The first blog about technique was about dealing with technique changes despite impaired anatomy due to injury. Today’s technique observations have no excuse but laziness and habit. Specifically, today I’m blogging about the positioning of my take-off foot (left, in my case) at the moment of take-off. This blog can be found in the dictionary, under the definition of ‘niche.’

Broadly speaking, at the moment of take-off, the high jumper’s take-off foot (my left) should be pointing more or less to the far back corner of the mat. The free knee (my right) comes up and round, right knee travelling more or less toward left chest, and that helps flip me onto my back, ready for a conscious arching to maximise efficiency.

That’s the theory. Unfortunately for me, for years and years, I got away with a take-off where my left foot didn’t plant facing the back corner, but was either parallel to the bar, or even worse, actually pointing slightly away from it.

If you look at this moment of shame frozen from a jump a few years ago, you can see where my left foot should be pointing in green and where it actually points in red:

If running slowly, that foot-plant is not a particularly big deal (aside from the fact that running slowly doesn’t help generate vertical force). However, if you run in faster, the plant foot has to handle more force, and if it has a choice, it would rather that this force is applied in a direction it’s designed to handle. More or less straight in line with the foot is good. Completely lateral across the inside of your heel, absolutely not. That way disaster lies, assuming you share my view that ruptured ankle ligaments constitute a ‘disaster.’

I therefore need to train that particular stride pattern out of me. This is somewhat easier said than done as I wasn’t aware I was doing it in the first instance. I only realised it when I saw video of me jumping and yep, my left leg was parallel to the bar at the moment of take-off. Fine for withstanding the forces I generate to get over 1.55 or even 1.60 on a good day, but a much higher injury risk with greater forces and greater heights.

From a technique point of view – as opposed to an injury prevention point of view – trying to take off a foot that’s parallel to the bar is also sub-optimal. The actual take-off stride itself is designed to be a very rapid heel-to-toe and up movement. Logically that means the force is travelling longitudinally along the foot, and if the foot is pointing where you want to go, then that’s just dandy. Point it toward the far back corner of the high jump mat, and that’s pretty much where you’ll end up, having travelled efficiently across and hopefully over the bar. Point it parallel to the bar and you’ll either travel parallel-ish (not actually crossing the bar at an acute enough angle and probably landing on it) or you’ll travel in the right direction but with ripped ligaments.

There’s an element of chicken and egg here with regard to the final approach. As mentioned before, high jumpers are supposed to run a curve into the bar, the tail of the J-shaped approach. The video doesn’t show it, but I sometimes – wrongly – cut the corner. Instead of running that nice helpful curve from the start of the J-tail to the take-off, I run a straight line from the start of the J-tail to the take-off. That brings me toward the bar at a much more perpendicular angle than the J would. If I’m doing that, then it’s harder to flip myself onto my back and the cheat’s way of doing it is by planting the foot parallel to the bar. Until I rip my Achilles to smithereens, that is.

Like any change of a long-established habit or technique, fixing this is going to be a proper sod. The unfamiliar but correct method feels a bit weird, to put it mildly. The wrong way of doing it feels so right, comfy like an old sweater. However, there’s only so many times in a training session you can run or jump at 50% exertion, never mind maximum. Even young and healthy high jumpers don’t do more than 20 jumps in a training session. For those of us with grey hair and half an eye on equity release (or more likely, payment plans for Stannah stairlifts), a dozen is nearer the limit. If you can only practice a new technique a dozen times per training session, you’re going to need a lot of training sessions to develop the muscle memory. And unless you live next door to an athletics track, this may cost a few quid and more than a few hours.

So I’m an economist by training and a recovering one at that, but I’ve still never been a natural mathematician. I can do some of those funny sums with the letters in them and who doesn’t appreciate a good set of curves, but I can’t make numbers dance like my mate BT (Girton, Complicated Sums).

Despite that, my sporting life revolves deeply around the psychology of numbers. High jump is the ultimate thought sport, and all assistance is gratefully received. After all, to launch yourself blind into space at pace is somewhat of a confidence test.

I’ve called this blog post running numbers because like the mafia hoods of old, my deployment of psychology is more confidence trick than test. To get my body up and over 1.80 again, I’ve calculated exactly how many Newtons I need to generate. It’s somewhat of a moonshot which is ironic as it would be considerably easier on a planet with one-sixth of Earth’s gravity. But knowing that it’s technically possible provides a massive confidence boost in itself. Just running the numbers tells me it can be done. Maybe not by me, sure, but at least it’s just Mission Really Quite Difficult rather than Mission Actually Impossible, Are You Sure You Want To Do This?

