66 inch jump!

Following is a video of a local athlete jumping over a 66″ piece of tape.

Whoa!

Incredible display of explosive strength and flexibility.

Stiffness

Today I’d like to touch upon stiffness. Muscle stiffness, not to be confused with tightness, is essentially eccentric rate of force development. When a muscle is rapidly stretched the nervous system triggers a rapid, reactive contraction of said muscle. This is important when it comes to speed.

As we all know you sprint on your toes. When the ball of the foot strikes the ground, the more rapid the calf muscles are able to contract the more efficiently force can be transmitted from the hips to the ground. What we want to avoid is allowing the heel to contact with the ground. The greater the range the heel dips, the longer it is taking you to transfer the power from the hips into the ground. Less heel dip = better application of force to the ground.

Stiffness is dependent on neural sensitivity and strength development. First if a muscle is not strong enough it will be unable to absorb the force created by the hips and undergo a longer eccentric contraction.

To develop calf strength we do lunges on the toes and a variety of ismetric holds. The other component is neural and teaching the muscle to fire and lock up rapidly.

To develop the neural component we do a variety of jumps in the low squat position with emphasis on staying on the toes. These two methods will go a long way to ensuring you have iron ankles and are able to effectively utilize the power coming from your hips.

-Until next time