What is the best way to improve my verticle? Does working out stunt your groth?Does the beach help? Is?

Question

im a volley ball player who is wondering about ankle weights and working out and is looking for the best way to improve my vericle and doesnt want to hurt my body with ankle weights

Answer 1

One of the best things you can do is plometrics. There are various exercises and you can find them by searching the web. They are things like lunge squats, jump squats, and drills involving jumping.

Answer 2

The BEST way to improve your vertical is to jump - ALOT.  

Working out doesn't stunt your growth, but it can cause problems with muscles if you're too young.  If you're atleast 15, there shouldn't be any problems with weight training, but prior to that, you shouldn't try to bulk up.

If you're going to use weights, don't use them on your ankles - they're tough on your joints.   Wear them as wrist weights and do all your jumping, or get a weight vest and do exercises in them.

Since VB is a sport where you mostly have to do 100% exertion in a small space of time, it is better to do exercises that consist of expending a lot of effort in a small amount of time.  

Therefore, better exercises would be:

Squats w/Dumb Bells,  Lunges with weights,  Jumping rope (GREAT warmup),  Jump Soles (essentially shoes with no heels so you have to stay on your toes), depth jumps (advanced - need to be able to squat 2X your weight atleast), tuck jumps (jump in the air, grab your knees, release before you land, and do it again 15x), and lastly touch drills - Jump as high as you can 25 times staying on the ground as little as possible (don't let your heels touch)

Beach is better for developing movement than height.   The timing for hitting is completely different, and on the beach, you don't jump nearly as much as you do indoors (atleast if you're playing 2s on the beach) - It will help you to develop a "burst" of speed, but to turn that into a jump requires you to "retime" your jump to turn that horizontal speed into vertical height.

That said, I typically jumped about 4-6" higher indoors than I did on the beach after playing on the beach for the summer.

Answer 3

The beach will help your jumping technique because you have to jump correctly to get any elevation out of the sand.  As far as exercises, you want to work on your calves as that is where a lot of your explosiveness will come from.  Calf raises, jump-rope, step downs are all good exercises for that.  Obviously you can't neglect the rest of your legs/body, but working on the calves should give you that extra spring in your jump.

Answer 4

Work on leg lifting in the gym for starters. Squats etc.

Plyometrics are also a great way to build explosive ability.

Lastly, you could also try and buy some Jump Shoes. Sort of like a platform shoe that puts most of your weight on your calves. Be careful with these as injuries can occur but done right you can increase your vertical up to 9 inches.