How To Maximise Your Starts: Part 3

Few would argue that Caeleb Dressel has one of the best starts in swimming.

In the final part of this series, we will discuss the types of jumps available to your athletes. However, first and foremost you must consider the safety of your athletes. If they cannot land after a jump effectively and safely, then you have no place giving them any kind of jump training until they can land correctly. Landing correctly means landing in a stable position, 1 or 2 feet on the floor depending on the variation, flat-footed, knees in line with the toes and freezing upon contact with the floor. There is plenty of articles available online on this topic.

So, the types of jumps… there are a few good ones to pick depending on the athlete, sports etc. The most common types have to be the Countermovement Jump (CMJ) involving a rapid descent before rebounding immediately into a jump, a Squat Jump in which one descends into a jump position and pausing for 3-5 seconds before jumping, single-leg jumps such as Split Squat Jumps and the infamously popular, and often poorly performed, Box Jump.

With so many variations, how do we choose the most appropriate for our athletes to transfer those physical qualities into the pool? We use our fundamental understanding of the needs of the swimming start and physiology with critical analysis. When choosing a jump variation think about the components in the previous 2 parts of this series. In Part 1 we discussed the kinematic, mechanical and constraints of the start and how the training must reflect those criteria, while in Part 2 we mentioned the prerequisites for an explosive start such as accessible force production capacity. Those are how you select the jump variations.

Now, let us break down a few jumps as an example, the CMJ and Squat Jump. You can make your own minds up about which is better for swimming athletes.

The CMJ is certainly the higher of the two jumps, an explosive movement allowing rapid use of various mechanisms in the body to achieve high power outputs. The Squat Jump is lower in most variables in terms of jump height, power output and velocity. So, clear cut right?… We use the CMJ…. No. Using the knowledge from Part 1 and Part 2, we can go further and uncover what is going on. The CMJ has higher scores for those variables because of the ‘countermovement’ phase, which allows for the uptake of muscle slack, placing tension on the muscles and tendons to put them in a prime position to jump. At what stage in a swimming start can you use a countermovement? None, you flinch on the blocks and you are DQ’d faster than you can react to the starting signal.

Also, considering the time taken to execute these jump variations, it is shown that a Squat Jump takes between 300-430 milliseconds from the initiation of the upward phase of the jump until take off when compared to a countermovement jump takes between 500-1,000 milliseconds from the initiation of the downward movement until take off. Going back to Part 1, we know that the starts of elite swimmers are ~0.72s and ~0.77s during the Track Start and 0.57s-0.63s and 0.61s-0.67s for the Backstroke in males and females respectively, for total block time. 0.5-1.0s to complete a CMJ is just too long and will likely have a minimal transfer to the water. A Squat Jump, however, is well within this time constraint.

These are some of the questions you must ask before implementing any training interventions with your athletes, critical thinking is essential. We are not going to tell you what to do, that’s not what coaching is. Coaching an athlete involves looking at them as a whole, identifying what they need and want in their training and providing them with an environment to grow as an athlete and as a person. So… the variations you use, are on you.

We hope you enjoyed part 3 of this 3-part mini-series if you found it useful for your athletes please share and follow @velocityswimming_ to stay up-to-date for the next articles.

Stay safe.