Training Jumpers Without a Sand Pit

A training platform plays an essential role in training jumpers to improve their skills and help them reach new heights. When training jumpers without a sand pit, you may be thinking there are limited strategies you can use to improve your athletes' jump performances. Fortunately, you can conduct long jump training without a pit through a combination of the right surfaces and techniques.

Understanding the Importance of Training Surfaces for Jumpers

Training surfaces, whether a sand pit, runway or board, all help to develop proficient jumpers. While sand pits can offer various benefits like injury reduction and eccentric load reduction, they still come with their disadvantages. For example, they can reduce peak power and lead to potential risks when an athlete's body responds negatively to sand training or if you pair the wrong techniques with sand pit training.

Additionally, sand pits often require more maintenance than other training surfaces because they are prone to water damage. Sand pits can harden outdoors due to damp weather and ground frost in the winter. Similarly, indoor sand pits can dampen due to humidity. Even with measures like adding a cover, rainwater may still leak into the sand pit. Your athletes may need more training time preparing the sand pit by removing the cover system and raking the sand.

Overall, training jumpers without a pit may be more effective. Many other training surfaces offer the versatility to handle various jump training exercises, maximizing athlete performance and minimizing the risks of injuries. Here are the benefits of these alternative surfaces:

Cushioning: The correct training surfaces provide enough cushioning to reduce the severity of injuries.
Slip and fall prevention: Slipping and falling during jump training exercises can cause a drop in performance for jumpers. Many training surfaces are non-slip to prevent this from occurring.
Shock absorption: If you're looking to protect your jumpers' muscles and joints from sprains and strains, training surfaces absorb the energy of a jumper landing and reduce the force exerted on their body.
Training aid: Another benefit of different training surfaces is they can provide jumpers with a visual reference to where their goal lies and how they can improve their form.
Boundary setting: These surfaces establish the boundaries of their performance area, allowing jumpers to stay aware of and within the safe zone.

Using MONDO Sports Flooring as an Alternative to Sand Pits

Training surfaces from MONDO are an excellent platform for athletes to train for jumps without a pit. Our surfaces meet all the above requirements with shock absorption, energy return and superior traction control. Let's take a look at the factors that make it a worthwhile alternative:

Our surfaces are two to three layers thick to maintain comfort and reduce the risk of injuries during knee landing drills and exercises.
We ensure our middle or bottom layer dissipates shock and stress and incorporate an underlayer with air-cell technology to provide energy return.
To maintain stability during jumps, running and landing, many of our training surfaces consist of vulcanized rubber to stay slip-resistant.

Choosing the Right Surface for Jumper Training

MONDO offers various flooring for jumper training. Here are some surface options and considerations to take into account:

MondoTrack: This training surface is great for humid environments because its surface layer improves drainage by 20% after rain and continues to offer grip even in damp conditions. Its elasticity also helps to ensure a uniform response and decreases the need for jumpers to adjust their posture while moving, reducing fatigue and increasing control.
Ramflex: Is shock absorption your main concern? Ramflex is a vulcanized rubber flooring with two layers that allow it to maintain stability and provide outstanding shock absorption and energy return.
Super X Performance: If you need a more environmentally friendly surface, the Super X Performance flooring consists of 37% recycled materials and 6% renewable materials. This training surface supports athletic performance and safety due to its exemplary traction, grip, and drainage.

Training Techniques for Jumpers Without a Sand Pit

With MONDO, you have the opportunity to implement various alternative jump training exercises and drills. Here are a few exercises you can use to enhance jumper performance without sand:

· Squat jumps: Squat jumps are a powerful plyometric exercise that helps jumpers increase their power and explosiveness. This is an effective exercise that jumpers can perform on MONDO sports flooring like Ramflex, Sport Impact and Mondo Valor which absorb shock and reduce impact on the body.

Box jumps: This exercise requires bending your knees and swinging your arms back before jumping onto a box or other durable platform to work the hamstrings, quads and glutes and improve power. A sturdy training surface like Mondo's Sport Impact can be perfect for this exercise.
Wall series: Are you looking to perform triple jump training without a pit? The wall series is a great acceleration drill you can teach your jumpers on a shock-absorbent training surface.
Running drills: To help your jumpers reach maximum controllable speed without a sand pit, implement running drills and sprints of different distances and intensities on rubber flooring — an effective surface when you need more grip to prevent slips and falls.

Impact Absorption and Safety Measures

While training jumpers without a pit comes with benefits like improved stability and speed, these benefits are only attainable with the correct safety measures and training surface. To enhance the impact absorption capabilities of MONDO sports flooring, you should also implement safety guidelines to prevent injuries during training.

Proper warm-up: Incorporating mobility exercises and dynamic stretches into the warm-up routine can be beneficial to ensure jumpers can handle the demands of plyometric training.
Appropriate footwear: Encourage your athletes to wear supportive athletic shoes to further absorb the impact of their jumps and landings.
Consider individual needs: All jumpers have different tolerances and fitness levels. When implementing jump training exercises, modify them to match an individual's physical strength, agility and endurance capabilities.

Incorporating MONDO Sports Flooring Into Your Training Program

At MONDO, we have over 75 years of experience providing premium sports flooring for a variety of sports levels. We offer various alternative training surfaces for athletes that are flexible, shock absorbent, and resistant to slips and tears, allowing jumpers to perform strength and conditioning exercises safely.

Are you ready to install a training surface from MONDO? Before you do, establish a designated area for your jumpers either within your existing training facility or in a new space. Our surfaces are best installed on a concrete slab — it's recommended to work with a flooring contractor to inspect any defects on the concrete surface before installation.

Need help installing your Mondo Sports flooring? Click here to find a Mondo dealer in your area.