Let’s talk about how you can increase your vertical right now. I mean technique that you can do right now, walk outside, and jump 2 to 6 inches higher. In order to understand this technique, you got to understand that in track and field, this is very important. Jumping technique is extremely important to them.
So let me just show you something real quick. That’s Obama throwing with his left hand, not what I wanted to show you, but cool. So check this out. This is an Olympic track and field long jumper. Notice his second to last step. Look how long that step is and then look at the last step. Look how short it is. It’s almost half maybe a less than half the other one.
This is Vince Carter. So he’s about to jump from the free throw line. That is Vince Carter not Michael Jordan. Notice he’s taking a long step and then a shorter step right afterwards.
LeBron James doing the same thing in this picture. A long step and then a short step.
So why are athletes doing this? This is called the “penultimate step.” And so in track and field, they know if you take a long step and then a short step and you do this very quickly and properly, it will pop you up in the air because the long step brings your body down and the short step pops your body up. We call this getting “popped.” It’s kind of like a trampoline effect.
It’s something you can go outside and try right now. So have you to take a longer step followed by a shorter step. Now it’s very important that you don’t take too long of a last second to last. If that step is too long, it’s going to slow the entire movement down and you’re actually going to jump lower. So it’s a very proper specific way to train this, to do right.
In track and field, they do the same steps every single time so they can do this very systematically. As a basketball player, you have to learn to feel this out so you can do it from all the different angles that you’ll be approaching the rim.
