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Today was a recovery. The boy sprinters went to the pool for aqua jogging and general sprint training, and the girl sprinters worked on film breakdowns and general general sprint training (in a hallway at school). I spent my time during this block with the boys in the pool and had a blast! After the boys finished
up with jogging and drills they got some time to do cannonballs and flips off of the diving board. Check out the video!
After our time in the pool was completed I met my jumpers in one of the high school's classrooms to breakdown film. This isn't something many (if any) programs do, but I have been doing it for years and feel it is PARAMOUNT to our success! Here's what our session today (which was more of an introductory session than anything else) looked like:
- I showed them an example of film that was broken down for jumpers this year. I showed them what to expect from breakdowns and gave them time to ask any questions. If you want to see my breakdowns simply go the home screen of my website and click on the "free video analysis" button.
- After that I told them that I will only be breaking down film for varsity jumpers. This isn't done to lessen how important my JV jumpers are to me. It's simply impossible for me to breakdown videos for my 75 jumpers. I do everything in my power to treat EVERY athlete the same, but in this instance it would greatly affect my family life and I'm not prepared to do that...
- Even though I won't be breaking down everyone's film I will be getting 1-2 videos (minimum) for EVERY athlete at each meet. After the meet these meets will be uploaded to my Google Drive account and shared with all my athletes.
- If they are JV jumpers that don't get breakdowns they need to use a checklist (which I introduced to them today) to break down their own film to prepare for practice time and future meets.
- After showing them the checklist (which you can find HERE) we watched some long jump videos together and broke them down using the checklist.
- Afterwards I talked to them about giving their all when it comes to film. They are expected to watch their own breakdowns (and even those of other jumpers) and use the checklist if not given a breakdown. If they don't, it will fall (fully) on their shoulders if they don't improve!
Breaking down film is something I recommend you do for your athletes. I use a program called "Screencastify". It is a google extension that you can add right into your chrome browser. It has been a huge resource since I bought a subscription a few years back.
TOMORROW
We originally had a meet planned for tomorrow, but it has been cancelled due to weather. So, instead of the meet my athletes and I are going to work on proper takeoffs once again. It's been awhile since we focused on this, so tomorrow's session will be incredibly important!