MY TOP 5 EXERCISES FOR 1-LEG VERTICAL JUMP (IN ORDER)
1) 1-Leg Hurdle Jumps
2) Pistol Squats
3) Flying Sprints
4) Bounding
5) Hang Power Clean
1) 1-Leg Hurdle Jumps
Description and Qualities Developed:
1-Leg Hurdle Jumps are an exercise in which an athlete approaches and jumps off one foot over a high barrier or hurdle, and lands on two legs after the completion of the jump. Only one adjustable hurdle is needed for this exercise. Typical adjustable pole hurdles go from 0 to 60 inches in height, and if 60 inches is not high enough for the athlete, the base of the hurdle can be placed on an elevated block or slab for additional height. 1-Leg Hurdle Jumps develop the qualities of the approach, penultimate, plant, takeoff, and landing off the jump in a safe and effective manner. The immense height of the hurdle forces the athlete to approach with a high speed, have a powerful and quick penultimate and plant, takeoff from a far enough distance to clear the hurdle, and land from a tucked position from a height often double their maximum jump height. These qualities, when practiced repeatedly, will improve the athlete’s jump technique and develop the ability for the nervous system and muscles to fire quickly and produce enough force for the athlete to jump higher.
Superiority to Alternatives:
Practicing the skill of jumping is the number one method to jump higher. There are many other different types of maximal height single-leg jumps, including one-foot dunking, high jumping, and touching a Vertec or set overhead goal. However, 1-Leg Hurdle Jumps are superior to all these other exercises. One-foot dunking falls short since the athlete is carrying a ball with them or timing their jump with a lob pass, leading to reduction in approach speed and fluidity of the jump with a faster or longer approach. Also, most basketball rims are 10 feet, non-adjustable, and have pickup games being played on them during most free hours, leading to difficulty in practicing jumping, as the majority of trainees cannot yet jump high enough to dunk, and would have to intersperse dunking within periods of pick up play. Hurdles on the hand can be set up anywhere, indoors or outdoors, and long as there is enough ceiling clearance and the ground is not slippery. High jumping falls short due to the technique needed to complete the jump, otherwise known as the Fosbury Flop, in which an athlete attempts to raise their center of mass above a high bar before falling backwards over the bar. The eccentric portion, or landing of the jump, is not trained in a high jump, as the athlete lands with their back on a padded mat. This means the qualities developed in the eccentric portion of the jump, such as muscle and tendon stiffness and ankle and foot coordination, are not developed. Also, high jump requires specialized equipment that can be hard to come by unless you are currently on a track team, such as the standards, bar, and a padded mat. Touching a Vertec falls short as it is deflating if done too much. Once an athlete has reached their near maximum jump height, with all the flaps down except for the one they cannot reach, it can be quite deflating to whiff and hit air multiple times in a row, with no feedback on how close they were to the next flap, while attempting (and failing!) to reach a personal record. Touching an overhead goal falls short as it is just flat out boring. Let’s say an athlete is in university and can touch a 10 feet rim on their best jump, a jump session of 25 jumps would consist of going to the rec center, running and touching rim, resting a minute, running and touching rim again, resting a minute, and rinse and repeat 25 times. Sounds so fun and interesting! Ever wonder why most dudes never make the improvement from the touching rim to dunking, there’s why. With a hurdle, an athlete can vary their takeoff type and target jump height, making every jump unique. An athlete can jump with either plant from either side of the hurdle, can go from a 3-step, 5-step, or full approach, and turn in the air, tuck or even scissor kick while jumping.
2) Pistol Squats
Description and Qualities Developed:
Pistol Squats are a single leg squat exercise where an athlete stands on the ground or an elevated surface, lifts one leg in the air, squats down on the other leg until the top of the thigh of that leg is below parallel, then reverses their body’s momentum and attempts to rise back to a standing position on one leg. Pistol squats should be performed on a box, as that reduces the flexibility requirement of needing to raise the opposite leg high up in the air, parallel to the ground. Pistol squats develop the strength of the quadriceps muscle, mainly the lower quadriceps (vastus medialis, rectus femoris tendon, vastus lateralis) and the supporting tendons of the knee (ACL, MCL, LCL). The pistol squat can be performed in various different fashions to vary the load on the body, such as holding a dumbbell in a goblet position or placing the hands on the waist or behind the back (difficult version). Using a dumbbell in front allows for incremental strength progression, while placing the hands behind the back can be used as a test or when strength equipment is not around. The eccentric portion of the lift can be varied to develop different qualities. A slow eccentric, or lowering, can improve tendon health, increase muscle size, and teach the athlete the movement. A fast eccentric improves the stretch-shortening cycle of the athlete during the jump, and is optimal for strength development.
