Physiology of Jumping Higher

Beach Volleyball Workout to Jump Higher in Sand
Formerly known as jump training, plyometrics are exercises developed to increase your vertical leap. The words plyo and metrics actually stand for measurable increase. Beach volleyball vertical leap plyos workouts are the best way to go to increase you effectiveness of jumping in sand.

Plyometrics links strength with the speed of the muscle to produce power. Plyometrics are exercises designed in a way to enable a muscle to reach maximum strength in the shortest time possible.

When you brain tells your muscle to fire it does so by sending nerve impulses to the muscle fibers which causes a chemical reaction. When you bend down prior to jumping, your muscles react without any conscious thought on your part.

One thing that has been noticed is how the best jumper of all time are on the ground for a very short period of time before take off. This is because your body can actually lose power the longer that it is on the ground.

One of the main focuses of plyometrics is to shorten the amount of time you are touching the ground. Plyometrics focus on using the stored energy in your legs from the loading phase of the jump.

A muscle actually will have more power if it is stretched before it contracts. This is the reason that you need "load" before you jump.

Muscles behave in many ways like a rubber band. The more you stretch a rubber band the more power it will have when you let go.

An example of how our muscles react to stretching is the knee test. When the patella tendon under the knee cap is tapped, your muscle will react with power with no conscious thought on your part.

A muscle contracts faster when being stretched first. You can't really change the speed of the stretch reflex with training but you can change the strength of the response, which will cause you to jump higher.

Sand Volleyball Workouts

So you want to play beach volleyball in the AVP but you can't get your armpits over the net?
Well, lets look at some workouts you can do so you can learn how to jump higher. Jumping factors in both leg strength and speed which equals power. If you don't have strong legs then you will benefit from strengthening your legs in the gym with weights. You will want to keep reps fairly low because we don't care much about endurance for jumping. Some of the main exercises you will want to do include squats, calf raises and cleans. Now the best way to go about your workout is to do 3 sets where you lower the weight slowly and then go as fast as you can when pushing the weight up.
Now if you already have really strong legs, you aren't going to benefit much more from lifting weights in the gym so you will need to focus more on training those strong leg muscles to be faster. This is done through plyometrics, which are jumping exercises. You will want to do your jumping exercise in sand for 2 reasons. One, you will be playing in the sand so it will transfer over to beach volleyball better. And, 2 because it is much easier on your knees when landing. You want to keep these reps low as well and jump as high as you can on each jump. Some exercises you want to do are jumping at the net 6 times fast (as soon as your feet hit the sand jump again) do 4 sets of six. Then do 4 sets of 6 where you actually let yourself land and adjust before jumping again. Take a chair or something about knee high and sit on it then explode jumping up as high as possible. Do 4 sets of six of this. This will help you squat lower before exploding up to block.

Conditioning For Sand Volleyball

Sand Volleyball is all about jumping. There's not a position that isn't allowed to jump like in indoor volleyball. If you play you have to be able to jump no matter how tall you are. But how do you learn how to jump higher? Very easy, you jump. Anything you want to get better at requires you to practice. But there are more efficient ways to train for jumping than others. In Sand volleyball you need an explosive maximum height jump, not a bunch of repetitive sub-maximal jumps. For this reason, the way you should train for jumping in beach volleyball is different than jump training for other sports. When doing plyometrics (jumping exercises) you shouldn't be doing high reps but rather low reps and giving each rep all your strength. Also, you should let yourself get well rested in between sets.
Most of your jump training should be in the sand because that is how you will be jumping in the game. The approach is much different than on a hard court. Also, because plyometrics are of a very high intensity, training in the sand will be much softer on your joints which will prevent injuries.