A Matter of Tempo

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Tempo in lifting is somewhat of an interesting topic. When I first saw some of the tempo prescriptions that some elite strength coaches were recommending, I was amazed. Whenever I am in the weight room, all I ever want to do is push heavy weight as fast as possible, and tempo is usually the last thing on my mind. It would probably take somebody pointing a loaded gun at me to get me to perform a 4:1:2 tempo set-up. Aside from my personal preference, the literature, both scientific and practical shows several "positive" effects of using tempo in lifting.

1. An increased safety factor, reduces bouncing in lifts.

2. Along with increased safety, tempo makes the muscles do the work rather than tendons, ligaments, or joint capsules.

3. Varying lifting tempos in a yearly plan causes an extension of the trianing effect of lifting, which in turn, should lead to higher levels of strength at the end of the strength phase of training.

4. Tempo allows a greater time under tension, which will change the metabolic effect of the training, as well as increase hypertrophy (if this causes time under tension to rise into the 30-70 second range, which is proven the most effective for hypertrophy)

5. Since lifting will never exactly replicate dynamic sport movement, it should be performed safely and for the purpose of increasing the available, useable muscle tissue for sporting movement (at least the HIT camp would say this).

The college which I coach at makes a good deal of use of tempo for training our sprinters (at least in the pre-season phase). Our sprinters have been very, very successful over the years (national champions and olympians) and apparantly I would say that tempo in lifting certainly is not hurting them. A typical tempo reccomendation in the fall might be a 3:0:2 tempo, or a 5:0:3 tempo for squats.

Now that I have that out of the way, I will state what I personally hate about tempo in training. There are always two sides to the coin of any argument of course!

1. De-emphasis on explosiveness in training. I have never seen the use of tempo in any elite/international track coaches training plan (of course, I haven't come close to looking at all training programs).

2. Submaximal recruitment of motor units in lifting. When was the last time you ever saw a olympic lifter doing squats with any sort of tempo? Olympic lifters are athletes we sometimes or often model our training after, and they demonstrate no appearance of tempo on their squats, they even bounce! (say it ain't so!) It is just about the same story with powerlifters...powerlifters have two primary types of lifting days, dynamic and maximal effort days. You certainly won't see any sort of tempo except for all-out speed on the dynamic day, and the max effort day is full-blast of the concentric portion of the lift as well. If your desire is to increase the maximal amount of available motor units (your CNS pool) the concentric portion of the lift must be performed as fast as possible!

3. Time under tension can also be achieved by increasing the reps of the lift. In the preparatory period of the season, which do you think would be a better way of increasing hypertrophy in the fast twitch muscles: doing 3 reps of an exercise as an extremely slow tempo with 150lb, the set taking 30 seconds or doing 15 reps of the same exercise with 150lb in 30 seconds. I would put my money on the 15rep/30 second set. Think of JoeDeFranco's "50rep rhythm squats" on this one. In addition to the muscle factor, the higher reps in this case may also be a positive factor in explosive tendon development.

4. Some athletes do not need anymore hypertrophy development! In this case, tempo would probably not be a good idea, even if it is superior to higher reps at the same set-time window for hypertrophy (which doub't it would be, at least for functional hypertrophy).

5. Instead of trying to prolong the training effect of lifting, why not just switch to explosive/ballistic methods outside of weights instead of messing around with tempo?

6. Other methods of increasing the time-under-tension in a given set exist, including one of my favorites, the pause-explode method. I will get into this more in just a bit.


The dichotomy:

Here is the problem....research is somewhat mixed on this issue, and perhaps even favors HIT style tempo training. While the idea of HIT (1 set, slower tempo trianing for failure) makes many coaches cringe, it does work for a lot of people. The only thing about HIT that makes me want to cause bodily harm to Arthur Jones is the fact that you don't have to be "smart" to implement it effectively. You can be the dreaded "weight room nazi" style strength coach, who stomps and yells incessantly and appears to have ridden the "short bus" as a kid (Not that these coaches are all bad!) and still get a decent training effect out of your workout (or at least make people feel tired when they are done).

Some studies have shown that lifting at high speed will bring about the same increase in vertical jump as lifting with a slower tempo. The only difference between the two is that the faster lifting will bring about a higher peak torque in loaded conditions. Basically, lift weights fast, and you will become good at lifting weights fast, and not necessarily jumping higher, due to the amount of processes that go on in vertical jumping which bring tendon elasticity and static-spring proficiency into play.

Personally, I don't like a lot of research studies, and most of the subjects are un-trained athletes who will respond well to any kind of training. There are a few studies which make me cry "uncle" though, and these are typically the type of study as listed above. So what is the bottom line then? Well, tempo might be good because it is safe, and can extend the training effect of lifting out if it is varied, BUT, at the very best, it is no better than fast, heavy and explosive lifting. With that in mind, here is my official, mostly anecdotal opinion on lifting tempos.

