How to Improve Your Jumps

by | Aug 10, 2019 | Blog, Cheer Training, Flexibility & Mobility, Strength & Conditioning

Featured Image: Jerry Hughes Photography

Current Approaches to Jump Training

One of the most highly requested topics and probably everyone’s least favourite part of the routine… JUMPS! For many cheerleaders, getting higher jumps is a never-ending struggle. You can do drills for years and years and see only minimal improvement. Why is this? Well, almost every single jump drill I’ve seen used in cheerleading has been quite ineffective.

A lot of the time, the current drills being used to improve jumps don’t take into consideration the anatomy of the hip or the type of muscular training needed to lift the legs high. They’re also often performed with bent legs and flexed feet, which makes them even more unproductive.

There are much more effective exercises that are simple and boring, but they work. There’s no need to get fancy with jump training! Just stick to focusing on strength and power development, stretching and take-off and landing exercises.

The 4 Components of a Jump

To start, I’ll break down a jump into its 4 sections so you can understand it in depth.

1. Initial Jump

  • Requires power from the leg muscles (POWER = SPEED + STRENGTH)
  • Quick straightening of the knees and push off the ground to propel the body into the air
  • Proper hip-knee-ankle alignment must occur to avoid unusual stresses on the joints and prevent injury

2. Hip Flexion & Flexibility

  • Requires powerful hip flexion (bending of the hips/lifting of the legs)
  • Goal is to bring the legs up into the position of the jump (ex: pike or straddle) in the shortest amount of time possible
  • Must have adequate static and active flexibility in order to reach a certain level of hip flexion. Without this, the legs will become stuck at a certain point

3. Hip Adduction

  • Hip adduction = bringing the legs together
  • Requires powerful adductors (the muscles on the insides of your thighs)
  • Goal is to bring the legs back together in the shortest amount of time possible

4. Landing

  • Eccentric (lengthening) contraction of the quadriceps slows down the body and controls the landing
  • Must have strong legs, stable knees and mobile ankles to land safely and correctly
  • Proper hip-knee-ankle alignment must occur to avoid unusual stresses on the joints and prevent injury

Muscle and Joint Actions During Jumps

When analyzed, toe touches, pike jumps and hurdlers will all have slightly different muscle and joint actions as they are performed. Each jump will require hip flexion (closing of the hip joint/bending the hip), with the exception of the hurdler which involves single leg hip flexion and single leg hip extension (opening of the hip joint on the back leg).

The toe touch will include some hip abduction (lifting legs to the side) and hip external rotation (turning the hips backwards). This will occur with the contraction of the gluteal muscles. In terms of flexibility, the focus should be on stretching the hip adductors.

During pike jumps, hip flexion is required on both sides to bring the legs up evenly. Stretching the hamstrings and lower back (not by doing bridges, by doing pike stretches), will assist with hitting a proper pike position in the air.

Lastly, as mentioned before, both hip flexion and extension are needed to split the legs during a hurdler. Strong and powerful hip extensors (i.e. the butt muscles) of the back leg, as well as adequate hamstring flexibility of the front leg and hip flexor flexibility of the back leg is crucial in performing a nice hurdler.

Drills to Avoid

I could list tons of drills here but there are too many for one post! For now, I’ll just talk about 5 major ones that I see commonly used during practices. Now, some of these drills aren’t completely ineffective, but they just aren’t optimal for getting the results you want. There are way more effective exercises that will get you much quicker results.

Anything Upside Down

I’m talking about when an athlete rolls onto their back into a candlestick position and snaps their legs down as if doing a toe touch upside down. Reasons why it’s ineffective:

  • Doesn’t provide enough resistance to significantly strengthen the hip muscles – gravity is doing half the work on this one
  • Doesn’t involve a jump of any kind, which is usually the cause of lack of initial jump height and therefore lack of leg height in jump positions

Single-Leg Kicks for Toe Touches

Either when standing still or doing small continuous hops, kicking one leg out to the side as if doing half of a toe touch. If done standing still with correct technique, this drill isn’t horrible for improving general hip flexor strength, but for toe touches, there are better methods. Reasons why it’s ineffective:

  • Athletes don’t end up training within their range of motion – The leg that kicks up often goes higher than both their legs together would during a toe touch. This is because it’s easy for the body to compensate and find other ways to get the leg up as high as possible, none of which can be actually done when performing kicks with both legs at the same time (i.e. doing a toe touch).
  • If the athlete lacks even a small amount of flexibility, the single-leg kick will not be training the hip flexors at the correct angle. Often during single-leg kicks, you are able to bring your leg further out to the side, rather than keeping it in front. When actually performing a toe touch, the lifting of both legs combined with inadequate flexibility will limit each leg from going as far out to the side as it would during a single-leg kick.

