If You Want To Jump Higher, Learn How To Land First
Most knee injuries could be completely avoided if people trained for landing. So let’s say you execute a perfect jump: good acceleration, great penultimate step, even better deceleration, and now you’re in the air. After some air time, you make your way back down to earth and “pop!” Just like that, ACL tear. Jump-landing mechanics is a leading cause in all lower limb injuries. Proper landing mechanics is a combination of technique, neuromuscular awareness, balance, strength and flexibility. All of these puzzle pieces are equally as important, so no point in arguing which to focus on. Focus on all of them. Most will be strong in some areas and weak and others. The goal of jump landing is to absorb and transfer the produced force. The literature says stiff landings and/or knee valgus are strongly associated with increased knee injury. Which is to say, lack of knee and hip flexion and knee valgus are the main symptoms of poor landing mechanics. The causes? Well, like I said before, a combination of technique, neuromuscular awareness, balance, strength and flexibility. Although it would be impossible for me to suggest a one size fits all quick fix here, I can highlight some universal rules when it comes to landing mechanics: 1) strengthen your hips 2) improve the range of your ankles 3) train the outer range.
So first, strengthen your hips. Your hips are really the powerhouse of the body. If you have weak hips, you’re not even trying to be an athlete, and you’re likely missing out on untapped potential. And remember, there’s strength in length. So if your hips are tight in any way, this is likely manifesting somewhere else in your kinetic chain, likely contributing to your poor landing mechanics. When you look at jump landings you’ll find two types of people: quadricep dominant people and gluteal dominant people. Guess what? Although everyone should work to be gluteal dominant, due to the mechanical advantage of the glutes, everyone can still learn something from the quadricep dominant people (we’ll address this in rule #3). Strengthen the hips so that upon landing the glutes can absorb the force, rather than the knees.
With stronger hips, it’s time to improve your ankle mobility (dorsiflexion). Lack of ankle mobility makes it very difficult to land with optimal knee flexion and properly loaded hips. This study found that “the landing kinematics and kinetics of female athletes with reduced ankle dorsiflexion flexibility were characterized by greater knee abduction moments and peak angles, and reduced peak knee flexion angles.” Another study also found that “Greater dorsiflexion ROM was associated with greater knee-flexion displacement and smaller ground reaction forces during landing, thus inducing a landing posture consistent with reduced ACL injury risk and limiting the forces the lower extremity must absorb.” Who would’ve of thought inflexible ankles alone could be why an athlete is at increased risk for ACL injury?!
Finally, train the outer range. So, remember when I said that we can all learn something from quadricep dominant people? Well, in looking at “stiff” or quadricep dominant landers, you’ll often observe tip toe and knees over toe positions. Most coaches would tell you to completely avoid this position, but I say the opposite. The research already shows why glute dominant jumping and landing is both preferable and ideal. That being said, you MUST train for the range in which injury occurs anyways, because guess what, that range is inevitable. It’s just smart. Look no range of motion is bad. There’s just optimal and not optimal depending on the movement and goal. But if your body moves in a certain way, how could anyone possibly argue that a movement is bad? Your knees go over your toes all the time. The issue is, most people don’t train for that range yet are surprised when they find themselves injured in it. The range isn’t the issue. The movement isn’t the issue. LACK of training is the issue, so do your part and train the outer range!
