Coaching and Care of Athletes

THE HIGH JUMP Put the bar at a height he is certain to clear, and practise him in getting the right leg and right arm across the bar at the beginning of the turn, as shown by D. D. Albritton, U.S.A., in Plate XL, Fig. ng, keeping the left leg tucked well up under the right leg. When this phase has been mastered teach him to drop the right leg over the bar (Plate XL, Fig. I20, of Albritton) and to kick up the take-off leg with a strong, relaxed back-heeling action. (See Plate XLI, Fig. I22, but remember that this picture is of a jumper who took off from the right leg.) It is the left leg of a left– footed jumper that is swung up behind and above the body as shown. Alternatively use the left-leg shoot, as shown by Chang Onn Tai in Plate XL, Fig. I 2 I. In teaching this phase of the jump con-' centrate on having the knee of the take-off leg carried at least as high as its own hip. Finally, decide by experiment whether to teach the athlete the continuation or the reverse roll to take him down to his landing. Coaches are not recommended to teach the Back Lay-out style. Should they wish to do so, it is best to stand the athlete facing square to the bar raised I8 ins. to 2 ft., and have him jump over it, springing from both feet . Tell him to jerk his hips forward just before he lands, so that he may avoid hitting the bar with his buttocks. The rest is plain Scissors jumping, except for the dropping back of the head and shoulders and the bobbing up of the hips just as the body is centralized above the bar, plus the final upward sweep of the take-off leg. It is a sound principle of coaching that one shoul<f look first for the big fault and correct it, and then look for smaller mistakes which may be delaying the athlete's progress. When an athlete fails to make progress or to clear heights of which he has been capable previously it is time for the coach to study his general fitness in conjunction with the weight-chart record, but he must also make a careful analysis of the man's style for the detection of faults. It may be that the athlete lacks concentration from the start, or fails to exclude from -his mind what is going on around him. Perhaps too long a run-up exhausts him, or too short a run does not give him enough momentum; perhaps his approach run is too fast, so that he has no time to carry out all the take-off actions with precision; perhaps he does not hit the check mark with his 359