Latest / The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast / #69: Gill1918 Project Presents Boo Schexnayder “How to Coach LJ Part 2” at the Illinois Top Times Speed Lab

Transcript

#69: Gill1918 Project Presents Boo Schexnayder “How to Coach LJ Part 2” at the Illinois Top Times Speed Lab · The Gill Athletics Track and Field Connections Podcast

• 0:00
  Hey Yank, pumped for this. Here we go.
• 0:02
  Back in August, Randy Anderson of the Illinois Top Time Speed
• 0:06
  Lad hosted A1 day track clinic featuring two of my favorite
• 0:10
  people in the entire world, Boushek Snyder and Vince
• 0:12
  Anderson. He was gracious enough to allow
• 0:15
  us to record those presentations for right here on the Gil 1918
• 0:18
  Project. So for the next six weeks, every
• 0:21
  Wednesday and Thursday, Part 1 and Part 2, we're going to give
• 0:24
  you all those presentations from Boushek Snyder talking about
• 0:27
  hamstrings to Vince Anderson talking about Hurdle.
• 0:30
  Now, these were video in person type of presentation.
• 0:33
  So you're going to miss a little bit of not seeing the actual
• 0:35
  presentation. However, tons of value here with
• 0:38
  Boo and Vince every single week for six weeks in a row,
• 0:42
  Wednesday and Thursday, Part 1, Part 2, Vince Anderson, Booshex
• 0:45
  Nader, make sure you're listening, make sure you're
• 0:47
  sharing this. And again, shout out to coaches
• 0:49
  like Randy Anderson who is providing value and coaching
• 0:52
  education to coaches around the country.
• 0:54
  Thanks again, Randy, we appreciate you.
• 0:56
  Enjoy today's episode. Welcome to the Gil 1918 Project,
• 1:01
  a podcast series by coaches for coaches powered by Gil
• 1:04
  Athletics. Think of this as the Ted Talks
• 1:07
  of track and field coaching. Short, insightful, and packed
• 1:09
  with valuable strategies to help you grow as a coach.
• 1:12
  We'll bring in the once a year track clinic straight to your
• 1:15
  ears daily. Interested in creating your own
• 1:17
  episode? Everyone's welcome to
• 1:19
  participate. Check out the show notes below
• 1:21
  For more information. Now let's get into today's
• 1:24
  topic. OK, so next, now we're long
• 1:28
  jumping. Pretty much the last thing I do
• 1:29
  is I just teach them the arms. OK, so if you're a left footed
• 1:33
  take off person, I just teach them to bring the right arm up
• 1:35
  over their head. If they're a right footed
• 1:38
  person, I just teach them to bring the left arm up over their
• 1:41
  head. And that's the next step into
• 1:43
  progression. The last step into progression.
• 1:45
  Now it'll look like this. He's right footed take off.
• 1:51
  So you see the left arm is coming up and over and that's it
• 1:58
  looks kind of like long jump now, doesn't it?
• 2:01
  By the way, when you get them to bring that arm over, I never
• 2:05
  worry about the other arm. Like I've had athletes, a lot of
• 2:08
  them, you know, they bring the right arm over in the left arm
• 2:11
  as well to the side and they look like that.
• 2:13
  I never worry about it because over time it just it starts to
• 2:17
  flow OK, it the other arm kind of figures out where to go
• 2:20
  naturally. And if it looks goofy, just deal
• 2:23
  with goofy for a practice or two.
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  It's going to go away. OK, Don't don't get complicated.
• 2:27
  But if you just bring that one arm over the other arms going to
• 2:30
  eventually learn where to go. Don't have to be picky about it.
• 2:34
  So that's how I teach it. I just teach them that simple
• 2:37
  little run, run, run, run, run, jump, drill at slow speeds.
• 2:42
  The other drills I showed you skip for heights, skip for
• 2:44
  distance. Those are kind of like the
• 2:45
  warmups. Before we get to this, I teach
• 2:47
  them how to do the run run, jump at slow speeds.
• 2:50
  Then I start to teach them heel tool and take off.
