Best 8 Week Higher Vertical Jump Training Program

Learning how to jump higher is a real challenge for many ballers. With longer legs, it is usually easier than for short ballers, but anyone can find this problematic. What’s needed is higher vertical jump courses.

Fortunately, there are several courses available online that include some form of plyometric exercises that center around developing jumping skills to get higher. A few courses also include suggested weight training to add strength without bulking up much too.

 

Top 3 Vertical Jump Training Programs In 2024

In this review, we looked at the Vert Shock, Jump Manual, and BoingVERT training products to see how they differ, what they offer, and whether they provide value for money.

So, let’s dive right in

VERT SHOCK

The Vert Shock program is an 8-week charger.

There’s no lengthy 16-week or 28-week period here to get to grips with things. It’s dynamic, and fast and you need to be prepared for that. However, for any baller who wants to improve quickly, this course has a lot to recommend it.

The video-based training is split into phases: The pre-shock is before it gets intensive. It will get you moving for sure! You’ll have six days of activity out of the first several (day four is a rest day).

The Shock phase is six weeks in duration. This is where you learn the most about what exercises are important to jump higher, dunk the ball, and hang onto the rim for good measure!

Depending on the week, there are between 4 and up to 6 separate workouts to perform in a given week to get the most improvement. Some exercises will push your core, others your leg strength and some will specifically be plyometric ones for jumping performance.

In the post-shock phase, it’s an acknowledgment that the last six weeks have been hard on your body. Despite at least one day of rest per week, you’re going to feel exhausted by week 6. The muscles will ache, and they’ll be fatigued to deal with.

However, to avoid losing the gains and worse still, your body locks up, in the post-shock phase, the exercises are designed to warm up your muscles and keep your body free from injury.

Who Created the Vert Shock Training Program?

The Vert Shock program was one of the first to gain widespread interest. It was released a year before the Jump Manual (reviewed below) and considerably before BoingVERT was created.

The program was produced by Adam Folker with assistance from Justin Darlington. Darlington is known for his high jumping and dunking skills. Folker has a background playing ball at the college level and went on to become a professional baller too. Therefore, the people behind this training course are or were professional basketball players.

What’s Included in the Course?

The Vert Shock course is the major course in this area. This is why we’ve reviewed it first. Currently priced at $67, it’s more expensive than BoingVERT but cheaper than the Jump Manual.

The course includes HD-quality videos demonstrating the different exercises from each phase. This includes warm-up movements, plyometrics, and other demonstrations of correct form. A planned workout routine for each week and within each phase is provided. They’re also a few added extras for good measure too.

Strength Gains

Despite the training not being about strength gains alone, it’s quite likely that the knees and other parts of the body that suffer from athletic performance get stronger.

While the exercises and the 6 days a week routine are wearing on the body, as a result, once recovery time is included, the outcome is likely to be far better functional performance. Anyone with knee problems may find it helps support them through functional movement.

Conclusion

The Vert Shock course offers excellent value at $67.

There’s also a 60-day money-back guarantee provided for ballers who try the program and don’t get the gains they expected from it.

The Jump Manual

The Jump Manual is designed as a complete solution for people who wish to learn how to jump higher.

It includes both plyometric training to improve your jumping ability along with strength training to increase muscle mass and power to make the actual leaps into the air and land safely too.

The program is sustained over 12 weeks which makes it shorter than some vertical jump programs like the BoingVERT Savage which includes both plyometric and bodybuilding techniques, that’s reviewed later.

Just under three months is a sustainable amount of time to see real improvements when using the training provided without it getting boring. Significantly less meaningful gains wouldn’t be believable because building muscle mass, strength, and flexibility plus jumping higher doesn’t happen overnight or in a couple of weeks. If it did, everyone could do it!

Theory Behind Flexibility, Dexterity, and Muscle Strength

At one time, people believed that strength training meant pure muscle mass. While too much muscle mass slows down an athlete and can hinder game performance, thankfully this is not the only kind.

To obtain real performance, the muscles power the body by running on the court and having the raw strength when it’s needed. However, functional strength is also required. This is the ability to take increased muscle mass and flexibility through more fluid movements using tendons and ligaments, to complete sometimes repetitive movements to deliver predictable results.

When considering the above, this is why it’s sensible with basketball to combine plyometric training techniques to be able to jump high plus weight training too. While the mechanics of the movements to enable higher jumping can be learned alone, only with strength training can the best results be achieved.

Where Does the Jump Manual Come From?

The 12-week program originally came out in 2008. However, the techniques still work as well as they did previously because body mechanics is biology which doesn’t change over time.

The manual was the brainchild of Jacob Hiller. He’s an athlete who discovered that through specific techniques to boost his jumping, he could reach 45 inches off the court with his jumping style.