The second aspect of numerical psychology for me is beating the daily grind. High Jump might only be an 8 stride run-up for me, but it’s also 200 days of focus. Anything that can keep that concentration is a bonus. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death chocolates and weight gain, I fear not temptation for regular numerical prompts and triggers will save me. It’s mind-based milestones along the way that keep me on the path.

Whenever I’m in the gym, for example, I’ll only ever pick a locker number which has an uplifting resonance. 188 for choice, because that’s the PB, or 180 because that’s the half-blue standard or so on and so on. It reminds me why I’m there in the first place and stops me from indulging in totally unnecessary biceps curls. It’s all about the vertical. If I even see a locker with a crap number on it – crap meaning a rubbish height in high jump terms, like 145 – I literally shudder and keep walking. Not for me, thank you.

My training diary is an old-fashioned paper affair, emblazoned with the Cambridge crest and yours for about 12 quid in Ryder & Amies. It means an enormous amount to me that I get to study here, and to represent the university, even from the back of the field. Every time I see that crest on the diary, I can’t help but think of those who have gone before. I’m far removed from Harold Abrahams in every single dimension including time, but that doesn’t mean I don’t look to the heavens and dream. If the dreamier side of me is on the cover of the training diary, the numerical side is on the pages. Every training session is logged. Nothing especially unusual in that. But on each page, every day, is a countdown of how many days till varsity. And what I weighed that morning. Think of it as the world’s longest advent calendar. You better watch out, you better not cry – because there’s only one way you’re clearing 1.80 again and it’s not through tears, but more blood and sweat.

Maybe it’s because I don’t understand them that I find such beauty in numbers. I was deliriously happy when my Cambridge University ID was 227. I’ll never jump 2.27 (unless we’re talking long jump, or rather not-all-that-long jump) but for a brief moment, a vision of me clearing 7 foot 5 danced before my eyes and released a thundering herd of endorphins. Would I have been distraught if my randomly-generated ID was 179? Not distraught as such, but it would have irked. I’m easily discouraged and the implication that the fates had pre-determined I would fail to reach the half-blue standard by a centimetre would have whirled around in my psyche every time I logged in. For that reason, I’ll keep picking positive locker numbers, counting down the days and the kilos and faffing around with force generation equations.

It’s a thought sport, remember.

So…a good Saturday at Wilberforce Road Athletics track although the fact that I’m typing this lying on the sofa because I can’t manage to get up to type on a laptop suggests it was hard work. 

Two basic reasons for that. First, it’s the start of the build toward May 2021. The first feed training sessions are always somewhat of a sod and let’s just say expectations of fatigue were fully met. Driving 90 minutes each way doesn’t help, roll on Cambridge accommodation.

Second, I took full advantage of the end of the season, and so I’m a hell of a lot heavier than I was. See earlier references to the sainted Colin Chapman. Ah well, no pain, no weight loss. At the last weigh-in, 13 stone 6 (85.3kg) was reached, a full 10 pounds off my lightest. Tomorrow morning will involve a long walk, probably at pace, both to spend calories and to ease muscle aches that will not go gently into the night. Podcast recommendations welcome.

However, today was just a good day overall. 7 athletes in the squad were able to make it (alas, 1 is now in self isolation) and training together makes it more fun. We have athletes of phenomenal standard who clear tall buildings with minimal effort and we also have athletes like me. But it matters not because high jump is just such an inclusive event. We’re all aiming for our own personal bests and I think we are all genuinely delighted when one of us jumps well. We all also appreciate the aesthetic beauty of the event, and so when El Presidente folds efficiently over the bar, you can’t help but admire the technique, even if defeat in a head to head competition costs you a coffee.

In terms of actual takeaways from today, the obvious one is that I’m too heavy. I’m also too weak. Way too weak. That left glute is absolute shithouse. It doesn’t generate enough power, and it fatigues way too easily (I can maybe manage 5 max effort jumps before performance starts to drop off and that’s just not enough either for training or for competition). This needs addressing both by some specific weight training advised by the physio and also by more sprints. If I lack the raw power to lift vertically (and maybe I’ll never get the power back), then maybe one way to address it is to build in more speed. I’m never going to be a sub-12 100-metre guy, but if I can work on running faster curves, then I might have more energy to get flung up and out a la speeding motorcycle (see blog post 4). Part of the training work already includes something called U-bends where you run at take off speed but just carry on running the sharp curve rather than actually jumping at the end of the ‘J.’

