Volleyball Jump Training

Hello Coach, I love your web site I check it out every few days, you give very good advise.

I am looking for some type of jump training for my daughter. She is an Junior Outside hitter and has great arm speed but see needs to jump higher.

There is a lot on the internet, Do you have any suggestions?

 

Following your website and the info you have given to me and others has helped me and my family. We were able to wade through the recruting prosess and my oldest Daughter has a full ride with a D1 school.

 

Thank you for help!

J.L.

Thank you for the compliments and hopefully you have also used Inside College Volleyball as a resource your VolleyFamily!

Jump training, speed training, explosive training, and similarly titled conditioning and physical improvement programs have gained tremendous popularity these last number of years.  It is common to see such programs employed by club/high school teams, or by families outside of the team practice, to enhance the on court volleyball success.

What concerns me about such programs, is the wear and tear upon the young athlete's body.  In general, any physical routine which is specific to an objective will yield results, especially with the younger athlete.  If you want to train a young athlete to jump higher, to jump further, to do more pushups, to hold their breath longer, to run faster, the run faster backward, to dig a hole in the ground faster; all of this can be done via training (just like all of it can be done for any age group but the results will come quicker and better/bigger with the younger athlete).

While the younger athlete can recover quicker from such physical stresses (and remember that conditioning/training exerts much stress upon the body), it is still stress upon a still developing body and may manifest itself in some physical reaction that could not be realized for a couple of years.  

College volleyball is tough; the matches are longer and played against elite caliber athletes, the physical training is more intense, the mental demands upon the player are more, etc.  A high school player cannot arrive worn down; shin splints, sore back, sore shoulder, stress fracture, tendonitis - all common ailments of intense training regimens which high school age players do often employ.

Think of jump training in two ways - A candy bar or a granola bar.  The candy bar jump training will give you the increase in jump, it will be intense and you will see immediate results, but you will also have a comedown or crash.  A granola bar will give you a small, steady improvement in your results without the crash.

I can't recommend one specific program or another but rather a philosophy - Slow and steady with small consistent gains in leg strength, thus improved vertical jump. Go for the granola training not the candy bar rush!

Coach Matt