He later turned it into his training program. Even years later, by looking at his Instagram account, it’s clear that he keeps in excellent shape (sporting a six-pack into his 30s with similar athletic ability as he had previously).

What Does the Jump Manual Offer?

The program is more intensive than some others. Packaging a lot into an integrated 12 weeks, only those committed to improvement should step up to the line for this training.

The focus of video training is to get each student to the point where they have the strongest foundational core and reach the limit of what their mind and body can achieve. Each workout lasts for between 45 minutes to 90 minutes, so they’re easy to add to your daily routine.

Included in the package is a series of video training to demonstrate the type of exercises to build up to jumping higher. This is complemented by ones on different types of weight training that will support a baller in the muscle groups that matter the most to them. There’s also a provided workout regimen to follow for people who don’t know where to begin.

Helpfully, there are also some alternative exercises provided that get into the body weight area for people who don’t own weights and don’t get to the gym often enough. This reduces the startup cost for ballers without access to the best (if any) equipment but who still wish to learn to jump higher and better themselves.

The initial focus is running students through the types of exercises found to be most useful to jump higher. It requires being intentional over a few weeks to see any increases in jumping height. Many students have experienced 10 inches or greater gains over the full 12 weeks.

Muscle development techniques to teach speed and strength – not just strength alone – are included in the next training. This gives greater intention to the strength training aspect and prevents it from becoming boring because there’s a defined purpose to each movement and action taken.

Trigger training is used to enable ballers to react faster to the need to suddenly jump up or to move to a stray ball on the court faster than their peers. Bursting off a line or moving across the court with speed and purpose are taught in this stage.

The nutritional acceleration part of the training is appreciated. For people who don’t have a clue about how to provide their body with what it needs, this will be helpful. It won’t replace a dedicated book or training course specifically on sports nutrition (nor should it) but it delivers the basics well.

For people who want to see results quicker, there are also some quick hacks to get a boost sooner (this won’t replace putting in the time over the coming weeks though). Beyond the course, itself is a coaching membership program. This is enrolled every month and provides ongoing support and suggestions within a community setting.

No, every athletic program offers this type of additional support, so it’s good to see it as an option beyond the Jump Manual package itself.

The Jump Manual provides many different avenues to explore delivering faster jumps, stronger muscles, quicker movements, and significant gains overall. It won’t do the work for you, but athletes who put their attention to the right areas (which this training product covers well) should benefit greatly from their attention.

The $100 price tag (at the time of writing) along with a separate monthly membership option for coaching and more, are reasonable for what’s provided.

Coaching access is given initially for 14 days free to test whether the membership program is worth it. There’s also a 60-day money-back guarantee provided too.

BoingVERT

BoingVERT focused primarily on getting serious air to rise above other players in aiming for the hoop. This might be to take a clear shot at the hoop or to dunk it – whichever is your preference.

The BoingVERT program was created by Kelly Baggett and Shawn Myszka a few years ago. It has since gone through a rebranding, and re-envisioning and had additional programs and mini-training added by Shawn Myszka in 2016. This has modernized the product and made it more applicable to new audiences.

• The Trainer:- Myszka himself is highly regarded as a basketball trainer. This trust in his knowledge and as a brand extends to jump training specifically. He’s not someone who’s created a course on how to jump higher and has no experience in doing so. Quite the opposite. He’s the real deal and it shows as purchasers see as they go through the course.
• Duration of the Original Course:- The original BoingVERT training package included plyometric exercise positions over a 16-week duration. This was intended to improve flexibility to enable ballers to eventually jump higher.

This in itself is a longer duration program than other products including the ones reviewed above which is typically shorter at just a few weeks. As such, the product developers are indicating that learning to jump higher is not going to happen overnight – or even quickly – which is a departure from what other basketball trainers believe.

• Getting Your ‘Animal’ Stoked:- Animal is the rebranded original course that runs for 16 weeks.

It is intended to give ballers the ability to over roughly four months improve their jumping game. The course runs through different plyometric exercises to help get bodies used to new requirements. This compares to what players may be used to when previously playing American Football, baseball, soccer, or another sport that required their body to move in different ways.

The program provides very useful and applicable video demonstrations and information to help students of the course make meaningful gains in jumping height. Perhaps not quite as much as the vaunted 10.3-inch gain that is promoted on the sale page, but any improvement is a net positive, we say.

There are also BoingMinis, as they’re referred to, which are smaller modules to add additional value. These are some improvements beyond what the original course offered which is great to see.

These Minis include:

• BoingMIND

Produced by Dillon Freed, the idea with this mini is to get students into the right mindset. It’s a reality that too many people purchase a course and fail to complete it. The MIND mini-course is designed to align your mind correctly so that you’ll not fall victim to this trap.