1. If you are a speed-athlete, don't bother with lifting tempo. I would recommend keeping the eccentric phase of the lift controlled, but besides that, the concentric portion should be fast.

2. For the same set-time, 15 fast reps are better than 5 slow ones with the same weight. Tudor Bompa's classic book, periodization trianing for sports also takes this view.

3. If you want to prolong the training-effect-window of your strength trianing, try the pause-explode method! Lower yourself to parallel in a squat or similar lift for 2-10 seconds and then explode up. Repeat up to desired set-time. Jay Shroeder over at Evo-sport does lifting like this, and it is very effective in improving explosive power. Isometrics as a training method kind of go in and out, but this is a variant that you certainly can't go wrong with. Mel Siff also talks about this as a great training method in his "Supertraining" text.

4. A fast-tempo in lifting is only really dangerous is you are a new lifter, and haven't learned how to keep your core tight and aligned during the lift. I would say the more back-oriented the lift, the more I would use a controlled tempo, but not to the point where you would have to count. As with everything there is a learning curve. Tempo is something which is built to "injury-proof" the lifting process for the inexperienced.


Well, thats all for now, I will say that I am not completely bashing tempo work through this article, I am just saying that there are probably better ways of doing things than tempo work, especially in light of olympic lifters and powerlifters. Good luck, and happy training,

Joel

The Weightlifting Addiction

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You know what I am talking about......or maybe not, but I would say that most people reading this know what I am talking about.

Weightlifting Addiction, How to tell if you are a "lifting addict":

1. Your standing vertical has increased over the past few years, but your running jump hasn't, and your running one leg jump DEFINITELY hasn't!

2. You get anxious to get to the gym the day of your lifting workout.....as soon as you wake up, it is the first thing on your mind.

3. You have gained 10+ pounds in the first year you started lifting.

4. You have this inevitable urge to go heavy in the weightroom.......especially when there are a large amount of people watching.....

5. You have dreams about power-cleaning 2x your bodyweight

6. You find yourself watching olympic lifting competitions when you are bored

7. You haven't improved your 30m dash or slam-dunking ability in 2 years, but who cares! You can squat 150lb more!

8. You feel that if you can't squat 2x bodyweight, you are a failure as an athlete


OK, well those are a few signs I guess......and I will say that this post is primarily geared towards you unilaterals out there, aka track and field jumpers and anyone else who wants to get up off 1 leg. I will say that being a "lifting addict" isn't all that bad, but if you are a jumper or sprinter it can eventually hurt you! For the most part, a killer standing vertical requires a HUGE squat, and a good 2 leg running vertical requires a pretty good squat, but more complex movements such as running and jumping off 1 leg take a little more plyometric persuasion.

I am certainly not bashing lifting at all, but in order to be a good unilateral jumper, there comes a point in a yearly training cycle when you have to take a break from lifting. This usually comes in the form of plyometric shock work. Beleive it or not, taking a break from lifting to do a few depth jump cycles might actually increase your squat. After all, you will be dramatically increasing the output of your nervous system through the myotatic reflex, as well as doing some intensive work specific to bi-lateral power production.

Russian science has shown that the training effect of weightlifting regarding the improvement of speed-strength diminishes within 14 weeks. This scenario has happened to many of us......we start lifting again after taking some time off and gain a lot, but then suddenly we stop gaining, and instead of switching over to another stimulus, aka, plyometrics, we just try to keep tweaking out our lifting programs, adding cluster sets, drop sets, isometrics, partial reps and the like. As some famous authors say regarding periodization, "why do most coaches feed their athletes crap for workouts up until the big meets and then finally back off the weights and do what the athlete needed in the first place?". Of course the athlete will feel refreshed, but he/she could be at a much higher state of sport mastry if they had gotten what they needed earlier in the season.

I will say that the training effect of lifting can be extended by adding variation, but all lifting is in essence the same in the fact that it offers a training effect of neurological duration, and is not necessarily specific to jumping or running. I think the fear that many people have is that they will lose their hard-earned weightroom strength when they switch to plyos, or that they haven't hit that "magic number" in the weightroom yet. Alternating cycles will not kill you though, as long as they are planned out with the long term goal in mind! The key is to be patient. Yes, those elite jumpers can clean over 1.5 times their bodyweight, and squat 2.5x, but they didn't get there by spending the majority of their traning time in the weightroom. I will bet you that for the most part, they are naturally explosive, as well as have gained explosiveness through jumping, which contributes to their weight room numbers.

A quick, second to last note.....most Western track coaches develop the different strength qualities in parallel throughout the season....which works, but according to Eastern sport science, not as well as well-planned blocks with specific goals.

