In the event of high jump, many athletes are leaving plenty of height on the table with what they could potentially clear.
Plenty of athletes who have big “hops” have trouble clearing a high jump bar, or at least a bar that is as high as they feel they should be able to jump!
There are a few differences (such as body position, rate of force development, and tri-planar joint sequencing) that make high jump substantially different than a standing vertical jump, and even a long jump or a free-throw line dunk that athletes can tap into to perform better.
This article will give you 6 straight-forward tips to get better at the high jump this season which are as follows:
- Spend 90% of your energy on the run-up and takeoff (the bar clearance will take care of itself)
- Find the approach rhythm that works best for you (and practice with different rhythms)
- Understand how important the arms are in the jumping process
- Do the triple jump as a second event (and make sure you can set up a good second phase)
- Be careful with weightlifting
- Be sure not to get too far away from a jumping-based sport (and don’t high jump the same way too much)
Alright, let’s dive in.
1. Spend 90% of your energy on the run-up and takeoff (the bar clearance will take care of itself)
This is the number one area that troubles most jumpers (and many coaches without personal high jump experience and intuition) and that is to focus on what is happening over the bar when high jumping.
The thing is that what happens over the bar is a product of everything that happened up until the instant the foot leaves the ground in takeoff.
Once an athlete jumps, their takeoff “parabola” is set, not only from a perspective of where their center of mass travels (think of that imaginary point inside your belly button where you are balanced on all sides and can spin easily in any direction), but also from a perspective of rotating in all three planes.
Here is what I mean.
When you jump and takeoff, you will travel through the air, over the bar in a pre-determined direction like the picture below.
Notice that the black parabola puts the jumper in a good position to clear the bar, while the red parabola won’t allow the jumper to clear the bar, no matter how good their arch or bar clearance is.
In the air, there is nothing you can do to change this path! This is what trips a lot of people up, since all the “arching” over the bar in the world will still cause an athlete’s “butt to hit the bar” if the path of their hips will lead them into it.
We don’t often give athletes enough credit, since athletes with a good background of general body control (think athletes who did adequate amounts of tumbling, wrestling, gymnastic based work, and general play) will almost always form their body naturally over the bar, especially given enough practice to do so.
Excessive coaching to arch is really just “pre-programming” an athlete to commit more mental expenditure to hitting a particular position over the bar, which inevitably will take away from a good takeoff and conversion of speed into the right direction over the bar.
If athletes do seem to need a better arch over the bar, then the best way to approach this is to use the environment and context to let them solve a problem. With this in mind, doing things like standing back-overs and running 2 foot jumps are totally fine, since it’s a different “problem” to solve than the total high jump.
Gymnastic work on the mat (or off the mat) is also great to develop general skills. The problem just exists when we try to make 10% of the jump (bar clearance) the conscious portion of the entire product.
A better focus is rather “two bar” work in high jumping, since it will encourage a better parabola over the bar… a parabola that will put an athlete in position to naturally arch.
2. Find the approach rhythm that works best for you (and practice with different rhythms)
Something interesting in high jump is the rhythm of the approach. It is interesting because it’s rarely, if ever coached or addressed.
Think about an athlete going to dunk a basketball, there is often a distinct rhythm and momentum to this jump.
In high jump, athletes do not simply run each step the same length and contact time, and then takeoff. The also do not run every step the same, then go “quick quick”, or “flat flat” and takeoff (a common instruction).
Instead, the entire rhythm of the way an athlete jumps will set up the end product.
Just check out near-world record holder, Mutaz Barshim in the jump below:
Check the second half of this video for an analysis of Barshim’s contact times and rhythms
To this end, I have always liked utilizing approaches that incorporate bounding, mini-hurdles, and various long-short rhythms that reflect the way an athlete will take off. Many athletes find the right rhythm naturally over time, while others may need help.
A problem will always arise if your approach rhythm doesn’t match your takeoff style (see Adarian Barr’s recent podcast with me for more information here).
One of the easiest, and most fun drills you can do to see how it impacts your jump is simply to set a zone in the middle of the approach where you or your athletes will do a bound or two, and then run as normal. So the approach may go:
- 3-4 Normal steps to accelerate
- 1-2 bounds
- 3-4 Fast normal steps leading into a takeoff
Experiment with this over time to find a rhythm that is good for you. US record holder Charles Austin had a distinct single bound the led into his takeoff as seen in the video below, and we are all different as athletes.
3. Understand how important the arms are in the jumping process
Here is a “secret” I learned from Adarian Barr, and that is that the arms will operate in a “wide to narrow” manner (as with pretty much anything in athleticism).
A problem is when athletes just use the arms in a very long AND “front-to-back” manner, or they just underuse their arms.
Arm action is faster when (again an Adarian Barr point) is when it goes wide to narrow, or in simpler terms, when we “flap like a bird”.
Check out the highest jumper in the video below to see this in action.
