Why is flexibility important for an athlete?
Flexibility is an important component of physical
fitness and has many positive effects on the body-for instance, it improves
mobility, posture, muscle coordination, reduces the risk of injuries and muscle
soreness. It even leads to a better overall performance.
It mainly increases your range of motion and makes it
easier for you to perform certain exercises. Basically, stretching before
working out increases blood flow in the muscles. If you don’t work on your
flexibility regularly, muscles shorten with time: best example is the hip
flexor because we’re sitting too much. Limited flexibility feels like ‘stiffness,’and
restricts you in your daily life and when you’re exercising.
For a triple jumper is essential to maintain an
upright position and also to lock the pendulums during the transition from Hop-step and jump,
for example as you can see in these pictures.
Flexibility and
Core play the most significant role in maintaining this position.
As I commented in my last blog, Core Stability enables
athletes to control their body position, generate optimum power, and transfer
force along the kinetic chain. Core stability is often needed in rotational
movements, which is a fundamental requirement for a long jumper or triple
jumper. By strengthening core stabilizers, jumpers
can maximize strength in their arms and leg.
When an athlete is available to brings those exercises
in balance, the jump quality will improve gradually to a great success. Also it
is going to be easy to work with the plyometrics exercises with hard impact on
the ground, and the plyometrics exercises with hurdles will be even more
effective.
One of the major problems for a jumper is a lack of
flexibility of the Hip flexor- precisely the one that keeps the pendulum in the
right position during the flight phases.
The power that you will generate to project yourself
horizontally will come from your hip flexors. You will need to train them to
explode horizontal power. A few exercises that you can do include:
Bulgarian split squat with dumbbells with
arms in the front, with either double arms or single arms kept
in front during the exercise. Make sure
that you explode upwards in the movement.
Hopping exercises
(add hurdles or cones, placed for distance)
Hip thrusts
(add enough resistance weight and focus on pushing with your heels)
Remember all exercises are not
suitable for all athletes, that is why that you have to have a good training
program and control regularly your progress every month.
Next, I want to talk about something
important especially for triple jumpers- please protect yourself from injury.
One of the most common injuries that
triple jumpers get is a bruised heel. Once you get this, it makes it
more difficult to improve your triple jump performance since you will get pain
every time you land on your foot, and it will knock your confidence.
To help minimize the risk of getting
a bruised heel, you can get heel protection insoles for your shoes.
Specialized triple jump shoes will
give you added protection and comfort on your foot and especially around your
heel. If you are doing triple jumps that require you to handle a lot of force on
your jumps (Typically when you start jumping over 13 metres women or 15m men),
then you will need to invest in triple jump spikes.
