I often have people asking me if ankle weights will help increase their vertical jump height.
The belief is that they will strengthen your leg muscle and make you jump higher, is this the truth? What muscles will ankle weights improve? A weight strapped to your ankles is going to strengthen some muscles but which ones is the question your should be asking.
When you jump you use mainly pushing muscles to push against the ground.
When you have ankle weights you are mainly strengthening pulling muscles which are the opposite of what you would need to jump higher.
Will they help at all? Well they will make some muscles in the legs stronger so that is a plus.
But the risk of injury or problems with your gait outweigh the minimal gains you may see in leg strength.
Using ankle weight to jump higher is similar to doing bicep curls to increase your bench press.
You use your chest when benching and your triceps are the secondary muscles involved.
If you want to increase your bench you could work your triceps and that would help.
So how do I jump higher? To learn how to jump higher you have to exactly that, JUMP.
Before starting a plyometric workout you need to make sure that your legs are strong enough.
If you really want to strengthen your legs with weights you aren't going to strap them to your ankles you are going to push the weight doing squats or leg press.
This will mimic jumping and increase your vertical leap.