#1 Home Exercise for Athletes – Exercise to Increase Your Vertical and Sprinting Speed
Every single day I get asked:
“Chris, what’s an exercise I can do at home to become a better athlete? An exercise to increase my vertical and sprint faster?”
So, you want an exercise to increase your vertical?
To make you run fast like an Olympian?
Well, to those who are asking, there’s one exercise that trumps the rest. And you can do it as long as you want, every day, without getting sore.
Plus, it will help you run faster and jump higher.
It’s the Bulgarian Split Squat Hold.
How does it work?
I’ll share below…
How I Learned this Movement
When I was in Arizona playing JuCo football, I was hungry to learn any piece of information that would make me run faster, jump higher, and make me a better athlete. In that hungry search, I came across a guy named Jay Schroeder.
Now, Jay rose to fame after one of his clients, Adam Archuleta, acquired an unprecedented 4.37 40-yard dash time.
Lucky for me, he was located a few towns over.
With all the money to my name in my pocket, I travelled over to his facility to be trained by his assistant. Below I’m going to share one of the movements we went through, which he introduced to me as an exercise to increase your vertical, and sprint speed.
How to Perform the Movement
The movement Jay’s assistant had me do was basically a Bulgarian split squat hold. All you need to perform this is a chair or bench.
To perform this movement you’ll place the top of your foot flat on your chair and bench.
Next, you’ll split your other leg out wide, then sink down and back. The knee should be bent at 90 degrees and shouldn’t be shifted to far forward, nor too far back.
The first time I performed this movement, Jay’s associate had me do it for 5 minutes each leg, which was nearly impossible.
I’d shake, quake, and eventually fall, and have to start all over. It took me an hour to complete.
For you, I’d say make it a personal goal to increase the time you hold it for each night, because you’re not going to get sore.
Why It’s Effective
The first thing I’ll address here is why you won’t get sore from performing this movement for long periods of time.
This exercise can be incredibly challenging, especially mentally. However, there is no pulling or tearing of the muscle in this movement. It’s an isometric hold, so there’s no eccentric portion, which is responsible for the breakdown of muscle tissue.
So, how does this make you jump higher and run faster?
Every movement, athletic or not, relies on motor units. These motor units, along with muscle fibers, work to make muscles do work.
When you perform movements like a vertical jump, or a sprint, you want to recruit the MAXIMUM amount of motor units, so you can jump as high, and sprint as fast, as possible.
By holding this position, you’re recruiting maximal amounts of motor units. When you hold this movement for extended periods, you fatigue the motor units that are immediately recruited, calling upon more and more that you DON’T usually recruit.
This activates more motor units in the muscles that are required to run faster and jump higher.
More Exercises to Increase Your Vertical?
If you want to find out how to get off the ground, and find out for free…
Check out my FREE Advanced Vertical Series.
The longer you wait, the longer it’ll take for these methods to work your magic on your vertical jump.
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