It's amazing how the cold weather stiffens you up and tries to dissuade your body from jumping. It's around freezing every day here in London at the moment, despite the brilliant sunshine, and is actually great weather for training. Crisp, dry... but very cold. Particularly during the evening classes!


However, today was an afternoon training session: just myself and Stephane and Julien Vigroux, and was nothing particularly complicated. Running jumps and precisions, varying lengths, varying angles and landings, long strides and short, reduced run-ups, double-legs etc. The usual for this type of session. But that cold... how it makes you work; especially when all you want is to get inside and get some steaming hot tea down..! The whole body wanting to shrink in on itself for warmth, wanting to keep the linbs close to the body, not stretched out at full stride for long jumps. Means you have to focus more, force the body to open up and ignore the cold and just do the jumps. Makes all the usually simple drills that much harder, and that much more productive as a result. Love it.

And after all the jump drills, with heavy legs and cooling bodies, we ended with one double-leg jump at almost max range. And it was here that the jumps became hard. And as a result, the jumps had to become better. In a sense, the hunt for that perfect jump - when everything clicks and works exactly as it should, the connective tissues and muscles firing at their most efficient, the push from the ball of the foot, the swing of the body, the reach with the legs and shift of bodyweight as you land - is best carried out when you are this tired. It's at such times that you realise you can't rely on sheer power and strength to make the jump: you simply have to use the technique at its best, or not make it at all. Adding that extra challenge at the end of your session, digging deep to look for the perfect jump.. for me, that's what it is all about.

So the warmth and the hot tea had to wait until we cracked it. But I think it was worth the wait.

Labels: Training