One of the athletes on my team keeps having the same problem concerning HJ…I work primarily with the sprinters and hurdlers, but am attempting to assist wherever possible however my knowledge of the HJ is limited at best.
Basically the problem is this…this athlete used to be a 6-4 to 6-6 jumper approx. 3 years ago when he was in high school. After nearly 3 years off he can no longer clear 5-8 on a consistent basis. Now I know a good portion of this is due to a lack of explosiveness and acceleration, etc. which I am working on fixing. However, I don't even know where to begin concerning technical elements of the HJ.
One major problem concerning his approach since I understand that to be the majority of the event is that he continually takes off too far away from the bar even when his mark is adjusted which I'm not sure how to fix.
Any ideas or thoughts would be much appreciated.
Approach to the Bar in HJ
-
-
Member
-
KeymasterTaking off too far from the bar is rarely ever a problem. It's typically the opposite. Whatever the case, if the athlete is consistently off regardless of how you adjust the starting mark, it's likely an issue of visual comfort. That is the athlete feels comfortable taking off at a given distance from the bar and steers themselves to hit that takeoff position by chopping or overstriding. To get around this I'd avoid making any radical changes in starting position. I'd probably start by working on approaches away from the mat and bar. By doing this you could establish what the ideal approach parameters really are and then carry them over to an approach to the mat / bar.
ELITETRACK Founder
-
Member
-
Participant
It may sound like a simple idea, but it is difficult to master. Many times the athlete will change their approach simply because the mat/bar is not there. If you can get the athlete to work this way, you might be able to fix a lot of problems.
We use this approach a lot with our long/triple jump approach work. Take the sand out of the head.
Good idea Mike…Thanks.
-
Participant
I do not know that doing off runway work will work since the athlete has a pre-established visual mark that keeps them from getting too close to the mat. It is similar to the polevault and planting under, no matter if I move the athlete closer or farther, they will still plant at a certain point. The CNS needs to rewired with a new visual cue.
I had a similar problem with one of my athletes who always complained of being too close in high jump when she was in the right spot. Visually she needed to be farther from the bar. The problem is starting to be remedied by eliminating the bar all together and utilizing a bungee most of the time. I actually made her jump for quite some time from a little closer than I wanted her to overcompensate for the extremely far take off. Then when the bar went up, she did her normal thing about steering a little farther than i wanted, but her brain was essentially tricked to take off from the right spot.
I do a similar thing with polevaulters who are always planting under. I have them take a bigger pole than the one they are planting under with and make them do literally hundreds of plants where they are visually farther than what they are used to. Then when they come back and plant the shorter pole, they aren't apt to have a certain spatial reference that they must hit.
Probably unconventional but it worked.
-
Keymaster
Another thing you could add is to actually draw out the approach on the runway complete with a mid-approach check mark and a designmated takeoff mark. This way the athlete will have something to steer towards and the mid mark will help you better determine the cause of the approach inconsistency.
ELITETRACK Founder
-
Viewing 5 reply threads
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.