I will end on a note from Tudor Bompa's famous text of periodization for sports which says that athletes who have seemed to reach a plateu after a high training age can benefit by altering cycles of plyometrics and maximal strength. Seems to make sense to me. The two methods build on each other, and are powerful stimuli. FINALLY, to those two would say, "well I have great reactive strength, I just need to get stronger now right?". For a standing vertical jump, yes you need to get stonger, for high jumping, yes, but not to the point that you would for standing vertical. The ground contact time must remain low! I will get to this more another day, but for now, the moral of the story is, stick with what works, which is not using a specific training stiumuls for longer than you need to.

The Internet Age of Training

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I have been in the iron/plyometric game for quite a while, I first started reading about training when I was 12 years old, and was always fascinated with anything having to do with lifting or jumping higher, it was all new and fresh material to me. I dunked for the first time at age 14 at 5'11" without reading a single bit of internet training advice. My primary training method at the time was wall sits, leg extensions and playing basketball, very archaic according to todays standards. When I was about 16 years old (year 2000) I started searching the internet for training information. Of course, back then there weren't the forums that there are today, or hardly any of the information that you can find on some internet resources such as T-nation (was just getting started then) Now days, I see high-schoolers on these forums who are light-years ahead of where I was at the same age (knowledge wise), but here is something that I also see............their gains are similar or less than mine when I was their age. I think that maybe I just got lucky with the science of jumping program that I did, but I really improved a lot, without knowing an awful lot.

These days, I learn a lot off the internet, I have some great text books and reference guides here at home, but I probably get most of my knowledge off the internet. (I guess I had a few master's classes here and there as well......but who really cares about action potentials and cell membranes anyways?) Here is a fact though, that very few of us internet training junkies are willing to accept........how much have you improved since you found all this great training info on the net? I am not talking about how much have you put on your squat or clean or single leg BOSU squat while simultaneously playing ping pong.. How much has your vertical jump or sprint speed improved.?? Now I am sure for some, yes, it has increased, but I would make a fair bet that, for a lot of people out there, NO, I have not improved much at all in the last 2-3 years, even though I am learning all these new training programs/ideas on the web. (I am talking for the most part about people who have stopped developing physically, because you will gain speed no matter what if you are still physically maturing, From what I have seen I think that physical abilities (speed strength) no longer on their own develop due to physical growth around age 15-19, however, this does not account for "old man strength" which I am starting to develop.)

So what is the point of this entry? It is just this........practical experience in training trumps anything you hear on the internet regarding training, EVEN MY ENTRIES, hahaha.

Here is my recommendation for evaluating your training program and what you read online....

1. NEVER build a training program around 1 article that you read. Read many articles by different authors, and find the good things they have to say about certain methods and what the authors agree on as sound training methods.

2. STICK to your training program. Don't go for a month and say, oh, well this program really isn't working, I think I'll check (insert website here) to look for another program and see how that works for me. An exception can be made here if you made a terrible mistake in your program selection, but if you follow step 1, you shouldn't come across this. (note: of course, you are supposed to make changes in your program every 2-4 weeks if you are intermediate/adv, but I am talking about the basic structure of the program in regards to long term goals)

3. DESIGN your program with the long term goal in mind. If you have been training for 5 years, your goal should not be to put 4 inches on your vertical in a month. This is probably not going to happen, and if it does, it will be the most unstable 4 inches you ever put on your vertical (quickly gained/quickly lost principle). Try and find resources regarding long term training methods. www.athleticscoaching.ca has loads of GREAT free sport science articles, especially regarding periodization.

4. REMEMBER what has worked for you in the past, and try not to get far away from it in your own training. It is important to vary training procedures from year to year, but you need to know what works for you and what doesn't.


I hope these simple tips can help you in your quest for your athletic goal

Joel

Add 20lb to your clean/snatch INSTANTLY!!!

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I know this probably sounds like a cheap marketing tactic, but since I am not selling anything, I guess it isn't. Most athletes use olympic lifts to enhance their athletic ability. Something that I notice with many videos of athletes doing olympic lifts, however, is that they are missing one important peice of the puzzle..........lifting straps.

What are lifting straps? They happen to be handy peices of leather/nylon that allow to have a rock solid grip on the barbell while you are lifting.

Wrist Wraps

Of course you might ask, Joel, on what basis do you make the claim that wraps will help so much. Well for one thing, they are banned from olympic lifting competitions, why?, because if they were legal it would be immensely easier to maintain a good grip on the weight (This is why olympic lifters must learn the 'hook' grip in order to deal with their force output on the bar)

So why is it important to have a good grip on the bar? Well if you don't have a good grip on a bar when you are performing say, a hang clean, a few things will happen.

