Exercises to Increase Your Vertical Jump: A Weekly Plan

Search "exercises to jump higher" and you get endless lists of moves with no logic holding them together. A bigger vertical does not come from collecting and constantly rotating exercises. It comes from training the few qualities that actually decide how high you jump with incredible consistency, patiently applying progressive overload over days, weeks and months. It’s boring, but that decides how fast you leave the ground, and how high your vertical can be. Get that right and the inches follow.

In this article we cover the five qualities that decide your vertical, the best exercises for each (including the simple ones to start with), the training that quietly makes you jump worse, and how to fold it all into a week. And if you would rather have every session laid out for you, that is exactly what our Boring Jump Program does.

First: find your weak link

Here is where most people waste months. Two athletes can have the same vertical for completely different reasons. One is strong but stiff and slow off the floor. The other is springy but cannot produce much force. They need almost opposite training, and piling everyone into the same plyometric program helps only one of them. So before you train anything, find out what your vertical actually is and why it is lacking.

A quick jump test tells you which athlete you are. Compare a countermovement jump (dip and go) with a paused squat jump (sink, hold, then jump with no dip). If the two heights are close, you are not getting much from your stretch-shortening cycle, so elasticity is the weak link and plyometrics will pay off most. If your countermovement jump is much higher, you are already springy and the limiter is raw force, so strength work deserves the bulk of your effort. Your Reactive Strength Index, which rewards a quick, snappy jump, tells a similar story. Our guide on how to test your vertical jump walks through both.

1. Technique: centimetres for free

The biggest easy win, so do it first. The same legs jump higher with a better approach, plant and arm swing, and unlike strength, skill costs nothing to improve. Treat jumping as a skill you practise, not just an output you test: a couple of short sessions a week of deliberate, fresh, maximum-intent jumps, thinking about one cue at a time. Film your attempts and watch them back — the camera catches the slow dip, the lazy arm swing and the shallow plant you cannot feel.

Start with: ten deliberate max-effort jumps, twice a week, filmed. Then work through our guide to jumping technique for the approach, plant and arm swing.

2. Mobility: take off the handbrake

The second-fastest win. All the force in the world is wasted if your joints cannot get into position to use it. Tight hips and stiff ankles cap your jump before you leave the floor. Our stretches to jump higher are the safest, highest-value thing here, so do them daily.

3. Strength: the foundation

You cannot express power if you do not have a foundation of strength to work from. Relative strength, meaning the amount of strength you can produce for every kilo of bodyweight, is the quality most tightly linked to a big vertical, and the testing data backs that up.

Start with the simple wins — they build real strength and groove the positions the bigger lifts need:

• Goblet squat. Teaches a deep, upright squat with a load anyone can manage.
• Glute bridge and hip thrust. Wakes up the biggest engine in the jump, your glutes.
• Calf raises. The simplest win on this page, and the last contact you have with the floor.

Then progress to:

• Trap-bar deadlift. The best single lift for lower-body strength. Loads the hips and the whole back of the body, which is the engine of the jump.
• Back or front squat. Train it through a full, controlled range.
• Rear-foot-elevated split squat. Single-leg strength that carries straight over to a one-foot takeoff.

4. Power: strength applied fast

Strength does nothing for your jump if you produce it slowly. Power work teaches you to put that force down quickly, and here less is more: the goal is to maximise watts on every rep, not to accumulate volume. Keep it low volume and low frequency, done fresh, and remember that deliberate jump practice is itself your main power training — the gym work below is additive, not the engine:

• Jump squats and loaded jumps. Light load, full effort, full extension through the hips, knees and ankles.
• Olympic lift variations such as the hang clean and high pull. Hard to beat for teaching fast force. See Olympic lifting versus plyometrics.
• Trap-bar jumps. An easier way to load an explosive jump if the Olympic lifts are new to you.

The idea that ties this section together is intent to move. On every rep, try to move the bar as fast as you can.

5. Plyometrics: elastic, reactive power

Plyometrics train your stretch-shortening cycle, which is your tendons' ability to store and return energy like a spring. They are also the most over-used tool in vertical jump training. Most athletes do far too much, go too advanced too early, and are nowhere near gradual or patient enough — which is how plyometrics turn into sore knees and stalled progress instead of spring. In our own seven-week jump program, plyometrics do not appear until week four, and when they do they look almost underwhelming. That is deliberate, and it works.

Work from low intensity up:

• Pogo hops. Stiff ankles, quick ground contacts. These build reactive strength.
• Broad jumps and bounds. Horizontal power, plus practice controlling a landing.
• Box jumps. Explosive takeoff practice with a soft landing on top.
• Depth jumps. The most demanding option, and one to add only once you are strong and land well.

Plyometrics are stressful on the joints, so a little goes a long way. Keep the quality high and the reps low.

Training that makes you jump worse

Just as important as the right exercises is what you leave out:

• Piles of plyometrics. More is not better. Past a small dose they stop building spring and start accumulating joint stress and fatigue.
• Long, slow cardio. It keeps you in constant low-grade fatigue and nudges your muscle fibres toward slow endurance dominance — the opposite of what a big jump needs.
• Jumping under fatigue. Tired jumps are slow jumps. They groove sluggish movement patterns and carry most of the injury risk. If your legs are heavy or sore, rest.

A simple weekly vertical jump workout

You do not need six days a week, and you do not need a complicated split. The principles matter more than the exact exercises: two or three quality sessions with rest in between, strength on one day, power and plyometrics on another done completely fresh, mobility every day, and a jump test every week or two so you know it is working. A week might look like:

• Day 1, strength. Mobility warm-up, a squat or hinge, a single-leg exercise, calf raises, core.
• Day 2, power and plyometrics. Mobility warm-up, deliberate jump practice, pogo hops, a loaded jump or Olympic lift variation.
• Day 3, optional. Repeat the strength day a little heavier, or rest if your legs are not fresh.

Never train plyometrics on tired or sore legs. The adaptation happens between sessions, not during them.

That skeleton is exactly what the Boring Jump Program fills in: seven weeks, every set, rep and progression planned, in the order this article laid out. Athletes who follow it typically add 6–10 cm (2–4 inches) to their vertical.

Progress, and measure it

The difference between a program that works and one that wastes your time is feedback. Add a little load or a little height each week, and re-test your vertical every few weeks so you can see it moving.