• 2:53
  Then I start to teach them heel tool on penultimate and take
• 2:56
  off. Then I start to teach them how
• 2:57
  to lower. Then we work on the arm and
• 2:59
  we're done. All right, now it's time to
• 3:02
  start actually long jumping. If you're wondering how long
• 3:05
  this takes, 3 practices, maybe 4 the most.
• 3:09
  OK, so we're not talking about months here, we're talking about
• 3:12
  just a few practices to get them to that point, if you kind of
• 3:16
  know what you're looking at. OK, then what I do is this.
• 3:19
  I just put a cone on the runway and we just start jumping.
• 3:22
  All right? Don't even use a board like I'll
• 3:25
  put them, put a cone there where they can go about four or five
• 3:28
  steps and we do what we call starter long jumps.
• 3:31
  OK, so watch this. What do you do?
• 3:33
  Notice we don't really care about the board yet.
• 3:36
  So what we do is notice that he'll just come in here and by
• 3:39
  the way, he runs an odd number of steps in his approach, so
• 3:42
  he's going to use five steps instead of four.
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  OK, Other people may use 4, but and that's all we do.
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  And what are we doing still at the end?
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  We take off and run in the air. Take off and run in the air.
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  All right, Don't really worry about the board just yet.
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  And we get lots and lots of take offs that way.
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  You know what's funny is when I get them to do this, what I do,
• 4:07
  the problem is, is that kids get brand new on you, don't they?
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  Right. I taught you this, but now we're
• 4:12
  doing something a little different.
• 4:14
  You forgot everything you learned.
• 4:15
  What I do is I take that rake and I said, look, if you don't
• 4:18
  hit your penultimate and take off, right, I'm going to hit you
• 4:20
  in the head with the rake. Look, I have never hit anybody
• 4:23
  in the head with the rake. But it's kind of a joke.
• 4:26
  But it's also serious because it's like, hey, you did this
• 4:29
  perfectly in this drill. There's no reason why you can't
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  do it perfectly now. There's no reason why you can't
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  do it because that drill is the same thing as this.
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  So it's just my way of kind of comically making out the making
• 4:41
  the point that like you have to transfer this over, You have to
• 4:44
  duplicate what you've been doing in practice.
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  You can't get brand new on me in this regard.
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  OK, so now we do this for a practice or so, and then after
• 4:53
  they're good at doing this, the next thing I do is I set them up
• 4:58
  where they can hit the board. And from this point on, we never
• 5:01
  not jump from a board again. All right, Everything is from a
• 5:04
  board from this point on. So I'll set them up so that they
• 5:07
  can hit the board in six steps or seven steps.
• 5:11
  If you're wondering on how I get that approach or that distance
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  is pretty simple. I just make them run backwards
• 5:17
  and put a mark, get your buttock, catch each other's
• 5:20
  marks. And we just do that.
• 5:21
  And we do it from six steps or seven steps.
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  If I have an athlete in the track meet who runs like 15
• 5:27
  steps, they'll do it from 7:00. That's an odd number.
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  If they run, say, 16 steps in the track meet, well, that's an
• 5:34
  even number. I'll make them do it from six.
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  So you're an odd or even person in my system, depending upon how
• 5:42
  many steps you actually take in the competition itself.
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  OK, so we're good here, all right.
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  And again, we're always jumping from a board from this point
• 5:50
  forward. Now, you notice we've done
• 5:52
  everything in long jump except the landing, have we not?
• 5:56
  I don't allow them to land right away.
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  I'll work on landing separately. I'll get to that in a minute,
• 6:01
  but I'll work on landing separately.
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  The reason is, is the landing is a distraction to them.
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  It's very hard for you to get them to do the things we've been
• 6:09
  talking about perfectly if they're concerned about how I'm
• 6:12
  going to get into my landing position.
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  So if I don't worry about the landing, they learn it much,
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  much, much, much faster. Much faster.
• 6:19
  More about that later. So we're OK Feel pretty good
• 6:23
  about that. All right.
• 6:25
  OK. What about the flight?
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  Let's talk about what they do in the air.
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  OK. There are different styles of
• 6:31
  flight. The two we hear, the three we
• 6:33
  hear a lot. I'm sorry.
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  The the two we hear a lot are the hang style and the hitch
• 6:38
  kick style, Correct. And sometimes you see people who
• 6:41
  do some kind of combination of the two hangs and hitch kicks.
