How to measure your vertical jump at home (wall or phone)

Already tested? Put your wall marks or your frame count in here.

Pick a test that fits your space

The wall and tape test

1. Find a wall taller than your best jump, with flat floor in front of it.
2. Rub chalk on your middle fingertip, or stick a small piece of tape on it.
3. Stand side on to the wall with your feet flat. Reach straight up with the arm nearest the wall and touch as high as you can. This mark is your standing reach.
4. Jump off both feet with no step. Touch the wall at the top of your jump.
5. Rest, then jump twice more and keep your best mark.
6. Measure from the floor to each mark. Take your reach mark away from your jump mark.

Say your reach mark sits at 7 ft 10 in, which is 94 inches.

Your best jump mark sits at 10 ft, which is 120 inches. 120 minus 94 is 26, so your vertical jump is 26 inches.

The NBA Draft Combine runs two jumps like this: a no step vertical jump and a maximum vertical jump. The maximum jump comes with a run up.

The phone video test

1. Turn on slow motion in your phone camera. Pick the highest frames per second it offers.
2. Set the phone on the floor or a low shelf, side on, so it sees your feet and the floor.
3. Put your hands on your hips, or swing your arms the same way on every jump.
4. Jump straight up. Land with your legs straight, the way you took off.
5. Play the video frame by frame. Find the last frame with your toes on the floor and the first frame with them back down. Count the frames from one to the other.
6. Put the count and the frame speed into the jump timer above.

Landing matters. If you bend your knees or ankles just before you land, you stay in the air longer on the video. Then the jump reads too high. One foot landing before the other throws the count off too.

A review of 21 studies in Scientific Reports (2023) names both traps. It looked at a phone app that times jumps from slow motion video.

The review found no significant difference between the app and lab equipment. When the same jumps were measured twice, the results matched almost perfectly.

The math behind the timer

You rise for half your air time and fall for the other half. That gives one rule: jump height in meters equals 1.22625 times your air time in seconds, squared. The review lists the same rule.

Take 180 frames filmed at 240 frames per second. 180 divided by 240 is 0.75 seconds in the air.

0.75 times 0.75 is 0.5625. Times 1.22625, that is 0.690 meters, or 27.2 inches.

Timing jumps by air time goes back to a 1983 study by Carmelo Bosco, Pekka Luhtanen and Paavo Komi. They timed each jump with a digital timer.

Gym gear: jump mats, vanes and force plates

A jump mat times your air time, the same way the phone video does. A stand with plastic vanes that you swat at the top of your jump works like the wall test.

A force plate measures the push you put into the floor. The 2023 review says force plates are often seen as the gold standard. It also says their cost keeps them out of most field tests.

No step or run up: which number should you log?

Log both, and write down which is which. A run up jump is almost always the bigger number.

In NBA.com Draft Combine stats, a run up added 5.37 inches on average. That covers 1,615 prospects who did both jumps from 2000 to 2026.

The DunkMeter calculator asks for your no step jump, then adds your run up on top. If you only measured a run up jump, pick “With a run up” in the jump timer. It takes the run up off before it sends your number to the calculator.

Why your wall and phone numbers will not match

The wall test measures how much higher your fingertips go than your standing reach. The video measures how long your whole body stays in the air.

Those are two different things, so one jump can give two numbers. Pick one test and use it every time, with the same shoes and the same warm up.

On video, the frame speed sets your error. Here is what one missed frame does to a 24 inch jump:

A 24 inch jump stays in the air about 0.705 seconds. At 30 fps that is only about 21 frames, so each frame counts for a lot.

How does your number compare?

NBA prospects rank among the best jumpers in the world, so read this table as the top end.

So a 30 inch jump with no step beats more than half of all NBA prospects. With a run up, 91.2% of them reached 30 inches.

The highest jumps ever measured there are on the NBA vertical jump record list.

Put your number to work

Your vertical alone does not tell you if you can dunk. Your standing reach decides where the jump starts.

Put both into the dunk calculator to see how far your hand gets above the rim. No wall for your reach? Measure your wingspan and the calculator estimates it.

Then test again every couple of weeks, the same way each time. Vertical jump training shows what a plan can add, and its jump week builder keeps a log of your tests.

Fast answers about jump tests