There are 3 muscle fiber types in the human body:
Type I: Slow Twitch Fibers
Type IIA: Fast Twitch Fibers
Type IIB: Fast Twitch Fibers
In this blog post, I will discuss the Type I fibers, and how they relate to jumping higher.
Slow twitch muscle fibers are also known as slow twitch oxidative fibers.
This is because they contract slowly and maintain these contractions over a long time.
These types of fibers are ideal for endurance sports like long distance running.
They contain many mitochondria cells which enable oxidative metabolism (the use of oxygen by our muscles).
Slow twitch fibers are therefore resistant to fatigue but generate relatively low force.
They therefore will NOT make you jump higher, because they will not be able to generate a great vertical leap no matter how hard you train them.