When it comes to jumping higher, it’s all about technique. When it comes to technique, it’s all about a combination of strength and skill acquisition.
In other words, technique in jumping is related to your strength and movement skill level, which allows you to carry out great technique!
Above, Juan Miguel Echevarria has a unique, but highly effective, takeoff technique for projecting his body long distances into the pit.
What this means is that gaining the skills of jumping is a lot more than just reading about a particular technique and then thinking about it when jumping. The majority portion of jumping is “subconscious” meaning you can’t consciously think much at all about it when you are doing it, at least not to do it optimally well.
Some technical advise (such as “lower your hips on the second to last step”) can work if you are lacking major aspects on your jump, but when it comes down to more subtle parts of the jump technique, such as the angle your leg is when you plant, or the exact timing of your arms, these things are a lot harder to really optimize.
This is where “special exercises” to help your body access new ranges and pressures in the joints that will be needed for a better jump.
On top of this, these special strength exercises can be fantastic in terms of not only exposing your body to a new emphasis on movement, but they also can build the strength behind that movement. In other words, special exercises can “coach” jump technique for you, because they build movement awareness and strength in jump related movements, and now the brain can now take this information and assemble it in a way that will be optimal to your own unique jump.
I gave out a great deal of information, perhaps a whole book of sorts, in my original article on plyometrics for single leg jumping.
Today I’d like to share with you 3 more exercises that have very specific technical elements that can help break through barriers restricting single leg jump ability. Not only do these movements have technical elements, but they also build elasticity and power in the legs and feet. The 3 exercises are as follows:
- Scrape Bounding or “Toe-Drag” Bounding
- Timed Lateral Barrier Hops
- Straight Leg Bounding and All Variations
Let’s kick it off with an unconventional form of bounding that has really unique and effective benefits.
1. Scrape Bounding / Toe-Drag Bounding
If you want to jump well off one leg, then you need to know the importance of swing-leg dynamics. In other words, you need to know how to “kick”!. This concept was one of the first things I ever learned in my meetings with Adarian Barr, and it sticks with me in training athletes to this day.
In the current world of athletic performance and training, we are obsessed with “force” and “push” and anything that has to do with the tensile strength of a limb in overcoming gravity. Although tensile strength is important, what we don’t talk about nearly enough is the timing of other body segments that help the body work together in the best possible manner.
An athlete can have great tensile strength in their tissues and be able to generate a lot of power, but if they don’t’ have good mechanics, then they are just fighting themselves!
Scrape bounding epitomizes the art of using the swinging/kicking leg to big effectiveness. In many cases, athletes need to actually slow down more in their jump takeoff. Athletes often just go “out” and not “up” when they go to jump off a single leg, and this is because their swing leg is coming through very fast, and this gives them a very short window to create the time needed to redirect their momentum upwards.
To this end, bounding where an athlete actively drags the toe in the swing through is a practice that ensures a longer time to generate the re-direction upwards.
View this post on Instagram
You can also do this type of bounding for say 10-15 meters, and then take a few running steps and vault into a single leg jump takeoff. I’ve even used this myself to add about 2-3” to my jump on the single session.
One note is that “speed jumpers” will often use a very tight and fast swing leg action, and for them, this is fine, because their stance leg “spring” is so tight and effective that it has the capacity to redirect them upwards very quickly. For these athletes, generally speaking if it’s not broke, don’t fix it! Scrape bounding can be an interesting alternative for these athletes to practice an alternative skill just to see how it may affect their jump, however.
Many track and field high jumpers are “speed” jumpers although there are some out there who scrape their foot in takeoffs. Generally speaking, for high jump, being a speed jumper is a little more advantageous than being a toe-scrape jumper, but proceed with caution if trying to coach the “scrape” out of this type of high jumper, simply because this will interfere with their current raw ability to “get up”.
2. Timed Barrier Hops
One of the first high jump training manuals I ever got was a VHS tape by Ed Jacoby who was working with Troy Kemp (jumped 7’9” at 6’0 tall!). There were a lot of exercises presented in that training VHS that I really latched onto, such as barbell step ups, but one interesting one I noticed was timed lateral barrier hops.
In this drill, the jumper would hop with two legs over a bench as many times as possible in a set period of time. This would mean that the athlete could not jump as high as possible to perform the jump, but would have to jump in a manner where enough force to get back up over the bench and to the other side was produced as fast as possible.
