Which leg should a triple jumper take off from?
The leg choice happens once, at the board, and the rest of the sequence follows from it rather than being decided again at each phase.
Coaches get this question from a parent watching their first triple jump meet: which foot does the jump start on. The honest answer is that it is decided once, at the board, and the rest of the sequence follows from that single choice rather than being chosen again at each phase.
One choice, not three
The event only asks the athlete to pick a takeoff leg once. Whichever foot leaves the board for the hop lands the hop on that same foot. The step then lands on the other foot. The jump takes off from that same other foot and finishes on both feet in the pit. Nobody re-chooses a leg partway through a good jump, and an athlete who feels like they need to is usually reacting to a landing problem, not a leg problem.
How to pick it
Most programmes start with the leg an athlete already prefers to jump off in the long jump, since it is the same skill of converting speed into a single powerful push. That is a reasonable starting point rather than a rule. The way to actually check it is to have the athlete run the approach and take the first hop off each leg on separate days, a few attempts each, and compare which side produces a longer, flatter hop rather than a taller one. A leg that feels stronger standing still does not always turn out to be the one that carries speed best at full approach speed.
- Run the same approach speed and length for both trials, so the comparison is fair.
- Watch the hop's shape, not how it felt. A flat, long hop from the weaker-feeling leg beats a tall, short one from the preferred leg.
- Give each leg more than one attempt before deciding. A single mistimed hop is not a verdict on the leg.
What the Film Room reports either way
The triple jump analysis reports the first takeoff angle, a phase count taken from the hip trace, hip rise per phase and overstride on the runway. None of those numbers know or care which leg the athlete chose. They grade whatever sequence actually happened, which is the right way round: the leg choice is a coaching decision made once, at the start of a season, and the Film Room's job is to tell you whether the phases that follow it are working.
A side-on clip is good at showing how high each phase rose and close to blind to whether the plant foot landed squarely under the hip or drifted a little wide, because that drift happens across the frame rather than along it. Comparing two takeoff legs properly still means an actual tape measure on the distance each one produced, not just the numbers a single camera can read off the hop.
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Related
Which foot should a high jumper take off from?
The foot decides which side the run starts from, and most athletes have already shown you their jumping foot somewhere other than the high jump.
Read →Why your high jumper knocks the bar off on the way down
Legs taking the bar after the hips have cleared is a timing fault at the top, and usually a takeoff point that drifted before it.
Read →Where your triple jump step went
When the middle phase is the short one, the fault is nearly always in the phase before it.
Read →