In my experience, the running two leg jump is likely the athletic skill with the least knowledge revolving around it, or its performance. Part of the reason for this is simple: athletes who have grown up playing jumping sports who have good athletic ability can often perform a two leg jump with a good, and sometimes incredible, amount of skill.
Another part is that common internal cues and instructions to help athletes jump higher often don’t work and are ignored when one really wants to jump high, so we tend to get pragmatic, and just leave things be. (This doesn’t mean there aren’t cues that work, but it takes a thorough knowledge of movement to select what is really appropriate.)
When intent is present and the skill is fairly innate (i.e. running, throwing, jumping or swimming) as opposed to something more complex like pole vault), the ability of the human body to figure out that skill on its own is very good, and in some cases, phenomenal.
(Knowing also that technique is dictated by the strength of the myo-fascial system to handle the forces associated with particular positions and outcomes)
It makes sense, therefore, that the best dunkers and two leg jumpers in the world don’t need a “technique coach” or any sort of coaching, in fact, someone telling them what to do or think about could very well mess them up. This was a reason that Jay Schroeder didn’t do running or run technique training with his athletes… they were already running very well in the capacity they needed to.
We see this many times when track coaches work with team sport athletes. The acceleration and top-end paradigms of track and field (many of which are being overhauled, such as triple extension and “knees up”) don’t fit with how team sport athletes must move.
This isn’t to say the track and field stimulus is harmful to team sport, it’s anything but that, and a well-needed stimulus and variety towards any team sport athlete that is almost certainly over-lifted and under speed-trained. I’m more talking about the sprint paradigms that tend to come with track and field that team sport athletes are judged by.
Team sport athletes should run track instead of just lifting in their off-season.
I digress though, back to jumping.
So, although many athletes can put together a perfect symphony of movement in their jumps (such as Mac McClung in the video below), some athletes will struggle for a number of reasons, such as not getting enough jumping reps in, not starting jumping early enough, a lack of movement literacy (Jeremy Frisch is killing it with developing this trait in our movement starved youth, by the way), or just not being overly coordinated, such as those with lower acetylcholine levels.
In the video above, Mac has the dexterity with low hips to move towards the hoop with speed and control, and literally throw his left leg in front of him, catch up to it, and time his other three limbs to plant and carry him upwards, all while creating a ridiculous amount of torque through all three planes of movement.
In other words, Mac is an athlete. Nobody coached him how to do this, he just did it. And he is technically perfect in the process. Just like watching nature shows, you can see how all of life on this earth adapts towards the environment it is placed into with engineering we could only hope to understand and replicate.
Who taught this bobcat how to jump so perfectly? Did it have a coach?
That all being said, there are many cases where athletes need to have more detailed and directed with with aspects of their jump. In cases stated above where skill is sub-optimal, the motor pathway that exists in jumping has became rooted in something suboptimal, and the environment needs to be altered in which case learning a new pattern can occur.
Using a medicine ball is a nice way to accomplish this, since throwing the medicine ball vertically is not as taxing as actually jumping, and allows an athlete to get more reps in. It is also a diverse stimulus, so it can add onto the existing capabilities of an athlete for better jumping. One of the biggest things athletes who lack double leg jumping ability tend to struggle with is a long penultimate (long step before the double leg plant). Common mistakes can be:
- Too high through the penultimate step
- Over-gripping toes through the penultimate
- Hip flexor of penultimate leg wont’ release to allow COM to pass through
- Athlete doesn’t get rotational in the plant
- Poor posture through the penultimate
- Poor timing in the penultimate
- No taking out of muscle slack through the penultimate
*Thanks coach Barr for teaching the foundation of many of these to me.
Each of these points could have an article on its own written in regards to it. One exercise I’ve been experimenting with can help give an athlete an environment where they can learn to check off a lot of the boxes above, which is the use of a medicine ball in the process. To perform the “medicine ball penultimate throw”, athletes will simply push through a long penultimate with low hips, into a plant and vertical throw as shown below.
This drill can be done in a high volume of reps to help athletes with posture and timing into a plant for double leg jumping. Tape marks or check marks can be established to lengthen the step, so long as the hips don’t excessively rise.
One issue with the exercise as shown in the video above, mentioned to me by Adarian Barr is timing problems that are created without the ability to easily take the ball to the side of the body (see Sam Wuest’s work on rotational jumping). Having a ball statically in the middle of the body creates a paradigm that causes my left foot to hit later than optimal in the above video. A lighter ball could allow the upper body component to rotate and sync with a faster rhythm of the final two steps coming down.
The more you know about movement, the easier it is to know what to coach, and what not to, and jumping is certainly a skill that can be a razor’s edge at times. Using a medicine ball, however, is a nice way to create an environment to allow an athlete to explore the base components of good two leg jumping.
If you enjoy this series, and want to see how to put these exercises together in context of a complete program, check out our books and training groups, particularly “Vertical Ignition” and “Legendary Athleticism”. Be a part of the revolutionary training systems that are getting dozens of athletes to lifetime bests in speed, jumping and explosive power!
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