Run-up strategies in competitive long jumping : How an ecological dynamics rationale can support coaches to design individualised practice tasks

Understanding how individuals navigate challenging accuracy demands required to register a legal jump is important in furthering knowledge of competitive long jumping. Identification of co-ordination tendencies unique to each individual emphasises the need to examine the presence of unique movement solutions and presents important information for individualisation of training environments. In this study, key measures of gait were recorded during the long jump run-ups of 8 athletes at 8 national level competitions in the 2015 and 2016 Australian track and field seasons. These gait measures were examined to identify whether different visual regulation strategies emerged for legal and foul jumps for each competitor. Emergence of different footfall variability data curves, illustrating how step adjustments were distributed across the run-up for each athlete, suggests that athletes interacted differently with features of the competition environment. This observation highlights the importance of movement adaptability as constraints change and emerge across each performance trial. Results provided further support in conceptualising the run-up as a continuous interceptive action task consisting of a series of interconnected events (i.e., individual step lengths) influencing the regulation of gait towards the take-off board. This information can be used by coaches and practitioners in designing training environments that promote athlete adaptation of more functional movement solutions closely matched to the dynamics of competition environments. Results suggest that training designs that help athletes to search, explore and exploit key sources of information from the competition environment will enhance the fit between the individual and the environment and the development of rich, adaptable movement solutions for competitive performance.