SPEED APPROACH IN TRIPLE JUMP

In the last few weeks I received various emails with the same question; is speed approach the most important thing to achieve a good jump? First let me ask a question to all of you, if speed is the most important thing to achieve a good jump, why there are so many triple jumpers out there capable of running 10.05/10.40sg at 100m and yet they are still unable to jump even 16.00m?

There are many factors to achieve a good jump, and I would to discuss what I think they are the most important for me. Naturally a triple jumper needs to have good speed but he also needs coordination, rhythm, a really good reaction on the ground and, the most difficult to achieve, the ability to maintain or increase the speed between jumps.  An athlete can even have a good ability in  all these factors  and yet still not be able to pass the barrier of 16m, and this has to do with his ability to create time and space between jumps.

Some coaches, when their athletes start to have problems in improving his personal record, the first thing that they want to improve is the speed approach. These coaches forget that in triple jump; you cannot concentrate only in improving one technique, because as I always said, everything has to be balanced. If you want to improve the speed, the athlete also has to be prepared to handle that speed from take-off until the final jump. To be clearer, if you work to improve the speed,  it also has to work with plyometric exercises to improve the coordination between the arms and legs, rhythm, power of reaction at the time of impact on the ground, posture and the hip position during jumps.  Then you have to put all that work together to get the balance directed to develop a good jump. 

          

For an athlete to have the ability to create time and space between jumps, he needs a combination of a good sense of rhythm, and the ability to maintain or increase the speed between jumps. These two factors have to work together to carrying a good jump. When an athlete has good speed approach, of course it has an advantage, but the problem is, how to control that speed for a good jump?  To give you an example, I have helped athletes who managed to jump 17.05m with 7 step approach and when he performed jumps from 12 step approach, their jumps results were the same distance or lower than 17m,  therefore, speed control plays a big role in these results. 

  

Therefore to improve these issues, we started working to control the approach, and work with plyometric exercises to improve the time and space between jumps. I want to clarify that these exercises should be performed with speed between obstacles, for example cones or hurdles. It is very important that these exercises are conducted under the supervision of your coach

That entire problem has to do with control of speed; it is not how fast you run, but it having the ability to control the speed approach.