I used to play basketball and could never dunk but only need maybe 2-3 inches more vertical.
Did some good power cleans a couple of days ago, with actual jumping off the floor and catching in upright posture, and my calfs are completely shattered.
Got me thinking if not (jumping) cleans could add some inches to a vertical jump? It is after all the exact movement for a standing two legged jump and calfs definitely play a big part in jumping.
It's really not the same movement as a standing two-leg jump. As the bar sweeps into the pocket, you pop you drive your hips forward and up as powerfully as you can, while pulling the bar with your hands. This puts the lifter in the "archangel" position- hips through, often leaned back somewhat, like this:
Based on my limited experience... if you watch good lifters, you will see that at this point their feet are either in contact with the ground, or fractionally off the ground. And pretty much as soon as they have executed this, they are pulling their hips back and then dropping down under the bar- they do not continue upward after they have got this position and there is at most minimal "air time". And as I understand it, a lot of the time when you see their feet have come off the ground, that is not actually because they came off the ground as part of the process of putting the hips through and pulling, it is because they have to widen their stance in order to get down, and the best way to do this is to allow the feet to come off the floor a little, widen and then put them down again, rather than slide them straight across the floor.
Now there is explosive knee and hip extension, and the feet do sometimes come off the ground during that, so you can call that a jump if you want. But in either case, it is *very* different from a normal standing jump. And I guess it may well increase your vertical- certainly seems to have worked for this guy:
I am just a noob at Oly, so I stand ready to be corrected by the Oly lifters and coaches, here, of course.