See 2:30 in the video above for a good take on rebounding arm action
So for high jump, we easily see this happening in the best jumpers where this is a bending and wide to narrow arm action.
Below the arms are wide (thanks Adarian for showing me this)
And now narrow
How can you improve this? It’s simple, just practice various skips, bounds and jumps with various emphasis on arm action. The possibilities are endless here, but below is a simple video of me doing some bounding with an exaggerated lateral arm action that can get you started.
View this post on Instagram
Focusing on the arms in the plyometric action in the Marinovich video will also be really helpful.
Remember, arms that move straight front to back are slower arms, and will create a slower takeoff!
4. Do triple jump (or long jump, or hurdles) as a second event (and make sure you can set up a good second phase)
For those in high jump, doing a second event is a very important aspect of the jump equation. For high jumpers, the best second event to do, in my opinion, is triple jump.
Why triple jump? Because the second phase in triple jump has many commonalities with a high jump takeoff, and presents those qualities in a “same but different” manner.
What is the same?
- Backside arm action
- Vertical posture
- Extremely high takeoff forces
- Posterior chain-driven action
- Foot twisting needed to direct force in the correct direction
- Importance of the swinging leg in the backside of the body
What is different?
- The direction of travel (triple jump is horizontal while high jump is vertical)
- Timing of the ground impulse (high jump comes faster)
- Body alignment relative to the ground
For many athletes, getting better at triple jump will yield immediate dividends to high jump, and looking to get better here versus searching social media for various circuit-trick looking plyometrics is a great strategy.
Human movement is human movement, and track and field is the original competition of basic human movements.
Long jump is a great second event for athletes who have a takeoff with a very short ground contact time, and a swing leg action that puts the calf tighter to the thigh.
For me, my swing leg action was much longer, and resembled kicking a soccer ball, and therefore the longer swing leg action of triple jump fit well in transfer to my high jumping, although both jumps were helpful.
Hurdles, by nature require a very fast impulse (thanks for teaching me this Adarian Barr) in the last “cut” step over the hurdle, so this dynamic of the cut step can also be useful in high jump transfer and general development.
Use this to your advantage when planning what other events you may do.
5. Be careful with weightlifting
This tip is simple but is not what many people want to hear.
And before we get any further, I’m not saying high jumpers shouldn’t lift (they should), I’m just saying that coaches and athletes need to be aware of a few things.
We live in a world of “force, force, force”, but the problem is that all people tend to care about is the general term.
The problem is that the way an athlete produces force is very specific.
The high jump may be one of the most unique ways that athletes produce force across sports, which is why just “getting stronger”, especially in athletes who are already at a fairly high level of performance (say 2m for men and 1.70m for women) is a road to tread carefully.
First off, the strength of our fascial systems is critical for good jumps. This means we must have strong and resilient tendons and connective tissue.
The force our muscles can output in lab testing is actually limited by how strong our tendons are, especially force that must be delivered rapidly.
With this in mind, the fascial strength of a high jumper is key, and this strength is developed over years and years of jumping, sprinting and playing. Plyometrics also play a key role over time.
Strength training is important, but just remember two things:
- Barbell training is fundamentally different than jumping
- Elastic strength (built via manipulations of bodyweight) is #1
There is a reason that a lot of college high jumpers get worse when they get to school. They just lift too much. That or they are novelty-driven athletes (a lot of high jumpers are) so they’ll get gains off of lifting a lot for a bit, but then those gains will filter out and eventually reverse.
Barbells are different than plyometrics! A bar on one’s back tells the brain that the athlete’s center of gravity is now in a different place which requires a new muscle strategy (one that often favors spinal erectors).
A small volume of this is fine, and how much is different for each athlete, but too much over time can chip away at what I’d call “elastic power to weight ratio”.
If nothing else, remember the magic 5:1 ratio talked about in Supertraining of speed in favor of force-based methods.
6. Be sure not to get too far away from a jumping-based sport (and don’t high jump the same way too much)
This factor is key but goes far too unnoticed by most coaches. Progressive coaches like Rob Assise and Tony Holler know and understand that doing the same type of jump over and over again will eventually lead to an exhaustion of the organism.
How many high jumpers who played basketball in high school never hit their expectations in college because they stopped playing hoops, started lifting, and started really “getting coached” (or pre-programmed) in their event. Many stopped doing the second event we talked about in point 4 which doesn’t help either.
I am a huge proponent of safely playing as much sport as possible for jumpers, and as important meets draw near, looking at the risk-reward of sport, and perhaps instead making jump-related games on the mat (such as playing “horse” with different types of high jumps and heights).
Playing a sport such as basketball is fundamental for maintaining all of the subtle ways that the human body works with to project an athlete vertically, including foot steering and heel-tap impulses, rhythm, timing, multi-directional explosiveness, heating of the fascial system, and much more.
If you want to be a good high jumper, make sure you train smart, but an important part of that is knowing when to play, play, play.
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.