Some TJ

Lauren doing a short approach TJ:

Things to notice.
1) Too high on the hop, needs to be out. In the long jump it is about jumping as far as you can in a single effort so you want to get some hight but the tj is a coordinated movement. You need ot get distance without compromising your ability in the other 2 jumps and find that balance. Thats why there are tons of great long jumps and not a lot of great triple jumpers, easy to just go all out its difficult to go hard and restrained. So when she jumps this high she adds distance to her hop but it comes at the cost of her 2nd and 3rd phase. Not a good deal. Laurens PR is 31 feet and that distribution is probably some thing like 13-6-12. Ideally it would be closer to 11-9-13 = 33 ft. Sure she is jumping 2 feet further in the hop right now but it is the same as a 200 meter runner who is always winning coming of the curve but the dies on the straight away, its irrelevant. There is no biggest hop competition (there actually is its called the long jump haha)

2. Second Phase is miniture. After this rep I had her just stand on the board and jump as far as she could and she went further. This shows that her recovery from the big hop not only slowed her down considerably but also had detrimental effect on her jumping ability. (not good when you can jump further from a standing start). Just watch the force of impact her leg has to absorb when she comes down from the hop. (Note: I think her second phase would have been a little further is she wasn't running out of runway but this effected her 3rd phase more than her 2nd phase)

3) Watch her feet on all 3 jumps in the 1st jump it is moving backwards (running off the board) in the other 2 it is just held out in front and absorbs the force of the jumps. If she tried to bring it underneath to absorb that force by the time she can push her foot will be to far behind her. All 3 foot contacts should have that negative foot speed.

Things I liked: Her posture stays upright throughout. Such an important thing that people have alot of trouble with. She swings the foot low on the free leg. Very nicely done.

All her problems are set up from a too big hop and can be fixed by focusing on flatter shorter first phase. Go 2 feet shorter on the hop so you can go 4 feet further in the step thats a good trade. What we see at alot of high school meets are athletes that have trouble with the second phase so they try to go bigger with the hop to make up for it. Lots of 15-7-15s in our league for the guys. Here is a video of lauren and one of Jonathan Edwards (WR holder)