• 6:48
  The choice is over. Oh, hang in his.
• 6:59
  Are we haunted? Hanging hitch kick.
• 7:02
  Overrated choices. OK.
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  A lot of coaches think that hitch kick is inherently better
• 7:07
  because it's a little tougher. Not necessarily the case.
• 7:10
  For you to hitch kick really well, to run in the air really
• 7:13
  well, you got to be in the air a long time.
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  It's my opinion personally that to do a good hitch kick, you got
• 7:20
  to be jumping like 25 feet or more.
• 7:22
  How many of you are coaching those people?
• 7:25
  Not me anymore. My point is, is that you're not
• 7:28
  in the air. Well, you might say, well, I saw
• 7:30
  a kid at the state meet and he jumped 22/6 and he hitch kicked.
• 7:34
  Well, there are hitch kicks and then there were hitch kicks.
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  You know the, the whole purpose of the hitch kick is to control
• 7:40
  the forwardness or control the rotation, right?
• 7:43
  So if you are in the air and you want to control rotation, we
• 7:47
  want nice long arms. If you're jumping short
• 7:50
  distances and hitch kicking, you're probably doing something
• 7:53
  like this with the shorter arms and that means that you're not
• 7:57
  really hitch kicking. Well, those people are typically
• 7:59
  better off doing a little bit of a hang.
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  So my point is, I'm going to show you some video here and
• 8:04
  show you what's important and such.
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  So I'm not anti hitch kick, but I'm just saying that there's
• 8:09
  this myth out there that it's very important or it'll make you
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  jump further. And that's really not the case
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  for the vast majority of people out there.
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  OK, so let's take a look here at this video.
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  All right, first of all, let's look at Jeremy.
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  Jerry's about to hit the board here.
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  All right, let's watch what he does.
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  OK, You saw he's kind of a hang jumper, I guess you would say,
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  Right? OK.
• 8:32
  All right, look at his knee. Would we agree his knee is bent
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  right here, Correct. All right, so his knee is bent.
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  Now watch what happens to that knee.
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  OK, What did he do is straighten in the leg moved in front of his
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  body just a little bit. You have to do that.
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  You must do that. All right, That's where you get
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  90 to 95% of your rotation fighting capability.
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  That's what keeps you from face planting in the sand.
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  However, all right, if you do this once and call yourself a
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  hanger, that's good. If you do it a second time and
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  call yourself a his kicker, that's still good, but you have
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  to straighten that leg. That's one thing that you must
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  do. All right, That's the one.
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  That's the only thing that is really required in order to be a
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  good long jumper. OK, so that straightening of the
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  that leg is the single most important aspect of flight.
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  You see how it kind of makes him back a little bit, puts him in a
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  position where he can hit a landing.
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  You see, that's that's Newton's law, action, reaction.
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  See, when he moved that leg in a counterclockwise direction, it
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  reacted in a clockwise adjustment of his body.
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  Just put him in good jumping position there.
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  OK, now how do I go about teaching the extension of the
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  free leg? The answer is I already have.
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  I already have. Watch this.
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  All right, watch this video. Remember the run run, jump?
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  What was our basic rule? In the run run, jump, you take
• 10:12
  off of 1 foot and you land on the other foot, right?
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  If I land on the other foot, I have to straighten the leg, you
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  see. So here it is in slow motion.
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  That looks good right? Nice long jump, take off
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  position. Now watch what happens to that
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  leg. It straightens, right?
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  You see, I took care of that, you see?
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  You see, the details are important in these things,
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  right? The details are important.
• 10:47
  So we've practiced that already. Remember this exercise?
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  Remember this one? So once again, there's a pretty
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  good take off position. Now what does that leg do?
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  It's got to straighten, you see. So that's why the way you do
• 11:15
  your exercises and your drills, the details are important
• 11:18
  because they can develop good habits or they can be busy time.
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  We cool. All right, so to make it a Long
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  story short, I don't really spend a lot of time working on
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  flight. I don't the things that happened
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  in the air aren't nearly as important as the things that
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  happened on the ground. You know, Mike's heard this
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  story before, but I was like in like 5th grade or something like
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  that. What happens when you have a
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  substitute in your classroom? Yeah, I'm not seeing the I'm not
• 11:51
  seeing happy faces. Right.
