Speed, Power, Agility: Can you make me jump higher, Coach?

Over the past 6 weeks, I have had the opportunity to work with two very high level volleyball teams. In speaking with their coach prior to starting our training their coach stated that she needed her girls to jump higher. The teams were their 18-1 (the best) and 16-2 teams at a local volleyball club and the minimum reach that many college coaches want is 9' 6" and the average for the 18-1 team of about 9'4" and only one player at 9'6". The training for these groups of girls were going to focus on improving strength and power as I noticed many lacked some basic strength. A secondary goal was to reduce the likelihood of knee injury through learning proper jumping and landing mechanics, and proper muscle recruitment patterns.

The traditional thoughts on improving vertical is to do a lot of plyometric training:

Box Jumps
Hurdle Jumps
Bounding

I took a different approach and went into our weight area to improve remedial strength:

Hang Cleans high pulls
Hang Cleans
Front Squats
Back Squats

I wanted to improve the girl's leg strength as well as teach them the proper way to recruit muscles for jumping. Most female athletes go quads, hamstrings, glutes, then calves. The better pattern is glutes, hamstring, quads, then calves thus utilizing our larger muscle groups first resulting in an increase power output while minimizing the risk to an ACL tear via an overactive quadriceps muscle (every time your quad contracts it stretches and stresses the ACL).

My auxiliary training then incorporated a lot of plyometric type training:

Vertimax
Hurdle hops (single leg)
Single leg box squats
Approach jumps

Over a four week period (8 sessions) we saw an average increase in approach reach of 1.5" for the 18-1 team and 2" for the 16-2 team with one girl on each team even had a 3" improvement! I still have to talk to many volleyball moms and dads as to why their girls are lifting to help them jump and many don't totally understand but slowly I am winning them over. With this type of result there really isn't much room for argument.