1. You will prolong the coupling time between the eccentric and concentric portions of the lift due to 'give' in your hands at the explosive-isometric portion of the lift. Essentially you will teach yourself to be slower in converting your eccentric force into concentric. This is not something that you want as an athlete.

2. The loss of bar speed in an olympic lift will be proportional to the give in your hands during the lift, and by the way, even with a hook grip, it is still difficult to allow no give in a bar in a high speed hang snatch/clean.

3. Wraps help especially in snatches, where your hands are placed wider on the bar, which causes your hands with an even worse mechanical advantage than normal.

4. Finally, wraps teach you to use your legs/hips more, because you no longer have to worry about your grip much, therefore you have less cues to worry about over the course of the lift.

5. I will say that wraps will have a greater effect in doing lifts from the hang than lifts from the floor, just due to the rapid reversal that happens in a lift from the hang.

So..........use wrist wraps if you are planning on creating a greater force output in the olympic lifts!!!

A Tale of Two Years

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My junior year of college could be called a breakout year for any athlete. I increased my high jump PR from 6'8.75 to 7'.25", and my triple jump improved from 42'2 to 45'11.75". All this came after 8 years of training and competition in track and field and stagnant sophmore and freshman years of training. I look over my training log from my junior year quite frequently and can pick out several key aspects that made this a successful season. Here are the ones I find most important:

• Year-long management of volume and intensity. I started the year with circuit training and ended with depth jumps. The progress between these two was not linear, but always had the end goal in mind.
  
• A focus on squats as the primary weightroom method instead of cleans...if you don't have a good squat base, your strength from your cleans and snatches are going to come from places that aren't helpful as a jumper.
  
• A focus on SPEED in the weightroom. Just about everything I did in the weightroom was pretty fast, even squats. I usually hovered in the 60-80% range for my training in the fall.
• Gradual improvement of work capacity and special strength fitness. I did a lot of tempo and general work early this training year, as well as a few longer runs a few times a week, just for the purpose of recovery and fitness.
• Concentrated Strength Block Work: I can give at least two times during the course of this training year where I hit the weights hard for three week cycles and although my performance might have decreased a little during that time, it improved a LOT afterwards and led to PR's.
  
• Focus on RECOVERY. I did a lot of hydrotherapy, foam rolling, and stretching this year and it really paid off.
  
• Focus on the primary sport movement from October on. My primary workout of each week in October and after (except for the strength blocks) was high jumping and triple jumping.
  
• Consistant recovery weeks (every 4th week)
• I had a relatively lower workload in my sophmore year season, I think this allowed me to experience greater benefits my Junior year.

• 

I would like to compare this season to my Senior year. My senior season was very disappointing to say the least, I hovered around the 6'6 mark in high jump for most of indoor, until I finally pulled out 6'8 and 6'10 at the end of indoor season. I triple jumped in the 44 range fairly consistantly, until I got 45'5 at the NCCAA indoor meet (which was really more like 45'10 but they marked off because of my shorts) Regardless, this season was very disappointing. I sprained my ankle at the national meet going for 7' and couldn't really high jump at all for outdoors. I also tore ligaments in my elbow which took away my javelin ability. Here are some reasons that I feel I did not perform quite as well my senior year.

• Too much plyometric intensity early on in the fall. I was doing a lot of plyo work and very little tempo or solid weightlifting work in the early fall. I felt that my strength levels were fine at about a 290lb backsquat (could do more last year!) and that I needed to work on speed. This may have been a good idea, but my special fitness level was terrible, and although I had some good high jump practices early in the fall, I eventually hit a big plateu and burnout mark in late October.
  
• Too little weightlifting in the early season. (I had read a book by Marv Marinovich and it was good, but kind of led me down the wrong path) I did mostly bodyweight exercises in the early season.....pistol squats and the like. Pistol squats are actually a great exercise for acute increases in vertical, but they wont really provide enough overload to the CNS because of the balance issue.
• Too little general strength/elastic work. Once I hit my wall so to speak and started really hitting the weights again, I virtually eliminated elastic work from my regime (Aside from some sprint work). Although I gained MASSIVE amounts on my 2 leg vertical (and even my single leg), I was increasing my ground contact time by training my body to rely on frictional elements for the takeoff and thus my full approach high jump was in trouble. My first high jump practice after some very well planned strength work resulted in almost scissoring 5'10 after not being able to make 5'8 for the majority of the year and at the time would have been a practice record. I couldn't really jump off a full run however, because I hadn't really been practicing it, as well as not working on elastic exercises.
  
• Loss of high jumping progression throughout the SPP period.
  
• Loss of ability to maintain strength gains (possibly because of 'erratic' training cycles)
• X-Factors, Honestly sometimes I think that I also did poorly this season because I have been training hard for so long, sometimes the wall just creeps up on you. I know legendary sprint coach Charlie Francis reccommends a year of lowered volume after so many years of consistant training (I think 7 years). I did manage to take off 2 months of training altogether last year, and it really helped for this past summer's work.
  