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  But but, but one day I was in class and we had a substitute
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  teacher and the other kids were teasing me like throw a piece of
• 12:00
  paper at the teacher. So I ball up a piece of paper
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  and it was blackboards back then.
• 12:05
  So when she turned around to write on the blackboard, I stood
• 12:08
  up and I threw the piece of paper and right before I let it
• 12:11
  go, right as I was letting it go, she turned around and was
• 12:14
  looking dead at me. And I tried to use my mental
• 12:17
  powers to make that piece of paper curved to the left or
• 12:20
  curved to the right, but it didn't do that.
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  It nailed her dead in the head and I was on my way to the
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  principal's office. But my point is, my point is, is
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  that once it left my hand, I couldn't control what it did
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  right. The flight path was
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  predetermined. My point is, is that This is why
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  in long jump, it's so important that we spend the time working
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  on the penultimate step and the take off step and the run up
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  because that's where you really get your bang for your buck.
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  The things that happened in the air are determined to some
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  extent, to a large extent by what actually happened before
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  you left the ground. So that's where you want and
• 12:54
  actually put your coaching effort in.
• 12:56
  The things that happen in the air are not as important as
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  those that happen on the ground. OK, now when I look at landings,
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  the how to land, I break it up into two parts.
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  All right, What are the things we do before we hit the sand?
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  What are the things we do after we hit the sand?
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  OK, so let's look at a video again and we'll kind of pick out
• 13:16
  some things. All right, this is Jeremy's
• 13:17
  landing and Jeremy is a decent Lander, so he's not a bad model
• 13:21
  here. That's why I picked him for
• 13:22
  these videos. He does everything pretty
• 13:24
  decent. OK, so there's his landing
• 13:26
  style, you can see. OK, so first of all, look how
• 13:34
  he's getting ready to land. Look how high he is, right?
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  So that's lesson #1 get ready to land early, get ready to land
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  early. Do you ever have a jumper or see
• 13:46
  a jumper at the meet who always scratches the sand?
• 13:49
  They always lose a lot of difference.
• 13:51
  Those are people who are getting into their landing positions too
• 13:54
  late, too late. I'm not a gimmick person at all,
• 13:57
  but like sometimes in practice, if you put a rubber band over
• 14:00
  the pit maybe about 6 inches high and about a foot behind
• 14:04
  where they're going to land, that kind of teaches them to
• 14:07
  speed things up a little bit earlier.
• 14:09
  So that's a good cure for the sand scrapers, if that makes
• 14:12
  sense to you. OK, so that that'll help.
• 14:15
  But my point is, is that you got to get ready to land early.
• 14:18
  At the peak of flight. You're already should be moving
• 14:20
  into your landing positions, as you can see Jeremy doing here.
• 14:24
  The second thing is look at his arms, long or short.
• 14:28
  Exactly. Remember, it's all about
• 14:30
  absorbing forward rotation. You know, when you were a kid,
• 14:33
  you probably played a game and when you're falling forward, you
• 14:35
  crack your arms to bring yourself back on balance.
• 14:38
  You know, that's what we're ultimately doing.
• 14:40
  We're using movements of the body to absorb rotation.
• 14:43
  If the arms are long, we're good at absorbing rotation.
• 14:46
  So that long arm position becomes very important to us at
• 14:50
  this point. It makes us more effective at
• 14:52
  controlling the forward rotation that we're experiencing at that
• 14:56
  point. OK, OK, All right.
• 15:03
  Now in the landing, we want to drop the arms, but fight to keep
• 15:09
  the chest up. OK, so we want the arms to come
• 15:12
  down. Newton's law action reaction.
• 15:15
  If the arms move down, then the legs tend to stay up, which is
• 15:20
  what we ultimately want, but we don't want to drop the chest.
• 15:24
  OK, so arms down, but we're not trying to drop the tarsal here,
• 15:27
  OK? We're trying to keep it up,
• 15:29
  right? You're going to lose that fight
• 15:30
  eventually at some point, but you want to fight to keep the
• 15:34
  tarsal up. You see, if you folded the
• 15:36
  waist, the body becomes shorter, shorter levers rotate faster.
