Jumping over a bar 7’10.5” high while you stand only 6 feet tall requires a good amount of vertical lift; things like speed, power and explosiveness typically come to mind when considering someone who jumped almost 2 feet over their own head.
The question is: what does a killer high jump have to do with running repeated and fairly exhausting 200-400m sprints in practice, and why do many elite jumpers train this way in their preparation period?
Trust me, I have thought about that one myself.
(If you aren’t familiar with the concept of long sprints, also known as “tempo”, these are going to be 3-12 repetitions of sprints, anywhere from 150-400 meters at paces around 60-80% of the athlete’s best performance. They are long, tiring, and not all that explosive.)
For some reason, running the living crap out of their jumpers in the fall has been a staple “training” method of many track and field jumps coaches over the years. Call it old school, but it has been a part of the preparation of a lot of successful athletes…. and it works…. but it works best when done right. Example- Dick Booth, coach of Hollis Conway, would routinely have his jumpers run repeated 200m+ sprints as part of their training program.
One of the first books I received on training was the “USATF coaching manual” when I was 16. After reading the sample high jump training program, I realized that the “base training” for high jump looked more like what a 400m runner than a jumper. All long sprints had ever done to me was leave me fairly exhausted and wondering what it had to do with jumping and why my legs hurt.
After many years, through observations and understanding of training on a few different levels, things have finally started to make a bit more sense to me.
If you want to jump high off one leg, long sprints ain’t that bad. Here is why.
A Quick Recap of Single Leg Jumping
Single leg jumping is basically using ones leg as a rigid lever to “deflect” one’s self off of the ground. This will result in extremely high, ballistic forces in the hip, knee ankle joint. The forces are largely of the “explosive isometric” variety, meaning they rely heavily on a locking action of the muscle combined with strong tendons. 
Single leg jumping involves taking off of a fairly rigid plant leg
Strength for single leg jumping is highly dependent on the elastic power and resistance to deformity that can be created via the muscle/tendon complex, which doesn’t necessarily come through the weightroom or a few practice jumps every now and then. Creating the strength in connective tissues needed for jumping demands specificity and adequate repetition. The weight room doesn’t offer the specificity, nor the repetition of what can be done elsewhere.
Single leg jumping involves a lot of tendon strength. The Achilles tendon can be developed in the weightroom, but nothing I have seen in my life has the capacity to make the Achilles tendons as sore as a long sprints workout. You can do burning drop sets on every calf machine in the gym, but it won’t build up your Achilles the way that dynamic sprint work will. You just don’t get the rapid stretch loading mechanism.
Speaking of things you don’t get in the weightroom, looking at the single leg jump, the neurological pattern of power and drive through the forefoot is a crucial element of performance. This pattern is why, when you watch someone with “hops” walk around, they tend to spend a lot of time on their toes. They are constantly in “drive” mode. They want to get to the ball of the foot quickly, which also builds a lot of Achilles tendon stiffness. Drive is just wired into the brain of a jumper, and they express it in every movement.
This extension off of the ball of the foot is easily lost when you stop getting quality reps in, trust me. It happens due to a breakdown of both neurological and structural mechanisms. Most athletes will experience this heavily when they get away from team sports for an extended period of time. This is a big reason the basketball player who goes out for track tends to lose his or her “spring” around 6 weeks into the season. This is also a reason that a high jumper gets to college, stops playing basketball, puts 75lbs on their squat, and jumps 4” less than they did in high school where they barely touched a weight.
Ceasing team sports for too long can result in a significant decrease in elastic power
Capacity? Really?
Typically the things coaches practice (that work) are years ahead of the research. When you ask any track coach why they have their kids doing a boatload of long sprints in the fall, you will invariably hear the famous: “we are building a base” rationale. To this, I ask: “A base of what?”, exhaustion? Instead of running, why not cardio ropes, or maybe fitness bootcamp? What does a base really mean in respect to the end goal?
If long sprint training was completely counter-productive, however, nobody would use it. It does “work”, but why? Most coaches can’t really explain long sprints other than the whole “base” dogma. To build a better training program, long sprints need to be understood and used in the right way to maximize the athlete’s fullest potential.
So let’s talk base building.
The fact of the matter is that capacity must be specific to the athlete’s needs. For example, a powerlifter is building capacity by doing reps of 5 on the deadlift, where they only need to hit up to three maximal lifts in a meet. A high jumper builds capacity by taking 15 quality jumps in practice, where they would typically take 7 in a meet. Long sprints is an extreme form of capacity, but it is not so much capacity on the neurological level (although it can be helpful in building an extension pattern of sorts), but rather the structural level. Although it is on the high end of capacity, long sprints build elastic strength through the hip and lower leg.
The question is, how much capacity is needed, and at what point does this long sprint madness interfere with power development? What about long sprinting really is useful for aspiring jumpers?
These and more will be answered in part II, with part III featuring practical applications on methods that can be used to build elastic strength through long sprints while still improving all-important speed and power from week to week.
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