With all that written, I would have to say the moral of the story is this.......traditional methods are typically where it is at with training. Make sure you are doing mostly low intensity work in the earlier portion of the year, and get stronger in the weightroom while keeping the speed of your lifts up. Make sure you get to your primary movement work early in the year, and then strive to improve thoughout the fall. Work a few concentrated strength blocks in here and there, and make sure your recovery and diet are good, and you will have a great season.

Joel

Depth Jump Guide

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It's been a little while since my last post, I moved back to LaCrosse Wisconsin a few weeks ago, and have been pretty busy working on getting the paperwork for my master's thesis taken care of amongst other things. Since my literature review for my master's thesis happens to be on plyometrics, and I have read a few good articles about depth jumping off the Canadian Athletics Coaching website lately, I will write some of my thoughts on depth jumping and plyometrics.

Firstly, what is a depth jump? A depth jump is a training movement where one starts by standing on a box which can be 12" to 50+" tall and then steps (not jumps) off, free-falling towards the ground. As soon as contact is made with the ground, the athlete rebounds into a vertical jump. This should be done in one fluid motion. Depth jumping is the exercise origin of what we know here in the USA as 'plyometrics'.

This picture is sort of what goes down in a depth jump

The Rules of Depth Jumping According to Joel Smith:

1. Depth jumps have an extremely high training effect. Full recovery from a true depth jumping session can take anywhere from 4 days to 2 weeks depending on the training load and the work capacity of the athlete.

2. Depth jumps should have the number 1 priority in whatever training cycle they are used in. My standard practice when I was in college, as well as is the standard practice in many Eastern Bloc programs is to use plyometrics in a 1 week microcycle where no heavy weightlifting is used, aside from use as a priming exercise. An example of this type of training week would be performing 4 sets of 10 depth jumps from a 35" box on monday and friday mornings. A light weightlifting workout could be administered on monday and friday nights. No workouts with any significant training effects would be used on tuesday, wednesday or thursday.

3. Depth jumps increase your leaping ability in proportion to your strength levels prior to performing them. The prerequisite of having a 2 to 2.5x bodyweight squat before performing plyometrics was NOT a safety issue. I did 1.5 years of true depth jumps barely being able to squat my own body weight and still increased my vertical a significant amount with no injury. The 2.5x bodyweight recommendation is there to maximize the effectiveness of depth jumps in a training cycle. For example, someone who weighs 150lb, has a standing vertical of 27" and can squat 300lb will gain a lot more out of plyometrics than somebody who weighs 150lb, has a 27" standing vertical and can squat 165lb. Many people are aware of this concept.

4. Depth jumps should be performed with some sort of target in mind. Research has shown that jumping towards a target will increase vertical jump heights, as well as change the biomechanics of the jump. If you play basketball, you should do your depth jumps trying to grab the rim, or dunk a basketball on the rebound. If you are a high-jumper, you should also have some sort of target in mind, but this could also include jumping over something, such as a hurdle on the rebound (this is actually what my master's thesis is on). If you play football, have someone toss a football high in the air during the drop and try to catch it on the rebound, etc......


5. Depth jumps, contrary to popular beleif, do not HAVE to be performed on a soft surface (just don't do them on asphalt, at least not for an extended period of time). It really depends on your sport and this is a point where I will be specific to track and field. The softer the surface involved, the longer the coupling time between eccentric and concentric contractions is going to be. If your sport is sand volleyball, well go ahead and do your plyometrics in the sand or on grass. If you are a long jumper or high jumper, however, you should probably be doing your plyometrics on some type of track surface, or even a wooden basketball court (I am speaking for qualified athletes here who don't have biomechanical abnormalities, especially in the feet). If you have 'bad feet', you probably wan't to be more careful of your plyometric surfaces.

6. Effective depth jumping (if you don't want to be waiting 1 week between workouts) should be preceded by few months of GPP work, as well as weightlifting, olympic lifting, submaximal plyometrics, hill running, sprinting, and the like. The year of track and field where I jumped 7', I didn't do any depth jumps until mid-competitive indoor season. (It is interesting to note, I went from a PR of 6'9 to 6'10.25 to almost clearing 7'0.25 within a 3 week period of true plyometric work after having done some great prep work earlier in the year).

7. The optimal height of the box for 2 foot vertical jumping is the maximum height of the box before your vertical starts to decrease. The optimal height of the box to improve one-legged jumping is the maximal height of the box before the vertical starts to decrease PLUS 4-8 inches. These are for 2 leg box jumps. (Note, don't ask me for a reference on this one.......it's a blend of what I have read and what I have experienced over the years) Higher boxes will build reactive strength while lower boxes will build explosive strength. A recommendation for elite jumpers in russia is .75m (30") for explosive strength and 1.1m (44") for reactive strength, but has also been as low as 6" in some american studies with recreation athletes, so the ability of the athlete is a critical factor.

