Tracking the Progress of Your Vertical Jump
One thing that we highly suggest to everybody looking to increase their vertical jump is to accurately track progress. Especially important is to measure where your vertical leap is at prior to starting a vertical jump program, such as Jump Manual or Vertical Mastery. This way, you will know where you began, and after the program is finished, you can assess the program and the results you gained from it. Remember that not all programs are perfect for each and every person, so some trial and error can be a positive thing.
There are countless ways to measure your vertical leap, which can be as easy and measuring your reach, putting a piece of tape on the tip of your finger and jumping up and touching the wall, and subtracting the two heights. These home-made ways will give you a good ball park idea of where your vertical jump is at, but sometimes it is good to find out exactly what your vertical jump measures, especially if you are planning on training intensely to increase it over the next couple of months. To measure you vertical jump with full accuracy it may be best for you to pick up one of several devices that are designed to specifically measure the distance of you vertical leap. The price range on these can be anywhere from $20-350, depending on what type of device you are looking for. The higher end vertical jump measurement devices that cost more are the ones you will commonly see at high school/college gyms and in football combines sometimes shown on television.
We will be putting up some vertical jump measurement devices soon, just to give you an idea of what is out there and how much it would cost. Setting goals, working hard, and then visually seeing the results is one of the most gratifying things that comes along with training vertical jump. It is exciting after two months of hard work to see that you have gained over six inches of vertical leap, which is why we highly recommend that you measure you beginning and end results while training vertical leap. It has proven to be an amazing motivational tool for all types of athletes, and it can do the same for you too.
(While measuring results is important, we thought we would add this side note- measuring your vertical leap too frequently is not a good thing. While training your vertical jump you should only measure your results about once a month, if not even less frequently. If you are constantlymeasuring your vertical jump multiple times a week, the results will be less noticeable, and you will be wasting precious energy that could be going into your workouts. This can potentially slow your progress and also lead to discouragement, so we advise against measuring progress more than twice a month)