Natural Movement Skills: Jumping

JUMPING

This is your chance to beat gravity as you get some air time under your feet! However, the most important factor in jumping is not so much the take-off but the landing.

Your jumping technique will differ depending on what kind of jump you are doing e.g. a jump over something, a jump onto something, a running jump etc. Here we will focus on the landing technique.

The landing technique is basically split in to 2 types - whether you are landing flat on a surface, or if you are jumping down from a height. Here are some pointers to make sure that your shock absorbers (aka your legs!) can work efficiently and you can recover your balance quickly and safely:

For a flat surface (i.e. jumping up and landing down flat), make sure that the whole of your foot makes contact with the ground. Since your toes and the balls of your feet will land first, you need to make sure you also bring your heels down to provide a stable base for your legs to move into the squat position and ascend back up to a standing position. Improving your squat technique will improve your landing skills.

For more on how to do a perfect squat, click here

For a dropped surface (i.e. jumping down from a height), you should land on the balls of your feet with your arms pointing down and leaning forward slightly so that you can better absorb the impact and also touch the ground to steady yourself

To develop tendon elasticity we want our jumps to be small and fast. Think about a boxer in his skipping rope.