8. Horizontal falling distance should be accounted for in depth jumping. Your vertical target should be placed about 1.5-1.75x the distance of the height of your box away from the bottom of the box. If you were jumping off of a 36" box, your target should be at least 48" away from the bottom of the box. If you dont put your target far enough away, biomechanically, you will be jumping backwards. Unless you play basketball and are used to getting posterized all the time and want to work on your dunk-blocking ability while players are attempting to posterize you, you don't want to work on jumping backwards.

regards,

Joel
(the ultimate self proclaimed vertical jump expert internet guru of the next millenium!) joking!

Speed Continuum

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I felt like posting this because of some things I have heard lately about the Olympic lifters and powerlifters having such great verticals, and how all athletes should use these techniques to increase their athletic ability in their respective sport. Before I get into this further, I would like to point something out....

The number 1 way to improve your sport movement is to practice that movement. If you want to dunk better, practice dunking.....if you want to throw farther, practice throwing, if you want to pass a test, study the material on the test. Have you ever watched And1 streetball and wondered to yourself how these guys got their leaping ability? Guess what, 3/4 of these guys probably haven't even touched a weight in their life. (Although it can be said that genetic freaks will be awesome at what they do, regardless of training method) Now you can bring up the common argument of, well the average football player has a 37" vertical jump, while the average basketball player only has a 30" vertical jump. You know what the big difference here is though? How much higher than their standing jumps, can these football players reach with a running start? The answer is, not a whole lot.

Now if you are a track and field athlete and you compete in the jumping events, what good does it do you if you have a 33" standing vertical, but can only get up 35" off of one foot with a full run-up. The fact is, the majority of elite high jumpers have standing verticals in the 26-33" range. Occasionally you will get a Charles Austin type jumper with a 38" legit (no combine tricks) standing vert, but this is not common. So why is it that an olympic level high jumper can have such a poor standing vertical but skyrocket off 1 leg. There are several reasons for that answer that I will list:

1. Antropometrics, i.e. build. High-jumpers have long legs, and thin builds which rely heavily on elastic elements (tendon spring) rather than frictional elements (muscle contraction).

2. Bilateral Deficit, It is not uncommon for skill position players in American Football to out-lunge the linemen, even though the linemen have a much better squat than the skill players. Why? Because the linemen don't have to develop power unilaterally nearly as often as the skill players, their power comes from a 2-foot base. High-jumpers are this way also, in that they primarily express power off 1 leg, and their 2 leg activities will suffer. Of course, jumpers trained in the weightroom will quickly make this deficit up, to a degree.

3. Energy Accumulation vs. Dissipation; In high jumping, the ground-contact time is less than .2 seconds. In a standing vertical jump, the ground contact time from initiation of the jump is around .45 seconds. Enough said.

4. Training programs; most high jumpers who include some form of power training in a year round program, will often maintain a lower vertical jump and keep a higher running jump. The only way for someone with a true high jump build to fall behind in their running jump is to exclusively lift weights for an extended period of time. This can be dangerous to a jumper, as it will lengthen their ground contact time and really hurt their ability to effectively display a fast rate of force development off the ground, as well as maintain an effective ratio of frictional to elastic strength.

So, how much should T&F jumpers lift weights in ratio to plyometrics, sprinting, and other activities? Well, the answer will be different for everyone...The jumper who can fly off a 3-step approach, but can't jump well off of a full approach should probably only really have 1 day a week devoted to devleoping explosive or limit strength, while the jumper who can really get up with a 12 step approach, but has nothing off 3 steps may do better to have 2-3 days of good lifting workouts a week, especially in the preseason. I have found that with a balanced type jumper, such as myself, 1 day a week of explosive lifting and 1 day a week of limit strength lifting is quite effective in the special prep period. The main thing to remember is to always be doing some form of speed or jump training at all times in the season, because that is the basis of your event.

Well thats all for now, happy training

Joel, CSCS, USATF level 85 Jumps Coach

Squat Depth

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Just a quick note on my thoughts on squat depth and jumping. First I want to say that most sports probably shouldn't exclusively emphasize one type of squat or squat depth. Different movements should by cycled in and out to prevent staleness and work different muscle groups and motor patterns.

That aside,















For most sports, the majority of squats should be done to parallel or lower at a controlled tempo on the eccentric and a quicker tempo on the way up. For jumps, squats should be done full and deep in the offseason, and also in the pre-season, although box squats can be cycled in pre-season. Once the competitive season is in swing, however, full squats should be avoided within 2 weeks of a big meet and used sparingly.


