Elitetrack: Sport Training & Conditioning

I dont think it has anything to do with no enough flight time…

For those who don’t understand my landing problem, here it is, the first jump is this video by Mokoena shows you exactly the problem i have right now. He has lots of flight time but just miss times his left foot…

Any quick fix cues anyone may have would be appreciated…

When he lands to the side his left knee flexes first to allow him to let his hip go through. His right foot is pushed forwards and this process also happens in his good landings (see madrid gp, osaka 07, bejing).

I can assume he isn’t waiting for his feet to be in contact with the sand to start flexing his knee, thus he flexes his left one too soon (before he landed), so it naturally drops. Some kind of mis timed landing then.

Yes…on his good landings he keeps his left leg straight for longer and all lands together…this mis timing happens often…but can be fixed…he seems to have fixed it now.

Btw. this mis-timing can be result of being in the air longer than one is used to? Since he is ending his jump too soon…

It could be a couple of things but more than likely, how you approach the board is the culprit rather than just trying to fix the landing . . .

How is your posture coming into the board? Maybe even before that? Are there any changes in your sprint form coming in? 6 steps? 5 steps?
Are you lowering before the penultimate or after the foot has made contact? If it is the former, what is it doing to your posture during the last two steps? How does that affect your forward rotation?

I tend to lower after the penultimate then rise on take off. Posture seems upright. Often my sprinting doesn’t really change over final 4-6 strides, i hit a speed then maintain. Stride frequency doesn’t increase all the time like many jumpers do.

If anything. i think this may have something to do with it,

My shoulders twist slightly on take off, this aids my drive leg to come slight across my body, this causes me to lean slightly to the left in the air…as a natural balancer my right leg then drops more to stop me losing balance even more…this then makes landing with 2 feet together hard…

I do the side landing, and i’ve noticed that the only jumpers who seem to have the same problem as me do the side landing also. Phillips, Howe, Lewis land forwards therefore don’t have this problem. The reach forward and grab landers like Saladino, Lapierre and the Greek guy all maintain level hips in flight therefore this problem isn’t an issue for them either…

Problem is, i don’t want to be a forward lander, so once my drive leg is straight, how do i still be a side lander and not have this problem. Basically i aim to be exactly like Pedroso (same take off leg, same hitch, same landing)...

Francisco Falise - 23 July 2009 05:29 PM

Btw. this mis-timing can be result of being in the air longer than one is used to? Since he is ending his jump too soon…

I do seem to do this on ALL my big jumps…so yes you may be right…

Nick Newman - 23 July 2009 06:13 PM

My shoulders twist slightly on take off, this aids my drive leg to come slight across my body, this causes me to lean slightly to the left in the air…as a natural balancer my right leg then drops more to stop me losing balance even more…this then makes landing with 2 feet together hard…

 

Dig deeper into this. What is causing the shoulders to twist? What are you doing prior to take-off that is off setting your balance? Is it happening immediately before, or is it a product of successive steps that is exaggerated in your in flight mechanics?

I can’t seem to get an aggressive penultimate without having some lateral deviation with it, this causes shoulders to twist and im really trying to be aggressive with the take off as well.

Also, becuase my penultimate is wide, this brings my knee drive through at an angle right? Which set off the whole process…

During this video in practice, i seemed to get things mostly right…my landing was good, and balance was better than during meets…So maybe you can see some things from this video…

You can trace it back to your running mechanics, you have that side to side and weird shoulders thing.

Btw. most sprinters seem to place their feet on a line while at max v, but you seem to put them on two parallel lines. This is for sure the cause of your weird running thing.  When I see you running from the front I get the impression you were running in zig zag.

Francisco Falise - 23 July 2009 09:16 PM

Btw. most sprinters seem to place their feet on a line while at max v, but you seem to put them on two parallel lines.quote]

Huh? Never heard of that…if i did that i would kick my own calfs everytime…

Just watched a bunch of videos and i disagree, there is no difference between my foot placements and other jumpers…

Nick Newman - 23 July 2009 09:33 PM

Huh? Never heard of that…if i did that i would kick my own calfs everytime…

Look at 4:40, and Bolt isn’t the only one to do it. Most people do it.

I disagree dude…

They aren’t doing what your saying…Bolt isn’t even doing it. His feet are hitting 1/2 foot from the other one (normal hip width) ...

I’ve watched pedroso and many others and none of them do it during their approach…and look at Blake, his are even further apart than Bolts.

Plus, did you know Pedroso jumped 8.55m in 2000 running 9.7 m/s! how crazy is that.

That was I was refering to, they virtually “are on the same line” but you seem to place them wide apart, like Howe does. It doesn’t seem to be smooth and I don’t know if it can be related to some kind of weird mechanics in the pelvis / trunk rotation. I would like to see the opinion of more people on this issue though.

Did I told you Pedroso jumped 9.04 here in Argentina in the 1995 panams?