Acing The AFL Combine: Vertical Leap Test

The vertical leap test, rather then being specific to anything actually required to play Aussie Rules, is a measure of lower body explosiveness and is probably the penultimate explosiveness test as you can't really cheat during the test and it is extremely easy to implement so it's testing power at it's rawest.

Though not as technically heavy as the 20 meter sprint, it is more a product of your gym work. It requires both great relative strength as like the 20 meter sprint, you've got to overcome your own bodyweight from a stop start.

There are basically 3 components to training the vertical leap test.

Strength

Squatting is as specific as it gets to the vertical leap. Whether you use front squats or back squats it doesn't really matter and most will need to assess what variation is best for their body type and restrictions.

You'll want to lift in the 3 - 5 rep range, eventually progressing to some work win the 1 - 3 rep range for specific periods of time with use of singles, doubles and cluster sets.

Jumps / Plyometrics

Plyometrics is a pretty broad term and really anything that is used to produce fast and powerful movements. In my opinion they are poorly implemented in most routines that I see people have made up for themselves by either doing too much, too much too soon or their placement in the program. Sprinting is the greatest plyometric exercise there is but players insist on adding various jumps on top of all the sprinting we do at training and in a game not realising that they already have it covered in their training.

Obviously for the vertical leap test you want jumping plyometric exercises which is why I class them as jumps and plyometrics.

Jump squat variations is a sure bet here but be sure to use no more 30% of your squat max with the lower your squat max is, the less load, and possible none, will be used for jump squats.

That being said you can actually train the test here so definitely include vertical jumps in your training to enhance your vertical leap.

Making each squat and jump attempt should be followed by complete rest so that each rep is performed in as fresh a state as possible, just like in a testing situation.

Technique

There are 2 main things to consider with technique and that is the starting position and ammortisation phase.
For the starting position rise up onto your toes and raise your arms above your head. As you descend into your jump powerfully swing your arms down by your sides then as you jump up, powerfully swing them back up over your head.

The ammortisation phase is the transition phase from the eccentric contraction during the descent to the concentric contraction during the jump. What is important here is how low you drop the hips because if you go too low then you'll lose potential jumping output and if you don't drop far enough then cut off the vital eccentric contraction and it will inhibit how much jumping output you can put out.

Practice will make perfect here and also the use of a camera so you can study what length of eccentric contraction works best for your body type.

As you can see, training for the vertical leap and 20 meter sprint are very similar and really, training one will have a positive effect on the other but you so you can train squats the same for both but you'll need to mix around the types of plyometric exercises that you use.