The only reason for that, in my experience, is that deeper squats are nice for increasing muscular power, and 2 leg jumping, but they can have a slightly negative effect on full approach high jumping in the short term. I feel this is because of the long duration that the muscles must contract for each rep, teaching the body to "accumulate" energy rather than release it.

This is not to say at all that full squats are bad for high jumping, because the body is very plastic, in that, a few weeks after a full squat session, the body will supercompensate with an increase in strength, and when speed based training stimuli are introduced, the results can be spectacular. Case in point, my record high jump performance was 2 weeks out of a full-squat minicycle, followed by 2 weeks of plyo's only (no weights).

Regards,

Joel

p.s. Although different squat variations have a place, I wouldn't advocate an unsupported leg press like that of Ed Zercher as shown here.

My Technical High Jump Manifesto- as of July, 2007

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Well, I am at work right now sitting in front of my computer with little to do at the moment, so I would like to take this time to describe my current high jump technical philosophy. I will try to keep this short and understandable.

Here are the points that I will cover,

1. Efficiency
2. Takeoff Angle
3. Bar Clearance
4. Approach Speed

(I put a visual of high jump approach terminology at the end of this post)

In simple terms, the principle behind what I consider effective jumping technique lies in efficiency. I tend to judge jumping efficiency based on the differential between a jumper's best scissor jump and their best traditional full-run jump in competition. Depending on the athlete and their leg length, in an elite jumper with good technique, this difference will be anywhere from 9 to 14 inches. I would consider anything over 12 inches to be very good jumping efficiency. In my own jumping, I reached a maximal scissor jump of 5'11, while jumping 7 feet, and I feel that I reached a very efficient method in my own jumping.

That said, as a coach, until your athlete is reaching 8-12 inches over their best scissors, there are still some technical issues that need to be resolved in your jumper. Once the jumper is over 10-12 inches of difference (unless there is still something obviously wrong, which I would doubt their would be), then the emphasis can simply shift to speed of run-up and explosion in the take-off.

My second point which I beleive is very important is that of individuality in an approach. Many coaches seem to forget that the big approaches that are 15-18 feet out from the standard and start 75 feet back are reserved for those athletes that are running over 7.5-8 meters a second on their approach and are taking off up to a foot before the first standard. I prefer most jumpers in the 2 meter range to have takeoff marks of 9' to 12' away from the standard and 55-65' out from the first mark. Jumpers in the 5'-6' foot range can be even closer, 8'-11' from the standard and 45-60' out from the bar. The variance in approach charactaristics for a given height can be appropriated based on whether the jumper is a power jumper (narrower approach) or speed jumper (wider approach).

Many coaches get frustrated with their jumper for "not holding their arch long enough" or something to that nature. What very few seem to realize is that the body naturally tends to contort itself over the bar in order to clear it, according to the parabolic flight pattern given to it upon launch. If you watch some jump videos in slow motion carefully where a jumper "came down on the bar and should have held their arch", you will see that even if the jumper held their arch, their center of gravity would still be coming down on the bar, and no amount of holding the arch could prevent it.

The key to successful high jumping is finding an approach that minimizes an athletes time over the bar, while still allowing maximal force at the takeoff, and enough rotation to allow the center of gravity to rise as high as possible over the apex of the jump.

Allow me to clarify.

A approach with a big, wide radius will allow for an "easier" plant with less collapse of the takeoff leg and less stress on the ankle. It is also good for jumpers who are taller and lankier, and are unable to cope with the forces of a tight turn and plant, however, it also creates a shallower takeoff angle. What is the takeoff angle? If you drew a line between the last 2 steps of the jumper and kept drawing that line through the pit, and then connected that line with the plane of the standard, that would be your takeoff angle. Most good male jumpers are somewhere in the 40-50 degree range, while most good female jumpers are in the 35-45 range. The problem is, many coaches scheme an approach which causes this angle to fall well below 35 degrees. If your plant angle is less than 35 degrees, well......you won't be jumping too high today, junior.

This is the reason that I beleive, once a jumper knows how to run a curve well, that the radius should be as tight as possible, while still allowing inward lean, and good rotation at takeoff. If the jumper's knee is collapsing and they aren't jumping "up" then the approach can be widened a little bit (that is until they get more isometric strength and I make them go back to a narrow approach!).

Just a quick note on my view of the takeoff.....I don't have much of one, not yet at least, simply because I feel that the takeoff is a pure function of the unconscious mind. Giving the jumper too many things to think about when taking off can be a bad idea, the setup before the takeoff is a lot more important. A lot of coaches tell the jumper to "drive the knee" when taking off. This is probably the only acceptable cue when actually taking off, although it is probably not needed unless the thigh is not reaching 90 degrees when taking off. If the cue to drive the knee is causing MORE than 90 degrees of knee drive, this is a BAD thing, because when the knee is driven beyond this point, it cannot deliver its maximal block, due to a shorter moment arm when the knee drive stops. (I could also see keeping the eyes focused on the back corner of the bar and the standard as a takeoff cue, but that doesn't really have a lot to do with the takeoff).

