Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #34: Gill1918 presents Jeff Ondo "How to Coach HJ at Meets"

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#34: Gill1918 presents Jeff Ondo "How to Coach HJ at Meets" · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

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  Welcome to the Gill 1918 Project, a podcast series by
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  coaches, for coaches powered by Gill Athletics.
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  Think of this as the Ted Talks of track and field coaching.
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  Short, insightful, and packed with valuable strategies to help
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  you grow as a coach. We'll bring in the once a year
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  track clinic straight to your ears daily.
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  Interested in creating your own episode?
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  Everyone's welcome to participate.
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  Check out the show notes below For more information.
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  Now let's get into today's topic.
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  Hi everyone, my name's Jeff Ondo.
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  I'm the head boys track coach at Midview High School.
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  I'm also the owner of 0 Gravity Performance, which is my private
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  coaching business where we specialize in the jumping and
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  sprinting events. Before I get started with my
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  topic for the day, I want to give a big thanks to Mike and
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  the team at Gill Athletics for giving coaches like myself a
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  platform to share ideas and help grow the sport.
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  What I'm going to go over today is how to effectively coach the
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  high jump at a meet, go over things like how to warm up
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  properly, what heights you should be starting at depending
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  on your athletes, what you should be giving your athletes
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  as far as coaching advice in the meet and not over coaching them,
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  and some other things that I think will help you be a better
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  coach. The first thing we'll start with
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  is the warm up, which is an area I see a lot of people mess up by
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  doing way, way, way too much. So the warm up itself is I break
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  it down into two sections. So you have your dynamics, which
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  could be any dynamic movements you do if you like to jog before
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  Sprint, drill, stuff like that to get your body primed.
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  But where the mistakes mostly happen is when the athletes
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  actually spiked up. So once you get spikes on, you
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  need to do 2 approaches with no bar bungee, and then one to two
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  jumps with a bar bungee at an appropriate height.
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  And that's it. There's no prizes for winning
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  warmups. You're not going to reinvent the
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  wheel with your jump right before in the meat starts.
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  You just need to get some approaches that feel good.
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  One to two jumps at an appropriate height.
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  Don't be afraid to move the bar or bungee around in warmups.
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  You're allowed to do that if you have a talented athlete.
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  They don't need to be jumping over a starting height bungee
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  that's probably sagging another 2 to 4 inches anyway.
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  It's just a waste of jumps. Good solid approaches, one to
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  two jumps and then that's it. We don't need to do anything
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  else. As far as the warm up goose,
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  when you do your approaches without the bar or bungee, you
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  should always pop onto the mat. If you're able to stop your
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  momentum and not pop onto the mat, then you're not getting a
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  true idea of what your approach is actually like.
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  So your athletes should always pop onto the mat, ideally aiming
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  towards their takeoff angle point, which should be somewhere
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  between the back and front corner of the mat.
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  But you don't want to do your approaches and then just have
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  your athletes stop and just be guessing.
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  Always pop up onto the mat. The next part of the pre
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  competition process is getting the correct starting height for
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  your athletes. This is another area where I
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  think people make a lot of mistakes.
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  You don't need to come in at opening height if you can jump a
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  foot higher than it. You don't need to come in and
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  scissor heights for no reason. No one who actually knows high
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  jump is impressed by your scissoring of low heights that
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  don't matter. What you want to do is pick a
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  bar that is about 3 heights below your goal for that day.
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  So if your goal is to jump 5/8 that day, then we probably want
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  to come in around 5-2. If our goal is to jump 6 foot,
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  then maybe we come in around 5658 somewhere in there.
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  But you don't need to waste jumps at the lower bars.
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  All you're doing is killing your legs and taking away jumps that
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  you could have later when you're actually going for PRS.
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  This is something that as a coach you have to enforce with
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  your athletes because sometimes they'll be scared that they
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  don't want to come in at a higher bar.
