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1. Improve Flexibility in the Right Areas
Doing a toe touch requires you to get your legs up and out simultaneously. The closer you can bring your legs up to your body and the further apart they can go, the higher your toe touch will be.
To get to such a position, you need to stretch both your adductors and hamstrings.
Your adductors are a group of muscles located on the inside of your thigh. This is usually the area you feel a stretch in when doing middle splits, straddle or butterfly.
Your hamstrings are located not too far away, on the back side of your thigh. This is where you likely feel a stretch when doing a pike or heel stretch. Read this article to learn how to properly stretch your hamstrings.
If you can improve flexibility in both these areas, you’ll find that lifting your legs in the jump will be way easier!
2. Don’t Ignore Your Hip Flexors
Your hip flexors are muscles located on the front side of your hips. As the name suggests, their main purpose is to flex your hip – a.k.a. bend at the hip to bring your leg up closer to your body.
There are quite a few exercises you can do to strengthen these muscles, but not all are equally effective for toe touches.
There’s one particular muscle in the hip flexor group that helps lift your legs beyond 90 degrees: the iliopsoas.
If you’re looking to get hyperextended jumps, this is the muscle you want to focus on! Don’t waste your time strengthening only the range of motion from 0 to 90 degrees – this won’t train the muscles needed to bring your legs all the way up.
Here’s an example of an exercise that DOES work the iliopsoas:
3. Perform Lower Body Plyometrics & Strength Training
This tip relates more to the initial takeoff. Before you can even think about lifting your legs into the straddle/toe touch position, you need to have enough strength and power to jump high into the air.
Having strong powerful quads, glutes and calves will buy you more time in the jump, giving you a chance to reach that full toe touch position and snap your legs back together again before landing.
If you’re looking for some additional tips and an actual training plan to improve the height and power of your jumps, my Jump Training Program is a great place to start!
It includes:
- 13 strength and power exercises
- 9 stretches/mobility exercises to improve flexibility in each jump position
- For each exercise and stretch:
- Specified sets and reps
- Description of the purpose (why you are doing it)
- Written instructions (how to do it, what the proper technique is and key things to keep in mind)
- Videos and/or photos for demonstration and reference purposes
- Video of a full-body warm up to do before training
- Discount code to use towards other training programs
You can check it out by clicking here.
Leave a comment below if you enjoyed this article or have any questions 🙂
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