How often should a high jumper practice full jumps, instead of just drilling the approach?
The approach can be rehearsed almost every day; the bar, and the landing after it, cannot.
A high jumper's technique lives in the approach and the plant, but the thing that actually wears the athlete down is the landing, over and over, on the same knee and ankle. A coach who wants more reps has to decide how many of them are worth the real height, and how many can happen without a bar at all.
Why the question matters
Every full-height jump loads the plant leg with a large, sudden force and then asks the body to absorb a fall onto a mat. That is not free. Programmes that jump at or near competition height every single day tend to see the same soft-tissue and joint complaints show up by midseason, and the fix is not fewer jumps in general, it is fewer of the kind that cost the most and more of the kind that cost almost nothing.
What can be drilled without loading anything
- Five-step curve runs with no bar at all, which rehearse the curve and the rhythm into the plant without a takeoff ever happening.
- Short-approach scissors over a low bar, which let the plant and the lead leg get repeated often because a miss costs nothing at that height.
- Standing or short-run drills onto a box, isolating the plant leg's job without the rest of the approach attached to it.
None of that is a substitute for jumping at real height. It is what fills the rest of the week around the jumps that matter, so that by the time a full-height attempt happens, the pattern underneath it has already been rehearsed dozens of times at no cost.
A workable split
Most programmes land somewhere around one or two sessions a week where the athlete actually jumps over a bar at or near competition height, concentrated closer to the competitive season, with the other sessions built from curve runs and low-bar work. That ratio moves with age, injury history and time of year, which is exactly why it is a conversation with the athlete's own coach rather than a fixed number anyone can hand out.
A side-on clip can tell you the takeoff angle, the hip rise and whether the knee folded correctly on a given attempt. It cannot tell you how much that plant leg has absorbed across a whole week of jumps, or whether a miss on Thursday is a technique problem or three days of landings catching up with the athlete. That number lives in the training log, not the video.
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Related
Why does my high jumper's plant leg buckle instead of staying firm?
The plant has to resist a sudden load almost instantly, and that is a different kind of strength from the one that lets an athlete jump high at all.
Read →Why does my high jumper bail out at the last step instead of taking off?
A clean approach that ends in a dead stop at the bar is almost never a technique problem, which is why coaching the technique does not fix it.
Read →Should a high jumper run a J-curve or a straight approach?
The curve does part of the takeoff's job before the athlete ever leaves the ground, and a straight approach is easier to teach a beginner who has not earned that yet.
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