• BoingSWISH

This mini focuses on pushing up your shooting accuracy. It’s been created by the folks over at BasketballBrain.com to get your mind space right for sinking more balls in the hoop. Whether we’re talking close-up shots at the hoop or distance ones, the SWISH mini is there to make the difference in your accuracy percentage.

• BoingDIET

The DIET mini is looking at what you’re buying from the supermarket, preparing at home, etc. It’s a reality that many ballers are college students who don’t necessarily take care of their eating habits the way they should. Therefore, the DIET mini is an essential part to get them looking correctly at this area.

It includes some sample recipes, a list of ingredients to buy, and how to think about food nutrition properly. Some people will be tempted to skip this mini – don’t do it. Good nutrition means having enough energy to play the full game without stamina issues or needing an energy drink to survive it.

• BoingBREATHE

The BREATHE mini focuses on breathing and filling your lungs with clean air. Effective cardiovascular health includes breathing deeply, exhaling cleanly, and oxygenating your muscles well.

Eventually, you’ll be able to hold your breath for several minutes too – or at least, that’s the intention behind the training. This avoids getting out of breath during a game and speeds up recovery periods too.

• BoingSECRETS

This mini is a small collection of extra tips that the program creators have learned over time that don’t fit neatly into the main program or other Minis. When searching for something extra, you can dip into this part of the training program.

• BoingFlex

The FLEX mini looks at the overall flexibility of the body. The creators take the perspective that it’s necessary to get your body to a state where it’s completely flexible in the muscle groups, joints, tendons, and ligaments needed to move, twist, run, stop suddenly, and jump! Not only is performing these kinds of energetic movements a repeated requirement during a game, training, and practice, but it’s also important to avoid sustaining an injury upon landing following “going air” too.

The Savage vertical jump training program was created in 2016 to extend largely plyometrics-based training to now include weight training too.

The Savage course extended the training out to 28 weeks, from the original 16 weeks, partly because the Animal and Savage training are run consecutively not concurrently. Exercise routines run between 45 minutes to about 90 minutes for most people.

As athletes in many sporting disciplines realized the importance and indirect benefits derived from strength training, they’ve increasingly been including weight training in exercise routines.

The program creators have responded to this need by creating BoingVERT Savage, which includes the Animal content for plyometric exercises but adds weight training, bodyweight exercises, and more mini-modules too.

The result is a far more complete basketball training program that’s fit for modern sports training. The cost difference between Animal and Savage is currently only $10 making it a good deal. Presently, Animal is $17, and Savage is only $27.

The extra Minis included in BoingVERT Savage are:

• BoingCORE

A strengthening mini to ensure your center is strong enough to jump high and not pull a muscle while doing so.

• BoingCOLD

The COLD mini uses cold water therapeutic methodologies to boost the immune system and kick the cardiovascular system into a higher gear. You can think of it along the lines of plunging into ice-cold water for a minute – like a trainer, Tony Robbins does before a seminar – or cryotherapy treatment where people step into a below-freezing space for a limited time.

• BoingDGT

The DGT or don’t get tired mini is all about exercises to build your endurance over the weeks of the training course.

• BoingDESK

Is a useful training mini for people sitting at a desk all day. It’s focused on improving leg strength and functionality.

• BoingSPEEDY

This training looks to boost your overall speed throughout a game of ball.

• Other Options

There’s also both a Lifetime option and the BoingVERT Air Warfare version.

There are some benefits to selecting either one. Mainly it includes lifetime updates, new modules or releases in the future, and discounts on a supplement line through the Air Warfare version.

Conclusion:

Unless you already have an established weight training program that is getting results without injuries, then it’s a good idea to focus on the BoingVERT Savage and not BoingVERT Animal. The Lifetime and Air Warfare packages will only hold appeal if you want to select everything available (which some people do).

Not only are there more minis included in the Savage package, but it’s far more complete for people who feel they need training in jumping and strengthening too.

While we would say that The Jump Manual is superior in their weight training information, there’s still some value here at a low price point. It may depend on your budget and which training package you can afford to pick.

In terms of duration, this is by far the longest training course offered that we’ve covered in this review. The course isn’t more comprehensive accounting for the time difference.

Therefore, it provides more time for development and improvements to occur. Whether the shorter courses are long enough to see the gains you’re looking for really depends on how fast you get better, rather than a fundamental difference in the training duration itself.

For a specific and short training course, it’s difficult to beat the Vert Shock training program. The Jump Manual does have a lot to recommend, however, it shouldn’t be discounted.

Lastly, the BoingVERT is a longer duration course for people looking for a slower-paced course that was released more recently than the others. Follow the above vertical jump programs and increase your vertical jump within 8 weeks.