Spike approach: how to turn your run-up into centimetres of jump

If you jump lower in a match than you do in testing, the problem is almost never strength: it's the approach. The spike approach isn't the part that comes before the jump. It is the jump. That's where you decide how much horizontal speed you can turn upwards, and most athletes throw a chunk of it away without noticing.

The approach is there to load you, not to run fast

There's a misunderstanding doing the rounds in every gym: the faster I run, the higher I jump. It doesn't work like that. The speed you build up in the approach is only useful if you can brake it and send it back upwards on the last contact. If you arrive flying but your legs can't hold the braking, that speed goes forward instead: you end up long, off balance, and you hit with your arm late.

So the point isn't running more. It's arriving at the last step with the speed your legs can handle today. That value is different for every athlete and it changes for you too across the season: in September you can hold an approach that in March, with tired legs, only costs you your balance.

The three mistakes that cost you centimetres

Last step too short. It's the most common one. If you arrive with a cramped last step you have no room to get low and you end up jumping almost with your ankles alone. The jump comes out stiff, vertical but low, and with no drive from the hips.

Torso already upright when you plant. If you get to the plant with your trunk vertical, you've already lost the chance to load. The torso has to lean forward while you brake, and straighten while you push: that straightening is what adds drive. Arrive bolt upright and you jump with your legs only.

Arms starting late. The arms have to go back while you're braking, not after your feet are already down. If you take them back when you're already in the load, their swing arrives when your feet have almost finished pushing: it does nothing.

The last step is where everything is decided

Try filming yourself from the side during a series of attacks and look only at the last step. You need three things:

• The lead foot landing in front of your body, not underneath it. It's there to brake: if you plant it under your hips, you don't brake, you slide forward.
• The two feet closing almost together, with a clear beat between the first and the second. They shouldn't arrive together like a two-footed standing jump, but not half a second apart either.
• Knees that bend and extend fast. The ground contact has to be short. If you see yourself sitting on the ground loading like you're in a squat, you're losing all the elastic energy you'd built up running.

This is why an athlete who's strong in the weight room can jump badly on court: the strength is there, but the contact time is too long to use it.

The arms matter more than you think

The arm swing is a real part of the drive, not a cosmetic detail. The right movement is wide and continuous: arms back during the braking, then up decisively while your feet push. A lot of athletes barely take them back, or keep them bent, and cut a slice off their own jump.

A simple way to see what they're worth to you: do a few vertical jumps with free arms and a few with your hands on your hips. The difference you feel is the part of the jump you're handling with your arms. If you're not using that movement cleanly in the approach, you're leaving that difference on the table.

How you actually train it

The approach is trained fresh, never at the end of practice. It's a few reps done well, not volume work.

• Approaches without a ball, at increasing speed. Start slow and sort your feet out. Then only go faster when you can keep the same last step. The moment the plant gets messy, that's your maximum useful speed: train there, not beyond it.
• Film from the side, not from the front. From the front you see none of what matters. From the side you see torso lean, last-step length and how long you stay on the ground.
• Reactive work separately. If the problem is that you stay on the ground too long, you won't fix it by doing more approaches: you fix it by working on short bouncy jumps, with quick contacts and long rests.
• Strength in the weight room. If your legs can't hold the braking, technique alone isn't enough. You need the ability to absorb load, and that's built with strength work, not with more approaches.

Measure first, then change something

The classic trap is changing three things at once and no longer knowing what worked. Do the opposite: note down your jump now, change one thing only (the last step, or the arms), work on it for a few weeks and measure again. If the number moves, you've found your weak point. If it doesn't move, the problem is somewhere else — probably underneath, in strength.

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• How to film your vertical jump to actually measure it