speed and for others, it’s the other way around.
Increase Your Fundamental Level Of Strength
Virtually all jumpers need to work on getting stronger.
We increase strength by doing heavy lifts in relatively low rep ranges.
The below would be considered a very comprehensive lower body strength workout.
- Back Squat 5×5 @ 80% 1RM
- Hip Thrusts 5×6 @ 80% 1RM
- Glute Ham Raise w/ 40kg 4×8
- Smith Machine Bulgarian Split Quarter Squat @ 90% 1RM 3×3
You could also throw some calf raises in there as well.
The above would all be viable exercises if we were looking to train for strength specifically.
These exercises barely resemble the vertical jump but that’s okay because our objective is simply to make the muscles involved in the vertical jump as strong as possible.
It’s fine if we occasionally neglect the aspect of specificity when training purely for strength.
Speed Training Should Be Jump Specific
A speed workout on the other hand is the complete opposite and ought to be highly jump specific.
Plyometrics are where specificity is king.
When training for speed (AKA rate of force development), the objective is to condition your central nervous system to be able to transfer those strength gains we made in the gym to the sport specific movement of the vertical jump.
Below are some exercise highly effective at doing this.
- Depth Jumps 4×4
- Single Leg Bounding 5×6 EL
- Depth Drops 4×5
- Max Running Vertical Jump Attempts x10
These exercises are all pure bodyweight exercises and are designed to be completed as explosively as possible.
Your goal with these plyometrics is to get your CNS to fire up your muscle fibers as quickly as possible here.
Include Power Training Too
Power movements can be seen as a combination between strength movements and speed movements.
These exercises aren’t going to develop strength a whole lot, but they’ll enable you to generate force far more quickly and efficiently.
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Check out my full list of the best vertical jump training exercises of 2023!
Power movements are often referred to as ‘speed strength’ or ballistic exercises.
Below are a few of my favorites.
- Power Cleans 6×3
- Medicine Ball Tosses x10
- Barbell Jump Squats 6×3
These are similar to plyometric movements except with a relatively light external load and the goal should be to move said load as quickly as possible.
Now you should have a rough idea of what a strength, plyometric, and power focused workout will look like.
2. Do Explosive Exercises First
If you are going to do a workout where you’re incorporating a variety of each of these exercises, some strength and some RFD exercises, then it’s a good idea to do the plyometrics/speed work first, before your strength training.
This is simply to ensure you’re able to perform quality reps with maximum explosiveness while you’re still fresh.
If you try to do depth jumps after your legs are already wobbling from some heavy squats, you risk injury and your CNS simply won’t process the jump work as well as we want it to.
3. Use Post-Activation Potentiation
One of the most effective ways to train your vertical is to marry strength and speed work together using post-activation potentiation.
This means following a power or strength movement with an unloaded/plyometric variant.
It’s easiest if I give some examples first and then explain how it works.
- Barbell Squat Jumps x3 followed by Max Standing Vertical Jump Attempts x3
- Depth Jumps x5 followed by Max Running Vertical Jump Attempts x3
The idea is that you’re tricking your CNS into thinking you’re performing the loaded movement still, even though you’ve switched to a pure bodyweight unloaded exercise.
You’ll actually find that you can temporarily jump higher after performing weighted movements directly beforehand.
For more info on how you can leverage this temporary increase in performance to literally jump higher instantly, which is ideal for testing your vertical, check out my full article on post-activation potentiation in the vertical jump.
4. Training Focus & Periodization
Depending on how advanced you are as an athlete, what sport you play and at what level, you may want to experiment with the idea of periodization.
Training periodization is essentially just scheduling your training into different focus periods for a given duration.
Periodization for the vertical jump might look like the following.
- Hypertrophy Phase – 4-6 weeks
- Strength Phase – 4-6 weeks
- Power Phase – 3-4 weeks
- Plyometrics Phase – 3-4 weeks
Other approaches, such as triphasic training, will break the vertical jump down into its constituent parts: eccentric, isometric, and concentric, and periodize training this way.
During each phase, your focus is on one single objective while you put the other aspects of training on the backburner.
The reason we do this is to make tangible progress in one particular area and to overcome plateaus that often arise when you’re training everything at the same time.
This doesn’t mean completely ignoring the other aspects of training, but you’re simply looking to maintain those areas as well as you can while actively progressing on the focus area.
For example, if I’m in a strength phase, most of my training volume is geared towards increasing my strength and I’m just doing enough to maintain my power and explosiveness.
If I was in the plyometrics phase, I’m doing just enough to maintain my strength gains, while focusing my effort on jumping.
Typically it takes about a third of the volume you used to make the gains to maintain them.
So if I was doing 12 sets of back squats per week during my strength phase, when I move onto the power phase, I’ll be able to get away with only 4 sets a week.
If you’re playing a sport like basketball or volleyball, it’s important to plan ahead when it comes to periodization.
Know when your season starts, when the important tournaments are, how long you have during the off-season, etc.
You’ll typically be jumping your highest after that final plyometrics phase.
This is when you’ve successfully taught your CNS how to actually utilize those earlier size and strength gains in the specific movement of jumping efficiently.
5. Focus On The Prime Movers
All the time I see people asking questions like, how many calf raises should I do to increase my vertical jump?
It’s really not so important.
What’s important is that you focus your time and energy on the quads and glutes which contribute the vast majority of the force generated in a vertical jump.
But do it in a way that’s smart.
What that means is instead of sitting there doing leg extensions or leg press all day, get in the squat rack and under a barbell!
