My observations of common problems of trainee athletes. Part 2 Speed during The approach.

In one of my recent workshops I was focusing on the approach and the speed for Long jump and Triple jump. I saw many problems with the approach, but I want to mention the problem which was the most significant to me. If you are an athlete with a personal record of 6.60/6.80m in Long jump, it is not possible to have an approach of 45m long. Everybody thinks that the longer the approach, the better they will jump, but if you have to have a 45m long approach to jump over 6m, imagine how long you have to run when you have to jump over 7.80m. For this reason, it is really important to work hard at running techniques in combination with speed, together with the most important work of speed control. 

The other problem is, there is a big lack of technique coordination and rhythm. The athletes don’t know anything about drills exercises for coordination and rhythm, and this results in  bad coordination between the arm and leg movement.

Another problem is that they can`t lift the knees high, and the worst things is that they let the hips drop down during the approach, something which also often happens with triple jumpers. When you let your hips drop down during the approach, you have to make more effort to achieve the height and distance, and so the end result is always poor. 

Now, about speed in  Triple jump-  I have to say that I can`t remember how many time I heard it said in Europe that the best triple jumpers have to run between 10.05/10.80ms in 100 meters. Of course speed is very important, there is no doubt about that, but an athlete can run 10.00m/sec in 100m and may still not be able to reach even 15.00m in triple jump.

Why? Everything  in triple jump is balance- a good approach is essential, and of course you have to run fast, but the issue is  how do you build  speed during the approach? For example; if you have a 35m approach, you know that the last 15m before the board, you have to be at your max speed. This   means that the first 6m you have to start to drive and build your approach (you can drive from 6 or 7 steps etc according to your quality).  You then have 14m to increase the acceleration to reach the max speed in the last 15m, to be capable to run to the board with maximum explosiveness.

 

A fast approach is not everything for a good jump. but a combination of control and balance are essential. One of most important things is to try maintaining the speed between the jumps- for example, I know athletes that with a (7) step approach, are able to reach 17m. Why? Because they are able to keep the speed during the jumps, and they work really good with time and space.

To my surprise, during both of my recent workshops, I sow triple jumps athletes who are unable to do bounding properly, do single leg hops, a combination of jumps as hop-hop-step jumps, or quintuple. There neither seems to be any knowledge about specific hurdles exercises or plyometric exercises for Triple jump. 

All of the above elements are fundamental to the technique of Triple Jump, and without this knowledge, I’m not surprised that little significant progress is being made.  In training my athletes, as a coach I try to correct as much as possible any technique issues of each athlete, and know that this will result in more productive training sessions, better results, and better athletes. However, it does seem to me that there is big lack of knowledge about this discipline in some coaches, and that this is the main reason for the poor results of this discipline.