Sunday, January 11, 2015

2015 Start - RCC Meet 1/10

Starting over with the blog. Will use this space to put down thoughts/training notes, and film review.

Today I am going to do a breakdown of my latest performance at the RCC Tigers All-Comers meet. With the legs feeling "eh" after coming off of the holidays, I decided to do a short approach, 4 rights, and just focus on nailing the technique.


Now, striving to be a perfectionist, I can point out a hundred things that are wrong with this jump. I'll try to mix a little bit of good with the bad during this review.


Being a short approach, I can't fault myself for not being as tall as I could be at take off, as I would still be in transition during a full approach. Because of this, my foot on the board was too far forward, I would say about 6 inches. Ideally, I want my shin to be vertical, with the distance between my hips and the board being smaller (shown by the green line).



If you do not get the take-off right, everything that follows can fall apart, rapidly. The run-off the board here looks good. Foot is still on the board, while hips are well past. Keeping the foot on the board as long as possible serves a couple purposes. It leads to a good and flat take-off angle, and aides in the stretch reflex action necessary for an effortless cycle.

I can see that my drive leg did not get all the way to "A" position (green line). I probably could have drove off the board a bit more. From this "A" position, my left legs job is done for the moment, and it swings freely.

The cycle action is reflexive, not forced (remember what I said earlier about a good take-off?), foot to butt, and finished in an "A" position. Height is also good. Foot may be no more than 12" off the ground at apex.

Here we are looking at my positioning at the apex. My hips are behind my knees. Ideally I feel like everything should be "stacked" (shoulders, hips,knees, ankles, on the green line)

After a good cycle, my right leg ends up in the "A" position. From there, it's time to transition to the "B", and start the active pawing into the step phase, which comes naturally with a good cycle. Again, I think my foot landed a couple of inches farther than I would have like. 

The step feels natural. The left leg comes to "A", and hold.

I find myself holding the step too long lately. I am trying to squeeze every cm out, and I end up starting my "B" too late. This leads up to the start of an ugly jump. At ground contact, my hips are already low, which means I have to work that much harder. It is a wonder I was able to complete the jump phase.

Because of the poor positioning at the beginning of the jump phase (low hip height, collapsing), I wasn't able to get any height on the jump, and the landing was rushed. Ideally, I would be sweeping my arms below me (green line), but I had no time.

End result - 13.51m 

Where do we go from here? I think I am going to go back to Left-Left-Right (weak-weak-strong). A few years ago, after breaking 14m for the first time, I decided to experiment with RRL (strong-strong-weak) to see if I could go 15m+. It hasn't happened...yet.After all the reviews of my training sessions and meets, I feel as though my left as my "jump" leg is my weakest link. LLR is what came naturally to me in high school, and I can consitantly do 13.5m+ with either, so hopefully with a full concentration on it (LLR), I can finally break into the 15m.

I have to check the calender to see when my next meet is. A follow-up to this will come soon.





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