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  They're afraid that they're going to know height, but 99% of
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  the time they're not going to know height because they're
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  coming in at a height that they would have cleared easily
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  anyway. They just need to get over the
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  mental barrier of starting at a higher height and then they'll
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  be even happier when they get to those PR bars and they actually
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  have more legs left and can get higher and better attempts.
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  Before we move on from pre competition and warming up once
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  the competition begins you need to have a plan for your athletes
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  to stay warm. Sometimes high jump can take a
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  long time, especially if it's during running events and you
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  have people checking out. You could have a 2 1/2 hour high
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  jump competition, so you need to have, whether it's some Sprint
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  drills, some short sprints, some curved runs, whatever it is, you
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  want to have something for your athletes to do when it's about
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  to be their turn to jump again, to get their bodies ready to go.
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  Moving on to actually giving coaching advice during high
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  jump. When we're at the meet, we don't
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  want to over coach. We want to give advice on things
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  that maybe we've been working on.
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  Any approach issues like if they're a little too far away,
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  if they're a little too close, we make minor adjustments like
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  that. But as far as technical coaching
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  goes, you want to do a lot of that in practice and then you
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  want to create cues in practice that you can simply say it meets
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  and your athletes know what that means.
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  So some examples for that. If you have an athlete who
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  struggles and they get really shallow in their approach and
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  they don't have a good angle and they travel along the bar, I
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  like say something like try to get to the back corner or just
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  get to the back corner. And then when we're in a meet
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  and that issue is arising, I just go, hey, not a bad jump.
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  Let's just make sure we get to the back corner.
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  To use another example, if you have an athlete who struggles
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  with turning before they go into the bar, they like to throw
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  their shoulder head into the bar, which is very common.
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  Say something like, hey, make sure we go up first or just
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  simply up first, something simple like that.
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  So when they're doing their jumps, if they lean in on a
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  jump, you go, hey, let's make sure we go up first.
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  And if you need to combine two issues, say you have an athlete
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  who has both issues, I just said, and you want to maybe try
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  to give them two cues. Saying something like, hey, get
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  to the back corner and go up first is a lot easier than
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  saying, all right, you're getting too flat.
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  So you're traveling along the bar for a long time and then
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  you're coming down on it. But also when you take off,
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  you're leaning into the bar as soon as you take off.
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  So we need to make sure we drive up more and that's just way too
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  much for them to think about. Just get to the back corner and
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  go up first is way more effective and much less
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  overwhelming on your athletes. Like I said, the queue finding
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  process is something you need to do in practice by testing out a
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  few different queues with what you're working on.
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  You may have one athlete and the queue for up first works
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  perfectly for them and that's great.
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  And then you try up first with someone else and it just doesn't
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  click. And then maybe you try something
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  like rise and rotate and you say that to 1 athlete and it works
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  perfect and they mean the same thing, but it registers in their
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  brain differently and it makes the jumps actually effective.
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  So it's good whenever an athlete has a good jump in practice, if
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  they fix something we've been working on, I always like to ask
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  what were you thinking on that one?
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  And typically they'll tell you exactly what they were thinking.
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  You could just make that into a queue.
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  So if they said I just thought to reach my arm up as high as I
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  could just go, OK, that queue is going to be arm high.
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  And then that's what we're saying, it meets.
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  So that is a very important part of coaching.
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  It meets, but it needs to be done at practice and find
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  effective queues that work for each individual athlete.
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  A little bit more on over coaching or not over coaching.
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  Once you get into championship season, you're coaching as far
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  as technical. Coaching should be even more
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  limited at that point. You got what you got with your
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  jumps. I mean, you're just trying to
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  make it work with what you've developed up to that point
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  earlier in the season. Say you're at a dual meet that
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  might not matter too much to you or your team.
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  Then it's OK if you maybe you're a little more technical in
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  practice. Obviously everything has nuance
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  to it. There's no black and white rules
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  to it. But if you're at an important
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  invite or a meet that matters, qualifying needs, something like
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  that, you don't want to overwhelm.
