Athletes who participate in the high jump, volleyball, and basketball have the highest vertical leaps, but how do they get there? Some people are born with natural gifts, but even the best have to train if they want to jump higher. There are many ways to increase your vertical abilities.
Do trampolines help your vertical jump? These springy ‘toys’ are more than mere fun, so read on to learn how they can help you train.
Trampolines help your vertical jump by building the muscles, control, and stability in both your back and abdominal muscles, creating a stronger, more stable core to make higher leaps. By building and maintaining these muscles, it gives you better balance when you leap from the ground.
Table of Contents
5 Ways Trampolines Can Increase Your Vertical
It’s no surprise to anyone that spending your time jumping makes you better at jumping.
The same can be said for anything you work on hard or often enough. In fact, since the gains are gradual, we seldom stop to think about how and why we are improving, so I’ve broken it down for you.
Here are the five ways trampolines can increase your vertical:
1 – Muscle Workout
Jumping on a trampoline can help increase your vertical jump by building muscles. It does this in different ways.
A small rebounder trampoline, like many people, keep indoors, is excellent for your legs and glutes. Meanwhile, larger outdoor trampolines help work on your core and deep or lower back muscles.
One of the nicest things about choosing a trampoline for your workout is that it helps you do all the muscle work with none of the heavy impact on your joints.
This means you can jump for longer with little to no pain or strain. However, the lack of damaging effects does not reduce the effectiveness of the trampoline workout.
Small, fast bounces help your muscles build fast-twitch muscle fibers.
As Healthline explains, “Fast-twitch muscle fibers are mainly only used when the body needs to make sudden, more powerful movements… Slow-twitch muscles use energy slowly and fairly evenly to make it last a long time. This helps them contract (work) for a long time, without running out of power.”
The fast-twitch muscles are the ones you need for jumping. Higher jumping you’d do on a giant trampoline in your yard or at the trampoline park is suitable for increased core and back musculature.
The slow-twitch fibers that help maintain your stamina are found deeper in the muscles. These allow your body to contract a muscle for longer without fatigue.
2 – Bone Density
If you’re planning to do a lot of jumping around, you’ll need more than muscle. A strong skeleton with dense bones that can handle multiple impacts is a part of staying healthy.
You can increase your bone density through trampolining. The gentile sensation of the bounces creates an impulse or wave that ‘tells’ your bones you are exercising regularly.
This causes your bones to react by creating denser material. The effect is so profound and universal that people with osteoporosis or those with a higher risk of it are often encouraged to take up rebounding as a preventative or healing measure.
3 – Cardio Fitness
It’s no secret that exercise is good for your heart. Rebounding or bouncing on large trampolines is exercise and counts as cardio.
Regularly engaging in cardio training makes your heart stronger and more efficient.
The strength and efficiency ensure that the blood, and oxygen its cells carry, get to every part of your body when you need it most.
Having plenty of readily available oxygen means your muscles work better when making those vertical jumps.
Athletes who jump for a living typically do jump-squat training, but doing this on a trampoline can help prevent fatigue while increasing your heart health.
You will have the explosive power to jump and the oxygen to your muscles so that you can do it repeatedly.
4 – Balance
Balance is vital for vertical jumps and everything else you do.
We walk, run, jump and move every day without much thought to how that happens, but if you’ve ever had an inner ear infection, you’ll know how easy it is to fall or miss a step when your balance is off.
Studies show that using vibration for training helps increase their balance, but so does trampolining, and it’s a lot easier and more cost-effective to set up a trampoline than a vibration pad at home.
5 – Aim and Control
Whether you play a sport like volleyball or basketball, or you just want to be in control of your movements and feel more stable on your feet, the way you land from a vertical jump matters.
Going up is often the easy part, especially with a flexible mat that helps you get airborne. Coming back down and landing right takes more practice.
By using a trampoline, you are unconsciously working on your aim and body control all the time.
Each landing is a learning experience for your body, and the stretch from the mat makes it a little less firm and simple than landing on the ground, so you work harder to plant your feet.
Regular practice will help you gain the height you want vertically and come down safely again so you can keep moving after jumping.
Helpful Tips To Know About If Trampolines Can Help Your Vertical
- Trampolines come in many shapes and sizes. For the best possible workout to increase your vertical jump, it would be best to invest in an indoor rebounder and a larger outdoor trampoline. Using both will let you get the best of both worlds with small and large jumping, so you gain all the benefits to your vertical. For more information on how trampolining can help your vertical jump, check out this video from PJFPerformance. They explain how it works and offer tips.
- Trampoline jumping isn’t just ‘theoretically’ helpful. The science backs it up. According to NASA’s study on rebounding, jumping on a trampoline can increase your oxygen uptake by up to 68%. They also noted that “This makes it possible to exercise the entire body knowing that there is no undue pressure applied to part of the body… each part of the body is receiving the necessary environmental stresses it needs to become stronger cell by cell.” and “The efficient use of the vertical forces of acceleration and deceleration to produce internal loading by directly opposing the gravitational pull develops more biomechanical work with less energy expended, thus less oxygen used and less demand placed on the heart.” In short, trampolining is not just a great workout. It’s more efficient and causes less damage to your body.
- A trampoline isn’t the only way to get a better vertical jump, but it’s still the best. Soon, there may be colonies on the moon or Mars and hotels orbiting the earth. That higher jump means you or your kids may someday be capable of feats we call superhuman now, thanks to lower gravity. However, the people who train on a trampoline will still be healthier, more balanced, and able to jump higher than their companions.
Final Thoughts
Improving your vertical jump is essential in many sports and a few professions, but it can benefit anyone.
Using a trampoline to work on your vertical jump is one of the smartest ways to help build the muscles, stamina, stability, cardio health, and more.
Trampolining is also efficient, so you use less oxygen and incur less physical stress and damage while building muscle and strengthening your bones.