Studies have shown squats to be far more effective than leg press when it comes to vertical jump development.1https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26439782/
That’s not to suggest that these exercises are completely useless or don’t have a place, but that certain movements simply carry over to the vertical jump better than others because of the way they mimic triple extension.
6. Fix Your Explosive Strength Deficit
Your explosive strength deficit (ESD) is the difference between how strong you are and how well you’re able to make use of that strength in the vertical jump.
If you can squat really heavy but can’t jump very high, you have a high ESD and need to focus on rate of force development.
You’re already strong, you just need to learn how to use that strength quickly to create power.
This means you need to be prioritizing plyometrics over lifting.
If you’re skinny and have barely set foot in a weight room, but have amazing natural springiness, you have a low ESD.
You’re able to efficiently utilize the strength you do have when jumping.
Your focus should be on getting stronger.
Leg Strength Workout To Increase Vertical Jump
Let me first preface this by stating that you can use this exact same workout when you’re in a leg hypertrophy phase as well, just that the rep ranges will be considerably higher.
Let’s take a look at a couple of example workouts.
Vertical Jump Strength Workout 1
Warm Up:
You should perform a dynamic warm up to get some blood flowing.
Avoid static stretching if at all possible.
I wrote a full article on warming up for vertical jump training so be sure to check that out.
Back Squats 5×5:
This is a very typical rep range for strength.
You should start your strength phase doing 6-7 reps per set and towards the end of the strength phase, aim for 2-4 reps.
So over time you’re tapering the reps down and increasing intensity.
Standing Calf Raises 5×12:
Even though 12 reps seems high, it’s actually a relatively short set when it comes to calves where you’ll typically be doing upwards of 20 reps in a hypertrophy phase.
In a strength workout, keep the reps below 14 for calves.
We’re doing calves as our second exercise to give our upper legs a chance to rest before the next major compound movement.
Hip Thrusts 5×6:
Same thing as the above will apply for all exercises listed here: taper reps down as you progress through the training phase.
Core (Ab Pulldown, Med Ball Russian Twists, Plants, Woodchops, etc):
Select two of your favorite core exercises and do four sets of moderate reps but go quite heavy.
Just like calves, we’re doing core as a supplementary exercise.
Since volume is fairly low we can get through these four exercises without too much fatigue.
Vertical Jump Strength Workout 2
Warm Up:
As above.
Weighted Glute Ham Raises 5×8:
Probably don’t taper this one down to less than six or so reps.
Seated Calf Raises 5×12:
I like to alternate between seated and standing calf raises but if you don’t have access to a seated calf raise machine, feel free to do these standing.
Smith Machine Bulgarian Split Squats 5×8:
It’s important to include some unilateral exercises and the Bulgarian split squat is simply the best!
Core:
As above.
As I mentioned earlier, it’s important to still be doing some jumping and explosive movements while in a strength phase.
Be sure to do some plyometrics on your day off, or if you want to you can add in a few sets of plyometrics after your warm up before you begin your primary strength work.
Leg Power & Speed Workouts To Increase Vertical Jump
The first workout in this section will be more of a power focused routine and the second workout will be geared more towards pure explosiveness.
In the power workouts there’s less of a focus on tapering volume and increasing intensity over time as there is in the strength phase.
We still want to increase weight gradually but staying around the listed rep ranges is best.
Vertical Jump Power Workout
Warm Up:
Read my article discussing how to warm up for vertical jump training to get some ideas here.
Medicine Ball Tosses x12:
Rest as long as you need to between each rep, at least five seconds.
You want each throw to be as powerful as possible.
Barbell Jump Squats @40% Squat 1RM 5×4:
The research indicates anywhere around 35-45% of your back squat 1RM for these, but start by picking a weight that’s relatively comfortable if you’re new to jump squats.
It’s better to keep the weight lower and simply jump higher than it is to increase the weight while your jump height decreases.
Check out my full article on barbell jump squats for more details.
Max Standing Vertical Jump Attempts x12:
We’re doing these directly after (of course you can rest for five minutes) the jump squats to harness some of that post-activation potentiation effect we discussed earlier.
Hang Power Cleans 6×3:
You can replace this exercise with power cleans if you prefer starting off the ground.
Back Squats 2×6:
We’re remembering to incorporate some strength maintenance work here by including a couple of sets of heavy back squats towards the end of the workout.
Core (Med Ball Slams 4×5):
Any variation of this is fine.
Typically I’d do 2×5 overhead slams (into the ground) followed by 2×5 wall slams (into the wall).
This is a great exercise to fully activate our core and to also get our upper body involved.
Vertical Jump Plyometrics Workout
Warm Up:
See above.
Depth Jumps 5×5:
Focus on replicating the ground contact time of your typical jump approach.
You don’t want to be too quick or too slow off the ground.
Max Running Vertical Jump Attempts x10:
Again we’re doing these directly after the depth jumps to gain the potentiation effects.
This will help train our CNS to become more efficient at these regular max jump attempts.
Depth Drops 5×5:
With knees bent, try to absorb the force as quickly as possible.
Glute Ham Raises 2×8:
Again we’re simply working in some strength maintenance work on the back end of the workout.
Work your way up to two pretty heavy sets.
Core:
Approximately 20 minutes of any of the aforementioned core exercises is fine.
Parting Thoughts
By now you should have a fairly solid understanding of what a typical leg workout for increasing your vertical jump should look like.
I’ve given three examples of different vertical jump leg workouts, each with a slightly different training focus.
By understanding the training principles mentioned at the beginning of the article, you should now be able to construct a well-designed, personalized leg workout that’ll have you improving your weaknesses while getting stronger and more explosive.
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