I took yesterday off completely, aside from about an hour of static stretching and about four hours of icing. Later today I'm going to test out my hamstring again, checking to see if I can get up to at least 90% speed. I may also try a few pop-up's and short approach triple jump. I'm feeling pretty good overall, my first thought when I woke up this morning was "Oh it's not so bad today"... Well I guess that's a lie my first thought this morning was a reflection of the dream I had. I dreamed that at juniors, during the qualifying round of long jump, I jumped 6.29m and finished 13th, one centimeter out of the final. That would be something I would want to avoid. I don't know what distance I would be happy with but a pb would be nice, anything over 6.50m. Although I don't even know if I'll be able to jump yet I think 6.50m is quite a reasonable goal. I faulted a 6.39m and a 6.36m (which I tore my hamstring on) on a day where the wind was oscillating between -0.7m/s to -2.1m/s. I felt terrible too, I was tired, the bruise on my heal was throbbing. Surely a pristine day would be worth at least another 10-15cm, right?

You've got to learn to survive a defeat. That's when you develop character.

--Richard M. Nixon  

Well I guess he was right because I know if I did well this weekend I would not have studied the tapes as closely as I did. Technically it looks pretty good through the first two phases (well my hop could always be more active but it seems there are more primary concerns at the moment). Here's the video:


See, during the step phase there is definitely some major forward rotation which is probably partially responsible for my brutal landing. When I land off the step there is a distinct rounding through my shoulders which causes me to jump "into the ground" on the last phase. Here are a few video caps:

This is from the second jump, 13.32m. As you can clearly see I'm am not set up well for the last phase at all, hips are back, eyes are down, shoulders are rounded.














This one is from my fourth jump, 13.54m. It looks a little better but still, I could stay completely upright I think I would begin to see massive improvements.
 













If I'm well enough to jump at practice this Sunday I DEFINITELY know what I'm going to work on