High Jump

[mashellp]

I am sorry but I have to disagree with the statement that freshman girls do not have strong let muscels. My daughter is in the eitht grade and high jumps 5'2" and has really stong leg muscels. She is also a really good sprinter too. She will be a freshman at William Blount next year and can't wait to run with the older girls.

[MaryvilleRebels]

I have heard of your daughter and she is the one exception. You will see 98 percent of the freshman girls that run track running because: 1. They want to lose weight 2. They want to stay in shape for another sport. 3. They actually like track, in that order. Not many of them have had the time, want, or need to develop stronger leg muscles. There is a girl at Maryville Middle who is jumping 5'0 or so, but even her leg muscles aren't as strong as they could be. I played basketball for the high school for two years, and I saw the difference between our plyometrics and the girls basketball teams. The girls did wall sits (which can be hard, but not too straining) and the boys did work on the calf, the quads and every other leg muscle, in one year of basketball plyometrics, about a month of work, I went from a 20 inch vertical to a 25, now I have a 30 inch vertical, all because of basketball plyometrics. Not only did it help with jumping it helped with speed, I got faster and I could run for longer amounts of time. Your daughter might have some leg muscle, but no where near what she'll have as a senior. Most girls running track don't focus on track, they do it for the fun or someother reason, so they don't train all year for it. The ones that do train for it are much better and are much stronger, but there aren't many that do!

I don't know if I wanted to run Bearden or not, you guys have a lot of great athletes and it'd be a tough meet, but I think most of us were up to the challenge.

[mashellp]

I think that more girls are starting to do track but you are right, they do it for fun or to stay in shape. My daughter does it in school and during the summer with KTC and is really serious about it. She also plays basketball and I am sure that high school will be alot harder than middle school. If more girls would get into track for the right reasons they may be suprised at the results.

[MaryvilleRebels]

Well track takes up a ton of time if you do it seriously, KTC is 3 nights a week. During the summer thats a lot. Now I know that at Maryville Middle track is somewhat a joke. They have a ton of kids that run track, but their idea of a workout is running to a nearby gas station for slushies and running back. Then in highschool they don't run because they realize that its actual work, our sprinters run 4 miles every Wednesday. So that scares a lot of girls, also, girls are afraid of muscle because muscle means weight and weight means fat. Now even if the girl isn't fat, if the scale says they are then they'll believe it, and muscle is going to tip the scales a lot, thats why they don't choose to have a lot of muscle. You are right that more are getting into track, this year, however; was a down year for Maryville's girls track team, we hardly had anyone run.

[morelanmn]

Ok ,, what is plyometrics? my daughter doesn't play basketball. She wrestles in high school and AAU in summer. Her fall sport is soccer.

She is serious about track, but I belive her small size will be make the high jump difficult for her.

 

Michael Morelan

[MaryvilleRebels]

Plyometrics is the strengthing of the legs. A few of the workouts we do at Maryville for basketball included having a jump rope held at our knees and we had to jump from side to side over the rope for a minute. Its just little exercises that will strengthen every muscle in your legs. There is equipment that you can get that does it like the shoes and weight vests and parachutes, but those all cost a pretty good amount of money. Any amount of leg work will help!