Should Basketball Players Work On Vertical Jumping?

[Melba Hemingway]

There are t-shirts asking it, if you talk basketball invariable
someone will ask, so why dunk? After all if you can only get 2 points
for dunking why not shoot a 3? To this question I have many reply's
the first being I work on my jump because I want to jump higher! Some
people don't even play organized basketball; they play a little at the
park or in the driveway or something. They don't care about threes;
they might not even have a three point line. To them dunking is just
something that they want to do to impress people and have fun.
There is nothing wrong with this so let's all just leave them alone
and quit trying to preach fundamentals and shooting whenever they
express interest in dunking.
Others people do play organized basketball. They do need to work in
fundamentals like dribbling, defense and yes shooting. But we also
have to remember that vertical jumping and dunking isn't necessarily
the same thing. There are a lot of people that have increased their
vertical jump and have seen improvements in their game without out
dunking.
Good vertical jump training isn't just about jumping, it's about
power. And increasing your power can make you faster, give you better
first step quickness and do a whole lot more for your game.
Yes skill training is important and you can't make a great player in
the weight room. But it's awfully hard to have a good player that
doesn't send time in the weight room as well. There was a day when no
one worried about strength so you didn't have to either. But no that
everyone else is realizing that they can improve their "natural"
physical abilities, you have to do this as well or risk getting left
behind.
I don't think that it's a good idea for basketball players to get too
hung up on power, but they do have to realize that it's very important
and that it's also possible to increase it by a very large amount.
Some people are blessed more than others when it comes to natural
power. But we can all make improvements. And don't let some ignorant
person tell you that increasing your vertical jump or improving power
is the hardest thing in sports to do. Or that it's rocket science
because it's not.
I will admit there are some similarities between rocket science and
improving your vertical jump, they both involve power and trying to
put as much distance between you and the ground as you can. But
vertical jumping is way less complicated.
If you think of it as power training and not just vertical jump
training then you can probably think of many reasons why it's
important on your own. After all everyone likes more power. One area
where pure vertical jumping does become a factor is at tryouts type
events. Sometimes you have to perform a pure vertical jump and you
will want to put up good numbers as some coaches are really impressed
by someone that can jump well. That's because these coaches know that
an athlete with a good vertical jump is powerful and can probably run
and move very well.
And of course there are direct benefits to jumping high as well. First
I have heard, and believe that positioning and timing are the most
important things to rebounding. In fact some rebounds are picked up
off the floor or on the bounce. In other words you don't have to jump
well or even be big to rebound. But there are always a few rebounds
that are grabbed because one guy out jumped everyone else. I even
think that a good vertical jump can help make up for mistakes in the
rebounding game. One example would be when you slightly misjudge the
ball and are caught just out of position. An extra inch on your
vertical can be the difference between snagging that ball despite the
poor positioning or watching it graze off of your fingertips.
So yes you need to work on basketball fundamentals to be a good
player. But you should also increase your power, even if you think
that even after a good power increaser dunking will still be out of
reach. Because power is about more than just dunking, even if that's
power at its best.

Learn How To Jump Higher: http://groups.google.com.hk/group/jumpmanu/