• 15:40
  So if you ever pay close, close attention to people who reach
• 15:43
  for the toes and put their chest on their thighs, those people
• 15:47
  always, you see their feet drop early.
• 15:49
  You always will see their feet drop as a result of that.
• 15:51
  So again, arms down, but we fight to keep the chest up.
• 15:55
  All right, Now nobody's going to keep it up perfectly because of
• 15:58
  the rotation, but if you can kind of keep that chest around
• 16:01
  45° or something, that's a win for you.
• 16:05
  OK, So and of course, the other thing we're trying to do is just
• 16:08
  extend the feet out as far in front of our bodies as we
• 16:10
  possibly can. So this is a pretty good sit out
• 16:13
  position, I guess we would say, in anticipation of the landing.
• 16:17
  And when we actually see him touch the sand, see, that's
• 16:20
  pretty efficient, right? His feet are here, her hips are
• 16:23
  back here. That's a good position.
• 16:25
  That's what we ultimately want. Now, where's his torso?
• 16:27
  I drew the red stick figure on top of it.
• 16:30
  It's hard to see, but his torso is maybe, what, 45° or so?
• 16:34
  Like I said, that's a win. We're fighting to keep the torso
• 16:36
  up at that point. All right?
• 16:39
  Now, when you touch the sand, the theme now becomes absorbed,
• 16:44
  like everything gets absorbed. We've bended the hips.
• 16:46
  We've bended the knees. I want to see the body fold up
• 16:49
  like an accordion. So ultimately, the momentum of
• 16:52
  the long jump itself, the horizontal momentum continues to
• 16:56
  help us with our landing in that respect.
• 16:59
  So I teach them to just let the hips or the butt move toward the
• 17:03
  feet here. So when this next video starts,
• 17:06
  when the video starts again, watch his knees and see how his
• 17:09
  knees are going to fold up and watch his hips fold up and
• 17:12
  you'll see the butt kind of traveling forward there.
• 17:14
  OK, So watch you see him kind of fold up there.
• 17:18
  Exactly. So that's my cue at that point,
• 17:22
  but toward the heels, but toward the heels at that point.
• 17:25
  OK, Now when I teach the landings, I have a series of
• 17:30
  exercises that I use and I'm going to show you here in a
• 17:32
  second. What I do is I teach everyone a
• 17:35
  simple kickoff style landing. That's what I teach everybody to
• 17:38
  begin with. And I'm going to take you
• 17:40
  through the steps that I use in order to teach that.
• 17:42
  I have a teaching progression. I as you remember when we were
• 17:46
  doing the actual long jump stuff, we didn't land, did we?
• 17:49
  I teach the landing separate. I don't want the landing to be a
• 17:52
  distraction. So we'll do landing practice at
• 17:55
  the end. OK, in the early stages.
• 17:57
  Looks like this. All right, so this is the series
• 18:00
  I use. The first exercise is a standing
• 18:03
  long jump, but it's a little different.
• 18:05
  It's modified. Instead of jumping as far as you
• 18:08
  can, you kind of tone it down a little bit and you take it up a
• 18:11
  little higher than you normally would.
• 18:13
  But more importantly, you have to land like a gymnast.
• 18:16
  Watch watch the video. So watch Jeremy, he's going to
• 18:19
  do a simple standing long jump and land and stick it.
• 18:21
  You see how he stuck it just like a gymnast.
• 18:24
  So he lands in a position right here, arms in front, knees bend
• 18:27
  a little bit high position and he has to show perfect balance
• 18:31
  when he lands perfect balance, perfect balance.
• 18:35
  Watch here you'll see it again. OK, why perfect balance?
• 18:43
  Because perfect balance teaches posture.
• 18:46
  If the chest is in the right place, if your torso is in the
• 18:50
  correct place, you're going to be able to land balanced.
• 18:52
  If the torso is too far forward, you're going to have to take
• 18:56
  that recovery step. So because of the fact that I
• 18:59
  made him stick the landing, I'm controlling the posture.
• 19:02
  I'm making sure that the posture is correct in that point.
• 19:05
  That's why the gymnastics landing makes sense.
• 19:07
  OK, the second piece, the second piece is the absorption.