Superiority to Alternatives:
There are many other different types of exercises to develop the lower quadriceps, including normal and rear-foot elevated split squats, high bar back and front squats, lunges, leg press, and leg extensions. Leg press and leg extensions are isolation machine lifts, where the athlete lies on their back and presses up on the weight or lies in a chair and lifts up their legs against resistance. These lifts are not done in a standing, athletic position and do not teach the muscles of the body to act synergistically with each other, and thus are not very effective at increasing the quadriceps strength that is usable in a jump. High bar back and front squats are when an athlete places a barbell on either the back or front of their traps and completes a squat. They are the best overall lower body strength exercise; however they come with significant drawbacks for single-leg jumping. High bar squats cause an immense amount of muscle and nervous system fatigue (due to heavy weight and compound nature), greatly increase the mass of the glutes, hamstring, and quadriceps (due to large range of motion), and do not teach the feet and ankles to work with upper leg muscles for jumping (due to being performed on the heels and on two legs). Normal and rear foot elevated split squats are similar to squats but with a staggered stance and the rear leg has the option of being elevated on a bench. These have similar advantages to pistol squats but come with the drawback of needing to use a lot of additional weight for a similar stimulus. An athlete with a 1.5*BW max back squat performing barbell back squats for multiple sets of 5 will typically use 80% of their maximum squat, or 1.2*BW in additional weight. For rear foot elevated split squats (RFESS) the athlete will typically use a bit more than half of their barbell squat for multiple sets of 5, so 50% off their maximum squat, or 0.75*BW in additional weight. For pistol squats, assuming good coordination and technique, the athlete already simulates a squat with 1*BW on their back with a single rep. As such, to simulate a 1.2*BW back squat for multiple sets of 5 with a pistol squat, the athlete would only need to add 0.1*BW of additional weight! This means a 200 lb athlete with this strength level performing sets of 5 squats will use 240 lbs on the back squat, 150 lbs on the RFESS, and a single 20 lb dumbbell on the pistol squat. You can just see how minimally fatiguing pistol squats are for the strength stimulus they bring, which allows an athlete to focus more on sprinting and jumping exercises which are far more important for single-leg bounce.
3) Flying Sprints (10-30m)
Description and Qualities Developed:
Flying Sprints are sprints performed for the development of top speed. They are different from normal sprints in that the athlete does not start from a dead start, but rather runs into the starting line from a set distance in order to achieve maximum speed throughout the distance of the flying sprint. This can be confusing for first-timers to visualize, so a diagram between normal and flying sprints is shown below:
The acceleration distance for a flying sprint depends on the distance of the flying sprint as well as the proficiency of the athlete in sprinting. Flying sprints with a short distance such as 15m or below, will not need as long a run up as flying sprints with a medium distance, such as 15m to 30m. Also, the faster an athlete, the longer the distance they take to reach maximum speed, as their maximum speed is much higher than a slow athlete, and everyone starts from the same zero velocity during a sprint. Flying sprints should be timed, ideally with timing gates. If timing gates are not present, set up a video camera, record the sprints, and load the sprints into the computer software Kinovea to calculate sprint times. Flying sprints improve the ability of the athlete to produce force from the muscles quickly (due to insanely short ground contact times), and strengthen the glutes, hamstrings, calves, and feet immensely. Flying sprints, done consistently over time, will improve the top speed of the athlete, which will allow an athlete to harness more speed into their approach while jumping. Additionally, sprinting at top speed stiffens the tendons and ligaments of the ankle and knee area, allowing for a more rigid plant during the jump before takeoff.