It is at this point of blogging that I realise I have adopted the pose of Rodin’s penseur (although naming the statue in French is more poseur than a penseur). Narrow it down, Williams. What are you trying to solve?

You need to jump higher, check. You need more speed going into the take-off, check. So you need to run a faster curve, check. You take off using your left foot, check. That means you run a curve that’s effectively anti-clockwise, check.

EUREKA!

Athletics tracks have curved bits. You, know, those bendy bits at the end of the straight? When run correctly, they curve anti-clockwise. Maybe just maybe, I need to start running some of my sprints on the bends rather than the straights? I can see why that’s a bad idea for right footed jumpers who use a clockwise bend. But for a left leg anti-clockwise chap, who’s prone to cut the corner, reinforcing the muscle memory at every moment strikes me as a good idea. Sprint the corners, get the left shoulder dipped, carry the hips high, and then dab the brake with the left foot and up and out you go. Just like crashing a motorcycle by going too fast on a sharp left-hander. While wearing a light blue blazer and spikes, natch.

I’ve decided to cover the technique aspect of the jigsaw next as in my case, the run-up and take-off phases rather naturally follow on from the power aspect.

Broadly speaking, high jumpers run a J curve toward the bar (with the tail of the J being nearest the take off point, i.e. we run straight, then curved and take-off halfway around the curve). Physics being what it is, centrifugal force effectively throws us up and over the bar and turns us on our backs as we fly.

Think of it like a motorbike going around a corner: even if you lean into the curve, if you go fast enough, eventually you’ll get flung off into the barriers on the outside. If you lean into the curve, you can go faster before you get flung off. And if you go really fast and then dab the front brake, you’re going to go up and then out very quickly. That’s basically what high jumpers do, sans motorcycle.

In chronological order, then, a decent high jump technique includes:

• An accelerating run-up with sufficient speed to be flung up and over when physics rears its benevolent head
• A rapid and solid deployment of power at take-off, with the foot facing the correct direction (toward the far back corner of the high jump bed is usually recommended)
• Some vertical arm movement at take-off to help things along (some jumpers ‘gather’ both arms up, some do one, and some aren’t sure what they do until their coach points it out!)
• A very arched back in order to get the body over the bar, while the centre of gravity goes underneath it (see a later post for a detailed explanation of this alchemy)

While I understand exactly how the above is supposed to work – I’ve been known to get up in the wee small hours to watch Olympic high jump in different time zones – the practicalities are rather different, especially given my previous injuries.

The first thing I need to be aware of is injury risk when trying to train for speed. Unsurprisingly, my hip surgery threw up some longstanding implications, one of which is proximal hamstring tendinopathy. Or to put it another way, the hamstring tendons just below my left glute (origin, not insertion) do not play nicely. They get especially upset when I run quickly, not during the drive phase of the left leg, but when they’re deployed eccentrically to slow down the forward motion of my left foot before I plant it on the ground. It feels a lot like a hamstring about to pop, even though it isn’t. The gut reaction is to try and stretch the hammy, but as my sports doc, the infinitely patient James Noake (who can be found tweeting at @DrJN_SportsMed), tells me, hamstring tendinopathies don’t actually like being stretched much. So that indisputable training need – more speed – needs to be balanced against injury risk management. Fortunately, it’s a long old time till next May. Ironically given it’s about developing speed, slow and easy does it.

The second technique aspect for me is around the take-off itself. High jumpers basically approach the bar running that J-curve with as much speed as they can handle. What they don’t tend to do, though,  is dip down before they take off. This is what I used to do before getting to Cambridge and actually getting the benefit of coaching (thank you, Carol!). In previous years, I’d jump two or three times a year for Serpentine, usually get over 1.55 despite doing zero training and with a big ol’ knee bend just before take off.

