I was wondering if any of you know some exercises to strengthen the muscles used to jump. I play ultimate frisbee and high hops are a great asset. I know I could have Googled this, but I want to see what you know. It is my goal to be able to dunk a tennis ball on a 10-foot rim. I’m about 6 inches shy.
My friend played basketball and he would stand on the edge of a stair or something with his toes and his heels hanging in the air. He would then just flex his feet to go up and down. Sorta like squats for your feet. It’s kinda hard to explain. I’m not sure how much he did though.
David
doing that excercise listed above will help. also, jump rope. seriously. it increases your calf muscles a ton. Those are the main jumping muslces. jump rope a lot. it’ll help. For the record i’m 6’4, and painfully white and i can dunk a standard basketball on a normal (10foot) hoop. I used to jump rope like crazy. Also using good form will help with jumping higher, use your arms to help propel you upwards. you could also try googling some more excercises.
Wrong wrong wrong.
See Specificity Hypothesis.
All of the ideas posted above will give a small amount of transfer, but to get the maximum amount of transfer you need to replicate the resistance, speed, and motion. Knowing this, to improve your jump, you need to practice jumping to get better at jumping.
To jump higher, it is simply to start jumping…
But, if you need some more pressure, and faster results, put some weights on your shoulders.
And then do the ordinary “sitting down”, and then rise quickly, do this a ~10 times, remember that you are training an explosive movement, don’t use to much weights, it should be like jumping from both of your feet, but never leave the floor…
And… put something soft between your shoulders and the barbell.
When you do the toe raises, hang something really heavy over your shoulders. That’ll give you a much better workout.
Exactly. Jump more and you’ll jump better. I’m 5’9", and when I was younger I dunked a basketball on a 10 foot rim.
Remember that if you’re following this suggestion, don’t do this at the top of the stairs. If you lose your balance and fall down the stairs backwards, it’s going to hurt. 
As a honky who used to be able to two-hand reverse dunk at 6’2" I can assure you that having big feet helps a great deal. Toe lifts are the most important exercises for leaping ability and standing with your toes on a two by four is adequate but the stair technique described before would work well also. Jumping starts with your large leg muscles accelerating your huge mass vertically. The last thing to happen before you leave the ground is that your foot extends (preferably a LONG foot) and you push off the ground with your toes. This is what is required for vertical leap, no cross bar, just how high can you get off the ground or how high a point can you touch on a wall.
To high jump, a great deal depends on your ability to move your entire mass in a co-ordinated effort to make every part of your body just barely clear a suspended crossbar. For the western roll it’s important to be able to transfer forward momentum into vertical momentum by running up and stopping abruptly on your jumping foot and swinging both arms and your non-jumping leg as well as jumping at the correct time from your power leg. Then all parts should curl smoothly over the bar. To flop, the momentum tranfer after the run up is done using the entire upper body backwards by flexing the abdominal muscles and lifting the arms and non-jumping leg. Again the final elegant move is in getting one half over the bar and folding to allow the other half to lift at just the right time.
People with tremendous vertical leap are not necessarily good high jumpers and vice-versa. When I was seventeen I could reach over a basketball rim and touch the backboard. I could reach a little over eleven feet on a wall. I could easily kick the net on a basketball goal (something over eight feet) but I could barely high jump over 6 feet because my timing sucked so badly.
Check out this site. I have gotten a few products from them or by them over the years, and have been very pleased with the results. THe guy that runs it used to be a pro football strength coach.
From what I understand, jumping ability is mostly determined by the ratio of fast twitch muscle fibers in your corpus. You can train it up some, but you can’t change your genetics, which is a huge part of speed and jumping ability.
My daughter (17) is on the junior national track and field team and they have everyone doing a lot of plyametrics (hope that’s spelled correctly) to maximize their vertical. I reckon the Olympic coaches knew something, so you might look into this.
JL
I think you’re my new hero.
Once again. Doing weighted jumps, or calf raises or things like that are not the best way to improve a skill like a vertical jump. Even plyometrics are not the best way. Plyometrics involves things like jumping off of a box and jumping immediately after. By practicing this, you will get better at jumping off of a box.
There will be some transfer from doing these different things, but to best improve your vertical jump, you need to practice the same vertical jump you want to improve.
You will get the greatest transfer if your training is specific to the criterion task.
ok harper you seem like the expert so let me ask you (actually anyone who wants to respond is welcome to do so)–
im 6’4, but cannot dunk because i can’t palm a basketball. i have munchkin-sized hands. my vertical is pathetic. im willing to do anything. Should i be doing one footed calf raises? Two feet? With or without weights on my shoulder? Does jumping rope actually help? any other excercises that you think I should be doing? I have size 13 feet so I should be a good leaper. For some reason I’m not.
I dont like the squat-jumps, they seem really hard on my knees (when I bend all the way down, then burst up as fast as i can)
-grant
I remember for a fact that the Cuban high jump record holder (Satomayor??), the only human to ever clear 8 feet, improved his vertical by doing a ton of heavy squats. No doubt he also did a ton of straight jumping, but cross-training has long been recognized as helpful, even if you’re not replicating the exact motion you want to improve.
JL
I think you should be doing two footed calf raises (toe lifts) on a slightly raised platform and should do it with weights. If your hands are too small it will be easier for you to use both hands and jump off both feet. For the rest of the exercises, play basketball with ankle weights or a weighted belt. That way you’re excersising the muscles you actually use in the way that you use them.
If you want to be a high jumper, some entirely different approach should be used.
for some reason i can jump about 6-8 inches higher off one foot than off two. i suppose ill have to work on that. i wonder if i can make some makeshift ankle-weights? put rolls of quarters in my socks or something 
as far the calf raises with weights, is it okay to just hold the weights in my hands or does it have to be on my shoulders?
-grant
i suspect that may have something to do with the non-off-jumping leg swinging and giving some momentum to the jump
dig a hole in your backyard
one foot deep
jump out of it 100 times everyday
next week, dig it out another foot
jump out of it 100 times per day
repeat
since u want to jump higher for Ultimate Disk, wouldn’t it be easier to just get some team mates who can throw properly?
have u tried in on unis yet?
We almost got a game of unicycle Ultimate ‘Frisbee’ going one time (that’s what we call it here), but we could never get our schedules coordinated. I think that would be the greatest game ever…
Ok, so I’ve found a few exercises I think will help the most; namely deep knee bends and deep knee bend jumps, calf raises, and jumping rope. I would do polymeric, but I have bad knees, and just seem like a twisted knee waiting to happen. Anyway, I don’t have a jump rope and I was wondering if you had any suggestion on where to get one and what brands I should look at. Can I just get a cheap one at Wal-Mart?
Thanks for your help. I’ll keep you updated if my jumping improves.
Daniel