Workouts

You could try Air Alert, a jumping program. It is very good but intensive.

For the verticle jump:

My cousin was pretty short for a basketball player, around 1.74 cm, however he increased his vertical jump to the point where he could slam dunk a basketball in a full height hoop.

He did this by becoming very strong, I think he could squat 200kg. If you want to work on your vertical jump here are a few things you can do to increase your explosive strength (what you need to jump high) in your legs:

• Work on jump squats with a barbell, from a back squat position lower yourself to parrallel before exploding upwards and leaving the floor as high as you can, before safely landing and absorbing the impact by bending the knees, continue back to parrallel and repeat for reps.
• Front squats, and regular back squats will help to supplement this training by increasing your overall strength in different areas.

As for stamina and overall basketball fitness

I would recommend training in high intensity and trying to replicate the moves you do on a basketball court. Examples:

- Stand opposite a partner with a slightly weighted medicine ball, and chest pass the ball back and forth at high speed, with high intensity. This will strengthen and condition the appropriate muscles for functional use in basketball, and if done at high intensity will work your cardio massively.

- Short interval sprints, with few players on the court and all players working defense and offense basketball requires their athletes to do a lot of short sprinting, sprint the length of a basketball court, before jogging backwards to the start, then repeat. To make it harder you can carry a weighted medicine ball.

- Combinations at high intensity. Sprint to the far end of the court, pick up a medicine ball, and throw it at the wall hard enough that it comes back for you to catch it - do 10 of these fast, follow this up with 10 bodyweight jumps squats before sprinting to the other side of the court and repeating, repeat the entire circuit 5 times and time it, before resting and restarting, this should be enough to tire you out.

He was about that tall, (although I never measured him lol), im 1.81 and he was a good few cm shorter than me.

I dont see why not dude, believe in yourself and make it happen, turn your legs into machines, check out this 5'5 guy dunking, nothing is impossible http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8eXC81qSWo

I haven't tried in a while, I was definitely close last year when I had a short spell of playing, I can jump higher now, I'll try the next time I find a court and let you know.

What was the progam he was using Again?

guyz u might thnk im nuts i have found a video about jumping higher by mj he says "its not about the jump its about the skill" so work on these thngs .

guyz u might thnk im nuts i have found a video about jumping higher by mj he says "its not about the jump its about the skill" so work on these thngs .

First of all Adrian that is a very good answer my friend! I personally think most of the young athletes don't have enough STRENGTH and that is why they lack in vertical. I would concentrate on main lifts like squats and deadlifts first and then do sprints and plyometrics. :)

Its all about explosiveness and the strength of the calf muscles. Skipping is a good excercise to get repetative jumping, squats, calf raises and stretching. Also, the more you try, the better muscle memory and training you give to improve your jump