One thing’s for sure… telling a high jumper to do rows and chins is a complete waste of time.
A lot of the best high jumpers don’t even do squats, because they don’t want to add mass.
To be a good high jumper, you need to be a skinny person, with a lot of power.
Why skinny? To explode upwards? not just that, but so that you can wrap over the bar and feel light as a feather whilst doing it.
Why start with high reps. if at a later date, he moves the reps down to lower numbers, there would never have been any point doing high repetitions in the first place (even in the first 2 months of training.)
All he needs to do in the first two months (and for the rest of his career) is just not go too close to his one rep max, whilst doing low rep sets. It is just purely neural for the high jumper and allways will be. What is all this ‘adaptation’ rubbish. The more reps you do, the more chance you have of getting injured. (that’s fine if you are experianced - because you know how far you can push it.) he is better of learning how to be simultainiously focuses and agressive - which is exactly what the high jump is. 1 to 4 rep sets is all that is needed in those particualr exercises.
Power gains and power expressions have been shown to peak at below 1 rep max. The %'s vary from exercize to exercize, but think of bar speed.
Top high jumpers do plenty of heavy squats… Trust me. If you keep the volume down then the likelyhood of major weight gain is minimal… infact the high jump is more towards the ‘strength’ end of the scale as it is the longest foot contact of all the jumps. High jumpers are almost all ectomorphs as well and are not as prediposed to weight gain.
Are you using medball throws? These should be used as well as weights. Use lifts to compliment your training. I’d keep it at 2x6.
And the high jump places a lot of emphasis on the upper body during the arm swing.
Who told you that? My boy is a HJ for Nike and he Squats 4x a week. His legs are mad skinny though but powerful. You are right about most High Jumpers being skinny. I follow that trend being 6’5 165 lbs. I just dont have that leg strength that others have…yet.
But im officially confused now with all this talk lol.
I’ve known of high jumpers who preffered combining single leg press, with olympic lifts, and not a classic powerlift in sight.
Pogo jumps with stiff straight legs,(swinging 90 degree flexed arms)
A-skips with good hieght,forwards
A-skips with max high knee lift (stationary)
80m strides,
Jump backwards over bar from standing,
Toss med ball backwards overhead - with jump.
Aproach run up with jump (not over bar)
High jump (run up, and bar clearance)
Box jumps / depth jumps (low volume)
An abdominal exericse (my pref is roman chair)
Swing light weights in arms
Barbell Push press
Auxillary posterior chain - of choice (reverse hyper or glute ham or other)
special flexibility:
wrestlers bridge. (very good for lengthening hip flexors, which is a must for high vertical leaping.) will also add a bit of strength to upper body.
Quadraped straight leg walk, (you walk forwards with very high hips - straight legs - face down - and palms of hands on floor, not far in front of feet.) You are shaped like a tall pyramid or upside down ‘V’. Not too wide a base, keep hips high. High jumpers do this to help clear bar without clipping it with heels - when feet pioint up to the sky. However, in my opinion, it is also a good exercise for achilles tendon compliancy, as well as all other foot tendon / ligaments. You have to dorsi-fex the feet to stop ball of foot scraping the floor as you bring foot forwards. This is yet another way of developing the relationship between the gastroc and the hamstring. Think of it as the suppleness and compliancy counterpart to the stiffness and strength of the glute - ham raise.
Power:
(using a maximum variety of three differant olympic lifts within each 7 day period)
(here are 5 to choose from)
Snatch from hang
Snatch from floor
Powerclean from hang
Powerclean from floor
High pull from floor
Front squats - smith machine. (some high jumpers prefer single leg - leg press.)
(yes - smith machine) with lump of wood underneath the bar. Shoulders go underneath the lump of wood, and hands cross over fore-arms to bar. (a dam sight more comfortable than conventional front squat.)There are two small blocks on the long thin block of wood, to stop wood from sliding.
I don’t like the barbell back squat. For a tall high jumper it might put more emphases on their lower back than their hips. There lower back is allready worked with other exercises.
The back squat also tightens the hip flexors, and vertical jumpers need length in their hip flexors.
In the front squat (especially smith machine) your hip flexors wont be doing much and so they will be released. Released hip flexors have been known to increase vertical jump by 2 inches in same session.
As for stability. it is worked with every other exwercise in the program, so nothing wrong with one machine exercise. As for posterior chain, is is allready strengthened with many other exercises.
Don’t underestimate the quads in vertical jumping. One of the main differances between the sprinter and the vertical leaper (high jump, basketball and volley ball) is the hamstrings, adductors and hip flexors. In other words, vertical leapers all have good glutes and quads, but not all of them have good hip flexors and hamstrings. (but still be sure to train those groups to maximize your potential.) On the other side of the fence - or field: Sprinters tend to have the more complete set of good glutes, hams, quads, hip flexors and adductors. There seems to be a few exceptions to every rule.
I might add one or two ‘specials’ to this list of exercises but the specials are the ‘minutia’ and not what this thread is really about.
Exercise selection for high jumpers is pretty straight forwards.