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Here is some good information T0ddday shared with me about SL Bounding that maybe some of you guys might find helpful

Quote from: Merrick on December 07, 2015, 03:15:33 am

Hi Toddday,

1) What does the term "attack the ground" actually mean?  I'm assuming it means to actually voluntarily start extend the hips and lower your foot to the ground rather than just let it freefall and thud on the ground? 

Attack the ground.  The first thing we don't want to do is reach forward and land with our foot in front of our center of gravity.  This will help us go farther but kill our power for our next jump.  Especially in alternate leg bounding some long legged beginners actually go farthest like this but it's a habit we want to break immediately.  Assuming this isn't an issue, then depending on the speed at which we have have acquired and some individual characteristics we want to land with our leg pretty close to straight (approx 130-170 degrees).   Given that our leg is close to this position while we are still in the air what does attacking the ground mean?  I know from your old username that your well versed in physics and know that when your airborne the only force on you is gravity and we can't accelerate our leg down and make it land any faster without changing the knee angle...  This is where attacking the ground comes in... By extending the hips in the air accelerating the leg we are making slightly increasing knee angle (which makes it hit the ground faster) but most importantly we are hitting the ground with a leg that is rapidly moving backwards!   This is referred to as negative foot-speed and it's very important for us to do this to not lose our forward momentum...   

To better explain this I will attach a photo of myself before ground contact:



Notice the direction of the yellow arrows.  My left hip is certainly snapping my leg down but most importantly it's snapping it back.  If I didn't have the negative foot speed I might land with my toe past the yard marker...  In reality I land with my foot under my center of gravity and my toe before the yard marker.  As I snap my hip back to provide this negative foot speed my right hip is snapping forward (think of hips as a lever that work in unison) so my right leg is under my center of gravity while I make ground contact and thus moving up when I toe-off to provide lift (remember hips go forward and back but also up or down - I want might right hip to be done going down when I hit the ground so when I take off my hips are both going up). 

Additionally watch this slow motion video of Usain Bolt for a demonstration of negative foot speed.  This is one of the biggest things lacking in slower runners... Notice how his foot almost seems to pause and then get pushed backwards so it hits the ground with negative foot speed...

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fjC1Oim0UQ" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fjC1Oim0UQ</a>

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Reason I ask is, when I do SL bounding going for max distance, I am fairly proficient.  However, when I go for more height, I tend to land and hit my heels pretty hard on the ground.  It hurts lol.  Is this just a matter of being able to absorb more force?

Well, the first thing I have to ask is are you landing on your heels?  You shouldn't be.  You shouldn't land on your toes or your heels.  It's a whole foot or forefoot landing.  Dorsiflexion is just a cue to reduce backside mechanics and keep you from landing on your toes but you should not attempt to land on your heels!   If you are not then I'm not sure why your heels hurt, perhaps you need more supportive shoes?

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2) When I bound, I do cycle my leg completely.  Heel under butt, knee drive forward, dorsiflexed.  I don't understand WHY though.  What is the point of bringing the heel under the butt?  Why not just knee drive right after the foot leaves the ground?  It clearly feel more fluid bringing heel under butt, but just for knowledge sake, I want to know what the exact reasoning is

Not sure exactly what you mean by "why not just drive the knee right after foot leaves ground".   Assuming your doing LLL bounding again... When I bound off my left leg my right leg is providing knee drive to give me lift.   If I am on my last bound (say a triple jump and I want to land in the pit) then certainly I would drive my left knee with my right knee and land on two feet...  However, if I intend to land on my left leg again (or even my right in LRLR bounds) then if I bring both knees up then how do I complete the next bound?  If I am in the air with both knees driving up and I have to get my left leg down to do another bound then what do I do with my right leg? 

Do I just leave it hanging forward and sacrifice half the power of my hip swing?

Do I bring both legs down but only land on the left and allow the right leg to continue to swing behind me?  If I swing the hips down together at the same speed and only make ground contact with left but allow the right to swing behind me then by the time I leave the ground my right leg will already being swinging downwards and will counteract the lift I produce with the left leg!

Do I swing both legs down and make contact only with my left leg but try to stop by right leg in the air and reverse it's direction so it now drives up again?

Do any of those seem reasonable?   Remember bounding and (running at high speed) is a hip-dominant exercise.  We need to load our hip tendons and transfer that force to go far or high...   But our hips work as two levers in synch.  This is why coaches preach "RELAXATION" to sprinters.   If we start to fire our quad or try to stop our hip swing we completely lose out on the elasticity of the hips.  Our hips have to go through an entire path from extended behind as to flexed in front of us to make the most of this elasticity, they move in unison but the right is forward when the left is back and so forth.  We can't stop our hips mid-swing and reverse direction with our muscles and expect our tendons to still work for us!