In watching GOOD athletes do this drill (such as Troy Kemp) I noticed that he was jumping in a manner where his heels would come backwards up towards his butt, where at the time, my form was more like a series of tuck jumps. As I’ve moved forward in my coaching career, I’ve understood why a great jumper like Troy could perform the movement like this, which is due to the fact that he has tremendous power off of the inside edge of his foot (big toe side) and this jump is also done with tremendous forefoot dominance.
If during tuck jumps, the feet come down extremely flat and without much tension, the timing and direction of the lateral barrier hop will end up more like a tuck jump. You can see an action where the foot is softer and longer on the ground in the video below, and the action over the barrier is one that relies on the knees being lifted.
One huge benefit of lateral barrier hops is also the lateral component. This is a completely and utterly under-rated aspect of jumping and athletic movement in general, and that is access to the foot in the frontal plane. Anything that has a lateral element to it has the added benefit of working the foot in an eversion bias on one landing, and an inversion bias on another landing.
In other words, this type of lateral aspect helps athletes access the full breadth of their foot more completely, which is helpful in giving us more real-estate to work with for building better technique. I spoke about this concept on the tail-end of my recent podcast with Miguel Aragoncillo, on the integration of motor learning techniques into strength and conditioning and sport skills.
3. Straight Leg Bounding
One interesting method to improve single leg jumping I discovered somewhat by accident, which was straight leg bounding and variations. In my time coaching track at Wilmington College, I always set myself a small “budget” to get various DVD’s and books each year. One DVD was done by UK coach Alex Caan on movement drills for all athletes. It was a phenomenal product that I don’t think is sold anymore, but it had some really fantastic ideas that I still hold close today.
That fall I had all my athletes doing the drills specific to Alex’s manual, which included a lot of straight leg bounding derivatives. There was straight leg bounding that started fast, and turned into scrape-like bounds. There was straight leg bounding where you would start with straight leg bounds, then sprint, then go back to straight leg bounding or vice versa. The workouts also had a lot of foot and “big toe” type work.
Below is a very, very basic form of straight leg bounding, nothing near as intense as a lot of the work in Alex’s program.
I found after a month or so of doing this on my own or with the athletes, that my single leg vertical jump on my right leg, or my non-dominant leg, had gone up several inches. This was initially quite surprising but then I thought through the mechanisms of the movement training, a lot of which revolved around a fairly straight and rigid leg being driven down to the ground, while the swing leg would “kick” through. When taking this basic movement, and infusing an element of chaos and intensification to it, which is sprinting, it got even more effective. See the straight leg bound to sprint below.
In single leg jumping, generally speaking, the more rigid the plant leg can be, the better. Straight leg bounding gives athletes the general mechanism of that rigid takeoff leg working down into the ground. I will say that for athletes already fairly adept at a single leg jump, this work won’t be as effective as for those athletes who are hitting the ground with a fairly bent takeoff leg.
Conclusion
So there you have three exercises that not only can help to improve single leg jumping, but also give you some solid principles on the elements by which a good single leg jump is built.
Remember, things like “strength” and “technique” don’t live in isolation. All exercises and training work together to help athletes reach their optimal level of single leg jumping potential. In infusing these three exercises where appropriate to training, great results can be achieved.
If you want a custom training program and help along the way, apply for my online training services today.
About Joel Smith
Joel Smith is a NCAA Division I Strength Coach working in the PAC12 conference. A track coach of 11 years, Joel is also a coach for the Diablo Valley Track and Field Club, and also has 6 years of experience coaching sprints, jumps, hurdles, pole vault and multi-events on the collegiate level.
Joel has coached 2 national champions, multiple All-Americans and school record holders in his time as a track coach. In the realm of strength and conditioning, his programs have assisted 5 athletes to Olympic berths that produced 9 medals and a world record performance at Rio in 2016.
In 2011, Joel began Just Fly Sports with Jake Clark as a central platform to promote information for athletes and coaches to reach their highest potential. In 2016 the first episode of the “Just Fly Performance Podcast” was released, now a leading source of education in the sports performance field.
Prior to working in the PAC12 conference, Joel spent 6 years in the realms of coaching, college lecturing, personal training, and thesis research. Joel’s certifications include Neurological and Physical Typing from BATI, CSCS, MAT Jumpstart, and NKT level 1, as well as USA Track and Field credentials. Joel is also well-versed in the Be-Activated protocols as taught by Douglas Heel, and has been extensively mentored by sprint and sport movement coach Adarian Barr.
Free Training Guides!
Sign up for the newsletter, get your FREE eBooks, and receive weekly updates on cutting edge training information that will help take your knowledge of athletic performance to a new level.