Vertical Jump Ability of Elite Volleyball Players Compared to Elite Athletes in Other Team Sports

Successful sporting performance at elite levels of competition often depends heavily on the explosive leg power of the athletes involved. In many individual sports such as Track and Field events, Gymnastics and Diving the ability to use high levels of strength as quickly and as explosively as possible is essential to perform at elite levels. Many team sports also require high levels of explosive power, such as Basketball, Volleyball, Netball and the Rugby and Football codes for success at elite levels of competition. Explosive power comes from the development of speed strength and pure strength. Power represents the amount of work a muscle or muscle group can produce per unit of time (1,13,21,26). Until recent years power as it relates to sports performance has been the subject of limited research, but in the last decade or so researchers have realised the importance of training for power in a wide variety of sporting activities (7,9,26,27,31)) Vertical and horizontal jumping, in its many different forms, requires high levels of explosive muscular power. The double legged volleyball spike jump and block jumps are very different in technique, but fundamentally they are similar(16,24,25). Basketball players typically jump from one leg to perform a lay up, and from two legs to rebound jump, again both are very different styles of jumping which are fundamentally similar in their movement patterns.(16,29) Different jumping styles also involve very different approaches and run ups which increase or decrease the velocity of the movement performed, depending on the type of jump.(29,32) It has been suggested that different styles of jumping require different strength properties and that training for one type of jumping technique will not necessarily improve performance in another style of jumping.(32)