*As far as bringing your heel to the butt.  You don't necessarily have to.  It's a cue.  In single leg bounding only one leg (say L) spends time on the ground.  However the hips have to move in unison despite the fact the the left gets slowed down by the GC.  To make up for this deficit and still have proper hip timing we have to quickly get out left leg through its backside mechanics while we can let our right leg hang in it's backside mechanics.   The foot kicking butt thing really a cue because despite the fact that we want to be fast we want to get through will our left-leg rearward hip-cycle completely without cutting it short.  We can cut our hip extension short when we flex our quad.  So we need to have our quad relaxed and if it is our foot will swing up and be near our butt.  One way to make sure our quad is relaxed and stretched is to fire our hamstrings (the antagonist), so when we do that we will actually kick our butt...  Not necessary but a good cue.   

I think you can get a good idea of this by doing alternating leg bounds if you haven't already been doing them.   Notice in the video I am doing a moderate distance (5 bounds for 16 yards total) but I am really exaggerating the relaxation of my quad by flexing my hamstring so my foot comes near my butt.  The second person in the video (a pretty good triple jumper) is just relaxing his quad but you still see that the natural hip swing will end up causing the knee to flex if it is relaxed (it's just not as pronounced).   Doing alternate leg bounds will help you really learn how your hips open-close-open-close-open-close in unison.

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULkeZBI7Xyw" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULkeZBI7Xyw</a>

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3) For the single leg running vertical jump what exercises or drills do you recommend for training the  transferring of horizontal speed of the approach into vertical displacement?  It seems like bounding for distance and regular bounding (being the most common variations) have a significant horizontal displacement without enough vertical.  As my bounding gets better, I sometimes clearly jump off 1 leg with more power, but I get around the same height but just go out farther forward. 

Thanks a ton!

Ahhh...  this is the million dollar question.   First off.  If you are more powerful off one leg you will jump higher.  Especially if you add distance to your bounds with only a 1 or 2 step take off.   High jumpers often can get up much better than long jumpers despite not being about to long jump nearly as far.... but if you compare their 2 step long jumps the numbers are a lot closer.   Triple jumpers on the other hand make incredible leapers (because they have to transfer essentially a crazy depth drop back to power rather than just rely on speed from the run-in).   Will you WILL jump higher the carryover might not be to your liking.  You could become excellent at bounding and be able to jump much farther but only an inch or two higher on the basketball court.   There are a few things you can do to help transfer this training to dunking:

1) Practice tons and tons of 1 legged dunking.  Focus on the penultimate. 
2) Start taking off from farther away.  I have seen triple jumpers do dunks where they take off from 8-10 feet away and get up really high.  Observers will often think "wow imagine how high they could get up if they didn't also go for distance" when the reality is they dunk best and get up highest when they take off from pretty far away.
3) Add alternate bounding if you are not already.
4) Add triple jumping (just 2 step triple jumping is all thats necessary.  Go past 10 yards).
5) Add mini-hurdles to your bounding.  Don't make the hurdle height too challenging though - we still want bounding to take place and you want to completely clear the hurdle without tucking a leg or anything.
6) Add penultimate bounds.  If you haven't done these here is how.  Set up a moderate hurdles (say 12-30 inches) spaced around 3-4 yards apart.  Take two steps and jump over the first hurdle off your left leg and land on your right and then take a small quick step back to your left and jump over the next hurdle.  Keep repeating.  As you learn how you will realize that you gain distance and height by a big jump with a small step rather than a big step in between.  As you improve focus on making the hurdles farther and farther apart rather than higher and higher.  Our triple jumper could do 36 inch hurdles that were spread every 5 yards.  Incredible.
7) Finally do both single leg dunk rim touches (stand on one leg and jump) and more importantly penultimate jumps - to do this stand under a rim with your left leg forward and your right leg back.  Dip into a 1/4 or so lunge and push your right leg off the ground and drive it forward and then jump off your left leg and jump to touch the target.   These SHOULD take you much much higher than your single leg standing vertical.  Think of your RSLVJ as made of three parts - your standing single leg vertical, your penultimate standing vertical, and your bounding/long-jump/triple jump performance.

Good luck!

he is a bendy dude.

I always thought this guys SL bounds we're amazing...

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ0da_u6eLI" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJ0da_u6eLI</a>

He might be a great high jumper and the bounds might look cool the way he does them but IMO it looks like he is actually using his quad for knee extension which is very bad way to train especially if your a sprinter...

In the front side mechanics of a sprint or a bound after the front knee passes forward the hip and hip alone should snap down pulling the leg back and under the body.  The leg SHOULD go from bent to straight before ground contact and although it might look like it, this is accomplished with a relaxed quad and a relaxed and elastic knee, the snapping that comes from the hip makes the knee strengthen not active quadricp knee flexion - ie there is no kicking out in sprinting! 

This is why I tend to avoid C skip type drills beginners because they will raise the knee (rather than point the knee) and then actively kick their leg straight and bring it down...  it causes them to "look" more like a better athlete but it also reinforces terrible mechanics.  Unlike the hamstring which does have a role (albiet minor - still mostly elastic recoil) in flexing the leg in backside mechanics the quadricep stays relaxed and should not be used for knee extension on the front side...

I could be wrong and maybe he is just that elastic that his leg straightens that early...  but it sure looks like active knee extension to me...