Using Ankle Weights

Putting ankle weights on and doing jumps or kicks has the potential to injure the hip joint and should be avoided in most cases. Reasons why it’s ineffective:

  • Loading the end of the leg, which is far away from the hip, will cause excessive force to be placed on the hip joint. Athletes lacking super amounts of hip strength and stability (i.e. 99% of cheer athletes) are at risk of hip impingement and hip instability, especially when they are flexible.
    • Hip impingement = the hip bones (femur and pelvis) make contact with each other at extreme ranges of motion which can be painful and cause soft tissue damage within the joint
    • Hip instability = taking the hip joint through an extreme range of motion without adequate strength and control of the movement, which can cause the top of your thigh bone (femoral head) to come out of the hip socket slightly. Because the joint capsule and other soft tissues within the hip are being stretched beyond what they should be, this can cause pain and significant strain on those tissues
  • It’s common for cheerleaders to have poor active flexibility and range of motion, but have great passive or static flexibility and range of motion. For example, an athlete may be able to do the splits but when standing upright, is unable to actively lift their leg up high enough to create a full split in a standing position. If athletes struggle to lift their legs against the resistance of gravity on its own, why add additional weight? They will compensate in other ways, such as by swinging their legs, to reach the end range of motion desired for their jumps.
  • Using ankle weights so that jumps are “easier” afterwards is only a temporary mind-trick. Initially, your legs will feel as light as a feather, but there are no long term benefits of this.
  • Since you want to train for power, light weight must be used to allow for fast movements. Regularly adding additional weight to the leg will not be effective in developing speed in the long run.

Drills for Rotating the Hips

Drills where athletes jump and rotate their hips and body so much so that they purposely land on their back on a mat. Reasons why it’s ineffective:

  • The desired backwards rotation of the hips in cheer jumps cannot be drilled and done with jumps of just any height. An athlete must have enough flexibility and strength to get their legs to a certain position in the air before the hips are able to rotate. With enough hip flexion and abduction, the hips will naturally begin to rotate backwards, because the same muscles that lift the legs up and out to the side are the same muscles that externally rotate the joint.
  • There is no point in telling athletes who have lower jumps to “try and rotate your hips backwards.” They simply lack the strength, power and flexibility to even get to that point in the first place.
  • Instead of telling your athletes to roll their hips back and trying to create drills to help with that movement, focus on passive and active adductor & hamstring flexibility along with quad, hip flexor & gluteal strength.

Training Jumps to Exhaustion

Going through a song or your routine music and doing a jump every 8-count isn’t going to help with developing powerful jumps with quick leg movements. Reasons why it’s ineffective:

  • To get fast, high jumps, you need to train for power, not endurance. Repeating jumps over and over again for minutes on end will only tire your muscles out. If you wish to train for endurance, then by all means do this, but for training speed and strength, this is not ideal.
  • To train power, perform less reps of the jumps and take longer breaks between sets. Each jump must be done with maximum effort and power since the rep number is low.
  • Quality > Quantity

Things You Should Do

Practice Powerful Knee Extension

  • Front leg elevated leg switches
  • Squat jumps
  • Box jumps – Jump from floor onto elevated surface or box
  • Continuous plyometric jumps – Jump on and over a line of cones/boxes/hurdles

Strengthen Your Hip Flexors

  • V-snaps
  • Hanging straight leg raises
  • Seated straddle raises – Hands must be placed in front of you, in line with your knees or further away, and be flat on floor the entire time. Only lift the legs. If legs do not lift off of floor, it’s okay, keep attempting.
  • Knees must be straight and toes must be pointed 100% of the time. If knees begin to bend, the exercise becomes less effective

Strengthen Your Glutes

  • Quadruped kick-backs (straight leg and bent leg) – Must keep core tight, back must not arch so that glutes can be fully engaged
  • Quadruped side/lateral kicks – Bringing leg from behind you and up to your side. Must keep core tight, do not twist to the side
  • Side-lying clamshells with mini band

Hamstring Stretches

  • Kneeling hamstring stretch
  • Pike stretch
  • Supinated hamstring stretch

Hip Flexor Stretches

  • Half-kneeling hip flexor stretch – Do not lean forwards and open the back hip to feel the stretch more. Instead, keep knees and hips at all 90 degree angles and squeeze glutes of back leg to feel the stretch
  • Lunge with back knee straight

Adductor Stretches

  • Straddle stretch reaching forwards
  • Middle splits

Other Drills

  • Straight jumps with a stuck landing off of blocks or any elevated surface – ensure proper hip-knee-ankle alignment upon landing
  • Do jumps on trampoline, focusing on snapping legs up fast and quickly bringing them back together
  • Jump from mini tramp onto floor or mat – toe touch/pike/hurdler in the air and stick the landing

For a jump training program to easily follow at home, please visit this link.