To the uninitiated, doing that sort of makes sense – why wouldn’t you bend your knee a bit more before you take-off, so you get the additional force generation from a contracting quad as well as a contracting glute? To understand that, you need to appreciate fully that high jump is about turning the horizontal force into the vertical, as quickly as humanly possible. The high jump take off stride is effectively nearly a blocked stride where further horizontal motion isn’t possibly anymore and the only way left to go is up. That’s best achieved with a relatively unbent knee joint and high hips, not a very flexed knee and the resultant lower hip position.

While I can understand the physics and the logic, this particular aspect is where I need to pause and think. I have a structurally much weaker left glute, and it’s probably because of this that I’ve developed somewhat of a more flexed knee on my take off approach. After all, if your glute is knackered, why not recruit some additional help from the quadriceps on the front of the take-off thigh? If they can generate more vertical force by straightening the knee joint at the same time as the glutes are blocking horizontal travel, surely that will help? Unfortunately, the answer is probably not, because by dropping the hips lower, I actually have to jump higher than if I were starting from a taller position anyway.

The obvious solution is to really build up glute strength between now and May, while simultaneously working on the technique change to stop dipping down. By jumping ‘properly,’ I’m clearly going to be taking my quad out of the equation. In the short-term, this might see a loss of performance while the glute strengthens (assuming it does) and the new technique beds in.

It will be interesting to see how I deal with that mentally when I can’t clear heights using the new technique that I used to breeze over using the old one.

As I mentioned before, the way I think about my high jump ambition is that I have essentially four problems to solve: weight, power, flexibility and technique. I don’t know what the priority order is among the jigsaw pieces but I’m working on the basis that each of them is equally key.

The weight piece has been covered in a previous blog post but broadly speaking, it’s about being light. No surprise there – if your event is about getting a mass above a bar, it’s not surprising you need that mass to be as light as possible. In turn, that means I don’t have much budget for excess fat, as that doesn’t help you generate explosive power. It also means I don’t have much budget for non-relevant muscle either, by which I mean big shoulders or arms. They don’t help me jump higher. Sure, Daley Thompson was built like a brick shithouse and still cleared 2.11, but I realised I wasn’t Daley a very long time ago.

Let’s turn to the power jigsaw piece.

In high jump, the power aspect is not simply one of force generation. Clearly to lift a certain mass high, a certain amount of newtons are required. But high jump is a very specific event and that force needs to be applied extremely quickly and efficiently. A slow and steady application of a gazillion newtons is not how high jumpers jump. The take-off foot really doesn’t spend much time in contact with the ground. It’s an explosive event. High jumpers also don’t jump from a static position either. Instead, we run toward the bar and translate some of our horizontal motion into the vertical. Legs need to be strong in order to generate that horizontal speed in the first place. Indeed, we do a lot of sprints as part of our training. The take-off leg then needs to be robust to brake the horizontal speed and convert it into vertical movement.

Where this gets slightly tricky for me is that I jump off my left leg. Nothing especially wrong with that, there’s more or less equal numbers of left or right-footed jumpers. There’s no advantage to doing either. But in my case, I’ve jumped off my left leg for the last 35 years or so, since I was ten, so that particular motion is extremely grooved into the muscle memory, a bit like brushing your teeth with either your right or left hand. Try doing that this evening with the ‘wrong’ hand and you’ll know what I mean. Where my left leg take off gets more problematic is that about 15 years ago, I had some serious surgery on my left hip, which resulted in a 20 centimetre incision across my abductors in the days before keyhole surgery. The surgeon also managed to snap off the greater trochanter, something that wasn’t in the brochure, but fortunately I’m good at letting things go.

The key consequences to this are that a) in gross strength terms, unless I train it specifically for about 2 hours a day, my left glute is about 40% weaker than my right according to my physio and b) when I do apply force, I have less lateral stabilisation which means that some of the power being produced isn’t being applied in the straight-line vertical direction I need.

Obviously, there are really only 2 potential remedies to this. Either I train the glute so it is actually strong enough to generate the force I need, in the direction that I need or I chuck away the last 35 years of technique and try and learn how to jump off my right foot. I’ve tried to jump off my right for a laugh now and then, and frankly it’s an advert for decent medical insurance or failing that an application to become a circus clown. It’s really bad. However, I’ve never consciously sat down and said, right, you have 9 months to learn this new skill and so let’s start with the basics. As of right now, I’m inclined to go with the left leg strengthening option, but I’m also painfully aware that it will probably take at least 9 months to gestate a right foot take off, so if I don’t start now, then it won’t happen by May 2021.