By Tom Kaberna

Last week I talked about how important it is to have a model that you adhere to so that your athletes know what will give them the best chance for success.  Today I will discuss the main pieces of my long jump model.

Third to last step

The step before your penultimate (second to last) step is crucial to having a successful jump.  It is extremely important that this step maintains a little bounce like a normal running stride while keeping their hips tall.  As jumpers get closer to the board they typically start to lower too early causing a couple of bad things to happen.  For one, low hips are slow hips so if you lower too soon you are really just slowing down too soon.  The second problem is if you lower on this step then your penultimate foot will land slightly in front of you thus blocking speed as well.

Picture 1 above is a good example of a third to last step nice and bouncy.

Penultimate Step

If your third to last step has some bounce and your hips are high then you have won half the battle.  The second to last step is when the lowering should occur.  During this step you should see high hips with the foot planting directly underneath your body and then lowering should occur when the foot touches the ground by allowing the shin to rotate forward while your foot is on the ground.  Once the shin rotates forward a strong push should be seen to get onto your takeoff foot.

Picture 2 above is a decent example of a penultimate step.  Notice the foot is striking underneath their body and at touchdown the hips are still high. 

Picture 3 above is a bad example of a penultimate step.  Notice the foot is striking in front of their body and at touchdown the hips are already down. 

Last Step

This is the step that gets you off of the board and into the air.  Going into this step if you executed your third to last and penultimate step properly you should see a couple of things occurring.  First the jump foot should come in low like you are putting your foot into a slipper on the board.  I don’t want to see a high heel recovery on this step as I want the foot to come in low to turn on the quad first and then catch and push off of the board elastically.  Second if you push off aggressively from your penultimate step you will see a strong long swinging segment from your free leg come through to aide in the lift off the board.

Picture 4 above is a pretty good example of a good push off your penultimate and good slipper action of the jump leg. 

With a model your athletes and you can work towards the same goal and have something to lean on when things don’t go your way at a meet.  The thoughts above are my main pieces of how I want to see my athletes execute in long jump.  Next week I will go into some detail about what work we do in practice to try to achieve my idea of the perfect model.