On to bar clearance.

I beleive bar clearance comes naturally in most jumpers. What doesn't come naturally is the idea that you have to rotate in the air around the bar enough to the point that you don't have to arch and "snap" so much as arch and just extend your legs. So how does this happen, well if the takeoff angle is good (35-55 degrees) and the jumper is landing fairly far back into the pit, then the only factor left is rotation around the bar. Essentially good rotation will, at the apex of a jump, leave a jumpers body in a position that, if they lied completely flat, they would be parallell with the ground, or rotating 90 degrees after takeoff (actaully, 80-90 degrees, there is a little leniency). You will see some jumpers rotate so much at the elite level, they will keep going and almost land on their head. When good rotation is attained, often the jumper will not feel like they had to "force the arch" it just happened.

Often on the high school level and sometimes on the college level, you will hear a jumper say "I was 8 inches over the bar, but then my butt hit it". The 8 inches they are referring to is often their back, which is because the body has only rotated about 45 degrees. Their center of gravity is never more than an inch or two over the bar, and because of poor rotation, they won't make it, no matter how hard they try to arch.


Finally, approach speed. I beleive that the approach speed in high jump should be as fast as humanly possible without collapse of the takeoff leg. The takeoff speed without collapse of the takeoff will (usually) be faster in competition than in practice in the majority of cases, because of the increased competition adrenaline, more motor units are recruited in the knee and hip extensors, take advantage of this.

Well, thats all for now, I may update this in the future, or post ramblings about one aspect or another of technical prowess in the high jump. Most of my future posts will likely take into account physiology moreso than technical issues, however.

Regards,

Joel

Here is a high jump visual that I made, probably not to scale, but hopefully it clarifies any confusing terminology.

First Entry

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Greetings,

As my first post, I would like to share a little bit about myself and what the purpose of this blog is. I have been involved in some form of physical training for sports for the past 12 years, the primary expression of which is an increased ability to defy gravity. I have always been gifted with an above average leaping ability, or perhaps it was just the fact that I was tall when I was younger and my primary goal seemed to be to jump and touch things in the school rooms that no-body else could reach, developing my motor pathways at a young age. Regardless, with just playing basketball, running stairs and doing wall sits and other primitive weightlifting, I acheived my first dunk at the height of 5'11, 3 weeks out of 8th grade.

Throughout high school, I tried various jump improvement programs, until I discovered solid gold in "The Science of Jumping". I improved my 1 and 2 leg jumps about 5 inches in 3 months with this program, which was far above air alert, or anything else at the time was able to bring about. I was now able to pull off most dunks (except between the legs) at a height of 6'0". By my senior year, with some intelligent training, and more strength training, I had increased my leaping ability enough to allow me to bring my head within 1 inch of a basketball goal and touch 2 inches above the top of the square of a basketball hoop.

It was also during high school that I started high-jumping. Going into track with the intention of running the 400m and staying in shape for basketball, I was met with a pleasant surprise with our school's recent investment, high jump mats. My first practice I did 5'2 off a dusty elementary school floor, and reached 6' by the end of my freshman year of high school. Coaching myself, I took this up to 6'8.5" my senior year. (I did not grow in height at all between those 4 years, just gained 20 lb) In college, I increased my best jump to 7'.25" or 2.14m. I also took my triple jump from 42'0 (12.75m) to 46' (14.01m) within the course of a year.



Entering college, I had very high hopes for my track and field performances. During my first two years, I struggled due to other commitments in my academic major (athletic training/sports medicine) because I was not always able to practice with the team. My best high jump over these two years was 2.05m, or 6'8.75. Although this jump probably marks an average improvement of a high school jumper (high school high jumpers don't always improve much their first year or two, or at all!) I switched majors to exercise science my junior year, and in the process, pushed my high jump up over 7 feet and my triple jump over 14 meters.

Now at the age of 23 and post-collegiate, I hope to go above and beyond the 7 foot barrier this coming training season. I also hope to have a job coaching track someday, and I really feel like this is the thing that I have been called to do in this lifetime. Along with the coaching portion, most of what I will be posting will be related to the biomechanics or physiological aspects of training for either high jump, or a great vertical leap in general. I am currently pursuing my masters degree in human performance at the University of Wisconsin-LaCrosse, in hopes of advancing my knowledge as well as improving my chances of securing a collegiate coaching position in the future.

Well, thats about it for now, I'll shortly be posting my philosophy of high jump technique, which is quite far from your traditional ten step-15 feet from the crossbar ideology.


Joel, BA, CSCS