"How to become a Triple Jumper"

Many athletes in the world choose Triple Jump because they are strong and have great speed. Others because apparently, they have done a triple jump competition and the result was so impressive that they are selected to became a triple jump athlete. Some of these reach the second level and some may reach the elite level, but at what cost?

We are in 2019, in the 21st Century and many coaches make the same mistakes when it comes to training someone for Triple Jump or Long Jump. For example, we use the same training program for everybody, when we know that each athlete has a different body composition, resulting in different levels of progress, despite using the same program.  As a coach, you have to have the ability to tailor the programme to each individual athlete, being inventive with new jumps exercises which will improve the suppleness and agility of the jumper even more.

One of the other big issues of a triple jumper is how to work with time and space between the jumps.

What is Time and Space? It is what gives the athlete the ability to know when he or she achieves e.g a hop of 6m, a step of 5.5m and a final jump of 6m ( these numbers I'm saying are hypothetically).

If you chose an athlete to become a triple jumper, and I am talking about both genders, the first thing you have to do is teach them the basics of this discipline. It's a shame that many coaches only focus on having results, and they forget to work hard on the basis. Worst of all ,many believe that the basis is only trained in the preparation phase, and they do not use it anymore during the year - this is a big mistake.

The BASICS in triple jump, teach the athlete the correct form to improve each exercise, such as coordination, time and space, balance, how to push the track during the approach etc. A good base prevents risk of injury and maintains healthy physical condition of the jumper.

The BASICS exercises are something that any athlete has to keep doing for life, even if they are a professional jumper. Working on the basis of this discipline will always keep the technique of the athlete polished and the facility to improve every training   

Another problem is how many times you train in a week. It is impossible to achieve something, only training for 1 hour, once or twice per week.

The warm up alone takes almost 45min, so when you start the real training you don`t have enough time to accomplish a good training session. In Europe, I can still observe athletes starting to do real jumps without a proper warmup and without a good technique - it scares me when I see the coach pushing them for better results under these circumstances.

Triple jump is a hard discipline to practice, that's why you see that there are very few who keep jumping over the 17m + in men and over the 14.50m + women, but when you work well at the base of this discipline, you will create of a talented and great jumper.

If you only train 1 hour or 2 hours per week, that means that the work on the BASIS will be poor, and if your coach is someone that doesn’t have too much experience in this discipline, then as an athlete you are wasting your time and you will risk injury and disappointment.