There are a couple of training shoes available that are designed to be worn while completing plyometric, or explosive leg training. The shoes are meant to increase the intensity at which your leg muscles must work during each of the exercises and thus more efficiently increase leg power and your vertical leap. The shoes alone will not make you jump better, but if you wear them while being consistent with training, you will see improvements in your vertical leap.
Shoes
There are two major training shoes designed to improve your jumping, which are Strength Shoes and Jumpsoles. Strength Shoes feature an entire shoe that you wear alone, while Jumpsoles are meant to strap onto your own athletic shoes. Both of the shoes feature an extra thick platform at the front of the shoe and at the balls of the feet. This causes your heels to hang free and thus requires your calf muscles to continuously contract to keep you upright.
Jumping Better
To increase the height that you can jump, you must increase the strength and power of your legs. Your strength is how much force your quadariceps, glutes and calves can produce. Your power is how much force those muscles can produce explosively. Therefore, training with the shoes involves you completing lower-body strength exercises and plyometric exercises, which are exercises that you do as explosively as possible.
Training
Both training plans that come with Strength Shoes and Jumpsoles include strength exercises such as squats, lunges, step-ups and calf raises. Plyometric exercises include jump squats, lateral cone hops, bounding, skipping, box jumps and rim jumps. The workouts are very high intensity and strenuous on your muscle groups and skeletal structures. Therefore, a 72 hour rest period minimum is required between training sessions. Working out twice per week with at least two days in between will significantly increase your leg power and allow adequate rest.
Considerations
In order to improve your leg power, it's essential that the plyometric exercises are completed as explosively as possible. When completing basic squats with your your training shoes on, you complete the movement slowly and under control, focusing primarily on your technique and completing the exercise at the full range of motion. When doing jump squats, however, the technique remains the same, but the speed of the movement is very different. You lower down into a squat slowly and under control, and then explode up as quickly as possible, getting as much height into your jump as you can.
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