• 19:11
  So what I teach them next is after they can do this, I teach
• 19:15
  them after you land pause, just stay in that position for a
• 19:19
  second. That enables me as a coach to
• 19:21
  make sure that they're not off balance.
• 19:23
  And then just squat. Just go into a squat.
• 19:26
  So it'll look something like this.
• 19:30
  So here's your jump stick it one Mississippi, 2 Mississippi.
• 19:35
  Then go into a squat. What happens at the bottom of
• 19:40
  the squat? We're bringing the butt to the
• 19:43
  heels, which is what we want, right?
• 19:45
  That's where we teach that folding of the body or that
• 19:47
  absorption. That's where we fold up that
• 19:49
  accordion, so to speak. Now, the last piece is that
• 19:53
  teaching the kick out move. All right, think about this.
• 19:56
  Your feet hit the sand. Your butt is traveling toward
• 19:58
  your feet. If my butt lands behind my feet,
• 20:01
  I lose distance, correct? So I want my butt to land in the
• 20:04
  holes where the feet were. The problem is the feet are in
• 20:08
  the way. So what do I do with the feet?
• 20:09
  I kick them out. I kick them out.
• 20:11
  That's the style of landing that I teach initially, the kick out
• 20:15
  style landing. So this is how I teach that at
• 20:17
  slow speeds. So this would be the third step
• 20:20
  in that progression. So there pause, squat, and then
• 20:25
  just kind of roll onto your butt and kick out.
• 20:27
  OK, All right. Now the last piece is simple.
• 20:37
  Just eliminate the pause. Just move through it smoothly.
• 20:40
  Now, when you eliminate that pause, things get crazy.
• 20:43
  No, they're going to start breaking down, like they'll
• 20:45
  forget the squatter things of that nature.
• 20:47
  So I teach, I teach them to keep it slow, like eliminate the
• 20:51
  pause, but don't try to go fast at this point.
• 20:54
  And when we eliminate the pause, it'll look kind of like this.
• 21:04
  And that's what it'll look like. And that's about the speed that
• 21:06
  you want. Now, I've had coaches that tell
• 21:11
  me that doesn't look like a long jump landing, but it doesn't
• 21:14
  because there's no speed connected to it.
• 21:17
  It doesn't have to look like it. It has to feel like it.
• 21:21
  It has to feel like it. It has to feel like it.
• 21:23
  That's what's important there. And if they land this way in the
• 21:26
  meat, that's perfectly fine. You'll be very happy.
• 21:28
  Now, there is one other style of landing that I do teach from
• 21:31
  time to time. If I have somebody who's pretty
• 21:33
  good and they're going to jump for a while, I teach them as
• 21:36
  they squat, not to stay square, but to turn their knees to the
• 21:39
  side just a little bit. It takes a little bit of
• 21:42
  pressure off the knees and you don't have that real abrupt
• 21:44
  folding of the knees. It's a little healthier if
• 21:47
  you're going to have a eight-year, nine year career in
• 21:49
  Long John. So I'll teach them that.
• 21:51
  Now that landing works perfectly well.
• 21:54
  But there's one danger in that landing.
• 21:56
  If you turn prematurely, it causes problems.
• 21:59
  OK, you see, Action reaction. If I turn my shoulders, my feet
• 22:03
  tend to rotate the other direction.
• 22:06
  So if you turn too soon, that means if I turn, let's say I'm
• 22:10
  turning to the right, if I turn to my right too soon, my left
• 22:13
  foot is going to drop backwards as a result of this.
• 22:17
  You know, back when I coached in Lafayette, we had a, the high
• 22:20
  schoolers used to use our track in the evening.
• 22:22
  And I'd never forget there was this lady and she had a pretty
• 22:25
  good little jumper and the long jumper always landed with one
• 22:28
  foot here, 1 foot here, never could get the feet together.
• 22:31
  And they worked on it and worked on it and worked on it.
• 22:34
  Could never fix it. And after six weeks, I was just
• 22:36
  getting kind of tired of watching it.
• 22:39
  So I just went out there and I just told a little girl, hey,
• 22:41
  look, when you land, keep your shoulder square and boom, their
• 22:44
  feet were together. And the coach had never figured
• 22:47
  out that the reason why her feet were rotated was because her
• 22:50
  shoulders were rotated. So turning is OK, but you have
• 22:54
  to make sure your feet are in the sand first.
