Friday, November 7, 2008

Jump, jump and jump


The grace of a jump is beauty to my eyes. I've always enjoyed watching the jump events at track and field competitions - the high jump, the long jump and the triple jump. An athlete's perfectly-executed jump with its accelerating speed, explosiveness, coordinated whole-body extension, and graceful landing is athleticism at its finest.

I like watching animals jump too. For 16 years I lived in a rural area on 5 acres and had thousands of visual experiences watching animals jump as they went about their country life. Squirrels jumping from the many oak trees on my property, and deers jumping over a fence to avoid an oncoming car were my favorites.

As a kid I did my fair share of jumping such as jumping off a rooftop; it would be fun to do that again but it's something I dare not attempt.

I've done workouts at the gym that included jumping, from higher repetition sets of medium height jumps as part of a circuit workout to single rep sets of progressively increasing heights. I don't do these workouts often because they're hard on my middle-age man knees, but I do enjoy them because they bring out the dormant youth in me.

My highest vertical jump is 36 inches for 5 repetitions, done about one year ago. That's not great but it's good for a middle-age man. A couple weeks ago I tried some jumps after a squat workout and only cleared 34 inches for a single repetition. I hadn't done them in a long time and was very rusty.

Here's a video of me doing 36-inch vertical jumps for 5 repetitions:




I've got the jumping itch. Maybe when I go to the gym today I'll set aside some time in my workout so I can jump, jump, and jump.

Pax Domini sit semper vobiscum

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I do a lot of jumping exercises--burpees, jumping squats, star jumpers. Try combining those jumps with a burpee. Do the burpee, come up with your jump but jump forward and onto something instead of just straight up. You probably won't want to go 36" though.