Superiority to Alternatives:
Some alternatives that develop similar qualities to flying sprints include long sprints (50m-100m), double-leg hurdle hops, accelerations, and assisted or downhill sprinting. Long sprints are the most similar to flying sprints; however, they fall short due to difficulty in timing them and a lack of forced intent. Without timing gates and just using video analysis, it is hard to record the entire sprint distance of a long sprint in a manner to which the start and stop positions can be recorded accurately and the sprint time can be recorded. Also, given an athlete is sprinting the same distance, say 60m, a flying sprint would typically consist of 40m of acceleration and a 20m split of recorded top speed, while a normal sprint would just be 60m of sprinting. The 40m run up for the flying sprint forces the athlete to have a smooth acceleration and not reach top speed too early, whereas in a regular 60m sprint, the athlete might reach top speed too early (let’s say in 20m), maintain that top speed for 20m, and be training speed endurance in the last 20m. Speed endurance is not a quality that when improved directly improves single-leg jumping. Double-leg hurdle hops are a high-force, low-ground-contact exercise that can be argued to produce similar adaptations for jumping as flying sprints. However, although the ground contact times are short (around 0.2 seconds), they are still much longer than top speed sprinting (around 0.1 seconds), and even longer than 1-leg jumping (around 0.15 seconds). Also, double-leg hurdle hops are not biomechanically similar to any part of a single-leg jump, whereas top speed sprinting closely models the approach in a single-leg jump. Now onto accelerations, which can be argued to be more beneficial to single-leg jumping than top speed sprinting, due to the acceleration in the approach of a single-leg jump. However, the athlete remains upright and tall during the approach of a single-leg jump, similar to top speed sprinting, in contrast to an acceleration sprint where the athlete gradually rises from a leaned over position into an upright position over the course of the sprint. Assisted and downhill sprints fall short since they teach bad backside mechanics and can cause injury when done too often. Assisted sprinting occurs when an assistance band is tied around the waist of an athlete and is tied again in front of an athlete (usually to a fence or pole). This requires specialized equipment and allows an athlete to reach a supramaximal top speed, but does not teach the athlete to strike the ground with their foot forcefully, due to being pulled by the assistance band. Downhill sprinting is when an athlete sprints on a downhill road, sand dune, or grassy hill. The gradient of the road should be no more than 15% in order to ensure safety. Again, thus exercise falls short since the athlete is being pulled by gravity and does not strike the ground forcefully, also the hamstrings and glutes are at risk of strain due to the sprinting velocities being higher than what the athlete can normally handle.
4) Bounding
Description and Qualities Developed:
Bounding is an exercise where an athlete performs a series of vertical jumps off of one leg with horizontal momentum. The main two types of bounding include alternate leg bounding and single leg bounding; however, combinations involving the two can be made, such as RRLL or LLRL bounding. Also, the approach speed can be varied, such as a slow approach with 1, 3, or 5 steps, or a faster approach with a 10-20m jog or run up. Bounding should never be done with sloppy form, and the athlete should remain upright with the plant foot driving behind the butt after takeoff. Bounding entails that the athlete should attempt to get off the ground with decent height, while covering a decent distance, with a relatively quick ground contact time and maintaining good form. Bounding for Height greatly increases the strength and power of the upper quadriceps muscles (adductor longus, sartorius, rectus femoris) as well as the ability for an athlete to store-and-release energy through a single-leg quickly and forcefully. Bounding can be performed for power (15-30m) or endurance (30m+), with different qualities being emphasized with each variation. Every above average single leg jumper will be able to demonstrate some ability to bound, within a couple sessions of being taught the movement.
Superiority to Alternatives:
Some other alternative exercises include triple jump, skipping for height, single-leg hurdle hops. Triple jump could be an alternative to bounding as it is technically a hop, bound, and jump all in one. Triple jump can be performed from stand still, jogging approach, or, if advanced, a sprinting approach. The main drawback of the triple jump is it requires a pit and a lot of technique and skill to effectively complete. Also, it requires a sequence of jumps off the non-dominant jumping (plant) leg before the main takeoff off the jumping leg. ex. A RRL jump combination for a left leg jumper. These right foot jumps will often not be done with good proficiency in most jumpers, leading to a poor, off-balanced final jump off the left leg. Although skipping for height produces higher jumps than bounds, it falls short since there is a “double” bounce between reps, as the takeoff leg becomes the landing leg before alternating to the other leg. As such, stiffness in the ankles and legs, that is important for single leg jumping, is not developed. Bounding for distance falls short as the vertical nature of each jump is not emphasized, leading to bounding for distance having more of a transfer to horizontal jumps. Single-leg hurdle hops fall short due to the long ground contact times that occur when landing from a single leg from great heights, which are much longer than a single-leg jump.
5) Hang Power Clean
Description and Qualities Developed:
The hang power clean is a dynamic compound lift in which a weighted barbell is raised from a hang position, typically between mid shin and mid thigh height, thrown from the hips, and caught on the traps in a front rack position, in a parallel squat or greater position. The hang power clean is a much simplified version of the clean and jerk lift that is used in the sport of weightlifting. The hang power clean starts similar to a Romanian deadlift; however, the athlete remains in a more upright, squatted position than a Romanian deadlift, in which the back often starts parallel to the floor. The bar is then pulled close to the body to about mid-thigh, after which contact is made with the thigh. The athlete then jumps with the bar and extends from the hips so that the bar is pulled high enough for the athlete to squat under the bar and catch the bar on the traps. The hang power clean is primarily used for a measurement or expression of power, not strength or speed, and develops the power of the hamstrings, quads, glutes, and core immensely. The hang power clean is an outcome-based lift, and is judged by success (bar is racked) or failure (bar is not racked). Max hang power clean to max power clean to max front squat ratios can be calculated to determine the explosivity of a given athlete, with a higher ratio indicating greater explosiveness.