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  You want to just go in, say as little as you need to and be
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  encouraging to your athletes. They're probably nervous.
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  They got a lot of things going through their head.
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  Stay calm, encourage them, and just make sure they have fun.
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  That's making them smile, making them laugh.
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  Something like that goes a long way, especially in the field
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  events when they have to stay focused for hours on it.
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  Sometimes switching gears to some other things that I don't
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  have exactly set into categories, but I think you
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  should know how to handle. Is your high jumper having other
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  events? This is another thing that's
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  commonly mishandled, especially at invites and they're holding
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  bars forever. If you have an athlete and you
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  know their event is coming up, you should ideally get them to
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  jump before they go to their event.
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  So if you know it's coming up, go up to the official, say hey
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  my athlete has to run the four by one.
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  Can I put them at the top of the order at this next height so
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  they can get their jumps in before they run and they don't
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  hold up your competition? If you preface it with we're
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  trying to do it so we don't hold up the competition, they're even
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  more likely to do it, but I've never had an official have an
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  issue with it anyway. Not only does it help your
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  athlete get their jumps in before they have to go run, it
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  also makes it so the competition doesn't get delayed forever.
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  The last thing I want to talk about is just having general
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  situational awareness as far as the competition goes, especially
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  if it's at a qualifying meet or meet that you're trying to score
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  as many points as you can for your team.
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  Anything like that. You should do your best to have
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  a good idea of what the other athletes are doing as far as
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  misses. You should always know how your
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  athlete is doing on misses. So that way when you get to
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  later bars and maybe it's a situation where the bar is only
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  going up by 1 inch and or you could, some people are passing
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  to two inches. You need to know if you're in a
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  spot where you're safe to pass the 2 inch because there's
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  enough people left that the one inch isn't going to matter.
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  Or is it close in the competition you're doing bad on
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  this is you want to try to undercut it.
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  It's just things you want to be keeping track of as best you
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  can. So those are the things I think
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  that if you can do as a high jump coach, you will set your
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  athletes up in the best possible position to have success.
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  Just to run through them real quickly.
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  Don't over warm up. Make sure you have a plan to
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  warm up once the meet is going with little drills or maybe it's
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  some light plyos, stuff like that in the meet.
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  Use the queues that you established in practice to
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  create easy to understand ideas for your athletes.
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  Make sure you know if your athletes are in other events and
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  plan around that accordingly. And do your best to keep track
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  of misses of your athletes and all the other athletes to ensure
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  you know what to do later in the competition.
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  Thank you all for listening. If you're looking for more high
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  jump content, I did write a 50 page e-book called the High Jump
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  Handbook that could be purchased on Gum Road or you can find it
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  on the link in my Twitter page which is at Coach Ondo Ondo.
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  The Handbook is a comprehensive guide to coaching high jump
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  written in very simple terms so that anyone can understand
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  whether you've been coaching for a while or you've never seen the
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  event before. It's got deep dives into the
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  different phases of the event, how to coach when you're at
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  meets like we talked about, and a lot of other various tips and
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  tricks to become a good high jump coach.
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  It also comes with a library of drills that you get video
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  examples of as well. Want to give another big thanks
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  to Mike and everyone at Gill Athletics for creating this
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  platform for us coaches to have and share ideas and grow the
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  sport. I wish you all the best of luck
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  with the remainder of your season.
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  Hey gang, Mike Cunningham here. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this
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  episode of the Gill 1918 Project series.
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  It's really my mission, my passion to bring you massive
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  amounts of value and I hope this one hit the mark.
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  The Gill 1918 Project is really dependent on you if for you to
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  build your own episode, to hear your voice, to have your voice
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  heard you have something to say and teach other coaches out
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  there. So please get a hold of me,
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  E-mail, text message, Twitter, smoke signals, get a hold of me
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  and let's help create your episode of the Guild 1918
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  Project. Hope you enjoy the day, they
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  will see you tomorrow.