• 22:57
  If you turn before your feet are in the sand, you're going to get
• 23:00
  that drop step or that that dropped foot, so to speak.
• 23:04
  So it's a little bit more complicated in that regard.
• 23:07
  OK, makes sense. Good.
• 23:09
  All right, so again, what I'm doing here in the way I'm
• 23:13
  teaching long jump, and again, if you're thinking this takes a
• 23:15
  long time, it doesn't. You don't have a long time,
• 23:18
  right? You're high school coaches for
• 23:20
  the most part, you don't have a long preseason.
• 23:22
  But I'll get them to the point where they're doing the run, run
• 23:25
  jumps perfectly and doing this progression typically within
• 23:29
  maybe 7 days, maybe 10 days or something like that.
• 23:32
  Not 7 or 10 practices, 7 or 10 days.
• 23:35
  And what I do is I have them jump in practice without the
• 23:38
  actual landings. They practice the landing here
• 23:41
  because again, I don't want that landing to be a distraction.
• 23:44
  Then after all of this is done and we've I feel like the
• 23:48
  takeoff is pretty consistent, then I'll start to let them
• 23:51
  actually land some of their jumps in practice.
• 23:54
  But even like good long jumpers who've been with me for a long
• 23:57
  time, they'll come out and we'll do say 12 long jumps in practice
• 24:02
  and the first eight they won't land and they'll do landings on
• 24:04
  the last four or something. So you don't have to land as
• 24:07
  much as you think you do is what I'm getting at.
• 24:09
  But that landing can be a distraction.
• 24:12
  I'll tell you a true story here. It's funny, I had this little
• 24:15
  girl I recruited from high school, her name was Tasha and
• 24:18
  she was like a 18-8 or eighteen six long jumper in high school
• 24:23
  and I thought she could be pretty good.
• 24:25
  So anyway, I bring her in and her take off was awful,
• 24:28
  absolutely awful. In fact, it was so bad I just
• 24:31
  made her jump off the other foot.
• 24:32
  We're going to start from complete scratch and we're going
• 24:34
  to jump off your left foot instead of your right foot.
• 24:37
  OK. So I taught her all the stuff
• 24:39
  she went through all the stuff you saw run, run, jumps, and she
• 24:42
  went through all of that and you know, it got better and better
• 24:46
  and looked pretty good. Well, anyway, we get to the
• 24:49
  first track meet and it's it's January 1st track meet.
• 24:52
  She started practicing in September.
• 24:55
  So anyway, she does her approaches, she hits the board
• 24:57
  perfectly. You know, she's ready to go and
• 25:00
  she comes over to me on the side.
• 25:01
  Coach, what do I do? I said, what do you mean, what
• 25:04
  do you do? She says, coach, I've never
• 25:06
  landed in practice. And I said, oh, you landed in
• 25:09
  high school all the time, you'll be fine, you know.
• 25:12
  So anyway, she smiles and she walks out there and I said,
• 25:14
  Tasha, she turned around. She looked at me.
• 25:17
  If you if you change your takeoff, I'll kill you.
• 25:21
  And she laughed because she knew I wasn't going to kill her.
• 25:23
  But what was I really saying? You're worried about your
• 25:26
  landing Now do not let that affect your takeoff now.
• 25:30
  Now you're mental about the landing.
• 25:31
  Don't let that affect your takeoff.
• 25:33
  So she came down and she hit a pretty good takeoff and it was
• 25:36
  over 20 feet and the landing was kind of not too good.
• 25:40
  The second time she jumped again, it was like 20 foot four
• 25:43
  and like a huge PR for her and the landing was OK.
• 25:46
  My point is, if I had let her land all the time leading up to
• 25:51
  that point, she would have been so distracted, I wouldn't have
• 25:54
  been effective in teaching her the actual skills of takeoff, if
• 25:58
  that makes sense. So that's just a lesson, you
• 26:00
  know, that might help you at some point in time.
• 26:02
  You know, my old jumpers, when I say old, I mean, like, been
• 26:06
  jumping for a long, long time. Like, they very seldom land in
• 26:09
  practice because that beats them up.