Superiority to Alternatives:
Some other common lower body power exercises include the jump squat, overhead medicine ball throw, kettlebell swing, speed squat, speed deadlift, and push jerk. Jump squats fall short since it is not outcome based, as there is no accurate way to monitor jump height with increasing load. With a power clean, the success or failure of the lift at a given weight provides feedback to the athlete on the force that they generated during that lift. Overhead medicine ball throws can be tracked on the distance thrown upwards by calculating air time, but is hard to incrementally improve on the exercise, as medicine balls typically only vary from 0-30 lbs. Also, medicine ball throws are too light to develop strength and too slow to develop explosiveness for jumping. The kettlebell swing falls short since there is a large decelerative component to the lift, to make sure the kettlebell does not rise more than parallel. Heavy kettlebell swings can also injure the back on the eccentric or lowering portion of the lift due to the added momentum. Speed squats are performed when the athlete “drops” into a squatted position while raising both feet off the ground, before squatting the weight up. Speed squats do not train the hamstrings well and are not outcome-based unless used in conjunction with a velocity tracker, thus fall short. Speed deadlifts are when an athlete performs a deadlift with a light percentage of their maximum weight, say 30-50%, and attempts to lift the weight as fast as possible. Again, there is no outcome to the lift, unless a velocity tracker is present to push intent. Push jerk is the corresponding lift to the power clean in the sport of weightlifting. Push jerks are a fantastic exercise, however they require immense shoulder stability and strength that is not often present in jumpers, and do not work the hamstrings much. Additionally, it has the opposite problem of the other lifts mentioned, as it is too singular in nature, as performing heavy push jerks for multiple reps is very technical and a trained skill that not many possess.
Justification of the Order:
The order:
1) 1-Leg Hurdle Jumps
2) Pistol Squats
3) Flying Sprints
4) Bounding
5) Hang Power Clean
The order includes the jumping movement itself (#1), a lower quadriceps and gluteus strengthening exercise (#2), a hamstring and gluteus speed exercise (#3), an upper quadriceps plyometric exercise (#4), and a lower body explosive power exercise (#5). Jumping obviously is the most important exercise for improving jumping performance, thus takes the #1 spot. After that, strength is the most lacking quality in most athletes looking to improve their single leg jump, and the pistol squat improves strength in a fashion of no other free weight exercise as there is minimal weight load placed on the athlete, as such minimal fatigue is accumulated. Thus, pistol squat takes the #2. After strength is developed to a degree, approach speed becomes the limiting factor in a single-leg vertical jump. Nothing comes close to developing speed in athletes as timed flying sprints, where the athlete tries to sprint as fast as possible for a certain distance. The speed exercise is of lower importance than the strength exercise as for most (less talented) athletes, speed will not be developed without the strength component and strength is more important to a vertical than speed, even for a single-leg jump. Thus, flying sprints takes #3. After this, it can be argued that the three main components of single-leg jumping are taken care of: jumping, strength, and speed. The next two exercises are important auxiliary, or supporting, exercises that aid in improving the first three exercises. Bounding is an important, but often overlooked exercise for improving single-leg jumping ability, as it is commonly thought of as “old-fashioned.” However, bounding trains the body like no other, as it forces the athlete to handle high amounts of vertical force unilaterally, rebounding into consecutive jumps, while moving horizontally. It is a “feel” exercise that while peaking the single-leg jump, most athletes will know if bounding is performed outstandingly, they will be setting a personal record in their single-leg jump. Bounding is a technique exercise, as such is not as important as a speed exercise like the flying sprint. As such, bounding comes in at #4. The last exercise is the hang power clean, which is a lower body power output exercise. The hang power clean is the simplest means using a barbell to measure the power output of an athlete. Increasing the max weight on this lift, due to the high bar velocity needed to bring the bar from the quads to the traps, will show that an athlete has gotten more powerful. Also, the eccentric forces of catching the barbell are similar to the plant in a single-leg jump. This exercise is less important than bounding due to specificity, as bounding simulates the nature of a single-leg jump way more closely than a hang power clean. Therefore, the hang power clean takes position #5.