Jump rope is an exercise that could be killing your vertical leap.
Does jumping rope increase vertical leap?
It can, but only at first… and from that point on your vertical leap may begin to slowly decrease.
Let me tell you why…
When you jump rope, how high off the ground you jump?
Not very high, right? Maybe a few inches.
So how is jumping a few inches off the ground five hundred times going to help you to jump 30 or 40 inches high?
It’s not.
in fact, it’s going to make you jump lower.
It’s like running a marathon…
If you run a marathon and you wonder why you’re not sprinting faster, it’s because you’re training your muscles to run at the speed of a marathon…
So your body reacts and optimizes itself to run slower and longer and with better endurance…
If you’re jumping rope, you’re training for endurance
Better jumping endurance isn’t going to make you jump higher because jumping high is an explosive movement.
So to jump higher you need to be training your explosiveness.
Some people say that they’ve jump roped and it helped their vertical leap.
That may be true but only in the beginning.
Why?
Because at the very beginning when you jump rope you’re strengthening your tendons and tendons help you create velocity when jumping.
You’re also building a new neural impulse from it (see our post about shock training to understand why)…
Those 2 things can increase your vertical by a couple inches but then that is it… you will not get any more from jumping rope.
From that point on your will begin retraining your muscles to jump lower and most people won’t even get that one to two inches at first.
If you REALLY want to use jump rope to jump higher… there’s a better way to do it:
Only jump rope using 1 leg… Then try to do double-under’s…
Meaning that you bring the rope under your foot two times.
This is important because now you’re putting a lot of strain on your muscle and you’re doing it very quickly so it’s becoming more of an explosive event…
So if you want to use a jump rope to jump higher, that’s how you do it.
However, I do not recommend even that…
There are far better ways to train your muscles than using a jump rope.
If you’d like to use our best vertical jump exercise you can get it here and we’ll show you more videos about things that you should be doing and things that you should not be doing.
I hope this was helpful in showing you why normal jump roping will not help you jump higher in the long run…
…and a better way to use the jump rope if you really want to use it in your workouts.
If you liked this, share it with someone else who you think might benefit from it.
