Why is my triple jumper fast on the runway but short in the pit?
A fast approach that does not turn into distance almost always means the speed is being spent going up instead of out.
This is one of the more confusing problems in the jumps, because the part everyone can see, the runway, looks right. The athlete is quick, the steps are even, and the board is hit clean. Then the tape measure comes out and the distance does not match the speed. The answer is almost always in the three phases, not the run-up.
Where the speed actually goes
Triple jump is a trade between height and distance at every one of its three takeoffs. A hop, a step or a jump that launches too steeply spends horizontal speed buying vertical height it does not need, and that speed does not come back. An athlete can be genuinely fast down the runway and still be slow, in the sense that matters, at the one moment the phases begin.
What to check first
- The hop: does the foot land ahead of the hips, which brakes, or under them, which does not?
- The phase split: a good rough guide is roughly even thirds between hop, step and jump, not a big first phase and two small ones.
- The step: does the athlete visibly sit down into it, losing speed before the jump even starts?
Where the Film Room helps
The triple jump setting reads four things from a side-on clip: the first takeoff angle, because a tall hop leaves nothing for the rest, a phase count taken from the hip trace, hip rise per phase, and overstride on the runway. Put a fast-but-short attempt next to a slower-but-longer one from the same athlete and the difference usually shows up as a taller first takeoff angle or a bigger hip rise on the hop. That is the speed leaving the runway in the wrong direction, as a number instead of a guess.
A single 2D camera cannot measure true horizontal velocity without two marks a known distance apart set on the runway first, and it cannot see whether the plant foot actually cut across the board at an angle rather than straight down it, which loses distance a hip trace will never show. The numbers rule phases in or out. The board itself still needs watching by eye.
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Related
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.
Read →How do you coach triple jump if you've never done it yourself?
Most of what a first-year jumps coach needs is the phase order, a short run-up, and the patience to keep the hop low.
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