The Two-Minute Drill: The 5 P’s To Rudimentary Jumps

The Two-Minute Drill

The 5 P’s To Rudimentary Jumps

 

The Play(s): Rudimentary Jumps

 

The Purpose: To learn how to absorb the ground in jump training by making sure the entire surface area of the foot or feet collects all of the contact with the ground.

 

Pre-Snap Read: Begin by standing with your feet apart, while also bending the ankle and knee.  As always, make sure you are keeping the core stiff and maintaining a neutral spine.

 

Performance: The performance part of this is theoretically pretty easy.  You are going to spring up and jump forward about a foot, land and then jump forward again, repeating the process for about 10 yards.  However, what you are really concentrating on here is the landing and springing back up explosively.  You want to make sure both of your feet are landing at the same time and softly absorbing the contact with the ground.  This will allow you to generate more force and create more power when springing back up into your next jump.

 

What you don’t want to happen is have your feet crash into the ground and make a lot of noise on contact.  This is going to do a couple of things.  It’s not going to allow you to generate as much power going into the next jump and it’s going to put more stress, along with wear and tear on the muscles and joints.

 

Once you have begun to master Rudimentary Jumps you can move up to the next progression using a single-leg and then moving onto hurdles. The form and technique are the same for all but you are just moving onto more challenging progressions.

 

Post-Drill Analysis: Were you coming back down to the ground in a controlled fashion?  Was your entire foot absorbing all of the contact?  Was there a lot of noise on your landings?