• 26:12
  You know, it's the toughest part in your body is the landing.
• 26:16
  We're good. Excellent.
• 26:19
  What we're going to do, we're going to take a quick break,
• 26:20
  Come back at 9:00 for our next talk.
• 26:22
  OK. All right.
• 26:23
  So get you some water, run to the bathroom, drop off some
• 26:26
  coffee. By the way, at my last slide
• 26:44
  always has my e-mail address, so at some point in time, snap a
• 26:48
  picture. Yes, ma'am.
• 26:51
  OK, I know you don't Remember Me, my friend I.
• 26:55
  Do remember you, Louisiana? I love refresh.
• 26:57
  Refresh my memory OK. You taught me in my first.
• 27:01
  Give me your name. I remember you.
• 27:03
  Natalie. Natalie.
• 27:04
  Yeah, No, I remember. No, I remember meeting you in
• 27:07
  clinics up here in Illinois. I just couldn't place your your
• 27:10
  name. Yeah.
• 27:11
  Yeah, I. Love hearing you talk it.
• 27:14
  Just reminds me. Bridge.
• 27:15
  Bridge. You home?
• 27:16
  Yeah. If it was just you, if it was
• 27:18
  just you and me, that accent would get a lot worse.
• 27:20
  Yeah. I was just home a couple of
• 27:23
  weeks ago because I do, I work for State Farm as well as coach,
• 27:28
  but yeah, I was down at the. Camp and in Baton Rouge.
• 27:33
  Yeah, I've got some work before. Yeah, I know.
• 27:37
  Before you leave, get my number. So if you ever come down again,
• 27:40
  let me know. We'll go.
• 27:42
  Yeah, we'll go and get some lunch or something.
• 27:43
  All right. That'd be cool.
• 27:45
  Yeah, I'll give him a number volley.
• 27:46
  All right. How's.
• 27:48
  He going coach minus Cooper. Any question?
• 27:49
  For you after your SO, I'm the horizontal coach at home
• 27:53
  community and something interesting you said about the
• 27:56
  penultimate so you, you. Coach.
• 27:59
  To bring the knee slightly in front of the toe is what you
• 28:01
  were saying? Well, I want them.
• 28:03
  Let's assume my right foot, left foot take off, right foot
• 28:06
  penultimate. I teach.
• 28:08
  I teach them to go heel toe and then bring your knee forward.
• 28:13
  OK, heel toe and bring knee forward.
• 28:15
  Yeah. So you think with high school
• 28:17
  students, especially ones that maybe are OK but not great, is
• 28:23
  that something that will you think will throw them off or is
• 28:25
  that something that? It depends.
• 28:28
  Like there's some kids that you're not going to have to
• 28:30
  teach it at all and they'll do it naturally.
• 28:31
  You know, they do it when they're dunking on the
• 28:33
  basketball court or whatever. And then there's some that'll
• 28:37
  hit up on the ball of their foot like a normal Sprint stride and
• 28:39
  that's not going to get them anywhere.
• 28:41
  So my point is, is that it kind of depends.
• 28:44
  You might have to fix it, you might not it, you know, but I've
• 28:48
  never been afraid to introduce it to people.
• 28:50
  Well, thank you very much. I appreciate it.
• 28:53
  If you just get them to go heel toe, that's a big win, even if
• 28:56
  you don't really get the shin rotation.
• 28:58
  OK, sure. Yeah, thanks.
• 29:00
  Hey gang, Mike Cunningham here. Hey, I hope you enjoyed this
• 29:04
  episode of the Guild 1918 Project series.
• 29:07
  It's really my mission, my passion to bring you massive
• 29:10
  amounts of value and I hope this one hit the mark.
• 29:14
  The Guild 1918 Project is really dependent on you if for you to
• 29:18
  build your own episode, to hear your voice, to have your voice
• 29:22
  heard you have something to say and teach other coaches out
• 29:26
  there. So please get a hold of me,
• 29:28
  e-mail, text message, Twitter, smoke signals, get a hold of me
• 29:33
  and let's help create your episode of the Guild 1918
• 29:36
  Project. Hope you enjoy today, they will
• 29:38
  see you tomorrow.