Most people these days spend a considerable amount of time sitting down in chairs.  Our bodies were not designed to do this.  Chairs were made by man in an attempt to create a way to relax.  Unfortunately, we all overuse them.  Sitting too much has caused limited hip mobility in almost everyone through weakened glutes (butt muscles) and tight hip flexors (muscles in the front of your pelvis).

Why should you care?  Well, the mobility of your hips is directly relational to the amount of power and speed you can generate from them when jumping.  It is safe to say that the more mobile your hips are, the more explosive power you can transfer to jumping higher.

How to Increase Hip Mobility to Jump Higher

Hip Flexor Stretching

There are countless ways to stretch your hip flexors.  Before any activity involving vertical jumping, give your hip flexors a good stretch.  Doing this alone can give you as much as 2 more inches on your vertical than if you hadn’t stretched your hip flexors.

Here is one example hip flexor stretch video:

From there, you will see many more on the right.  Pick one or two and do them every day to increase hip mobility.

Using a Foam Roller on your IT Bands

The iliotibial band (IT Band) runs from your pelvis to your knees on the outside of your thigh. Use a soft rolling pin, or Foam Roller, to massage the entire area up and down for at least 2 minutes on each side.  This is done best by placing the foam roller on the floor and rolling on it for the full length of your IT Bands.

Here is a video to follow:

Using a Foam Roller on your Hamstrings

Next, you can use the same foam roller to massage your hamstrings up and down.  To get into the muscle even deeper, you can use a tennis ball while lying on the floor.  Place the ball under your hamstring and shimmy your body up and down to deeply release the hamstring muscles.

Test the Results

Don’t believe me?  Try it yourself; you have nothing to lose.  Perform your highest measurable standing vertical jump.  Take the measurement.  Next, stretch your hip flexors and use a foam roller on your iliotibial bands and hamstrings.  Then perform the same vertical leap you did before, again measuring the result.  Your second jump is higher, right?  Congratulations on quickly increasing your vertical.

For my morning workout, I only did 3 exercises.  I like to vary my routine day-to-day and generally only do each exercise once a week to allow for proper recovery.  I started off with ten minutes of jumping rope.  Nothing fancy, just ten minutes of great jumping work.

Second, I did ten minutes of work with my jump box.  I will try to get some information up on how I made my jump box and the exercises I do with it.  It’s a great tool to increase your vertical and jump higher.

And finally, I moved on to squats with free weights.  The first set being a warm up set at a very light weight.  The second and third sets consisted of the most weight I could handle for 8 repetitions.  Sometimes I only make it to 6!  The important part, for me, is making sure I physically cannot perform another rep.

On to my diet.  Again, this changes day-to-day, but this is what I had yesterday.  Breakfast was 5 raw eggs and a green smoothie (1/2 head of romaine, 1/3 cucumber, 1 carrot, 2 sticks of celery, and a bit of filtered water).  For an early lunch, I had about 2 cups of whole milk (raw – as in straight from the udder) mixed with chocolate whey protein powder.  My next meal was I had roughly 8 ounces of organic chicken and a healthy serving of guacamole with raw food chips.  Dinner was a little over 2 cups of chili with bison meat.  An hour before bed, I had 1/4 cup of almonds and a hunk of cheddar cheese.  Also, throughout the day, I drank a bunch of filtered water.  I believe my diet is just as important at advancing my vertical jump as the workout part.

I hope to post more of these, ‘day in the life’ posts in the future to give everyone a glimpse at what I am doing and have done to condition my body to jump higher.