In my opinion, the big problem with scissors jumping in warm-up is not
jumping with this style in itself, it is with the use of a curved
approach when scissoring. Scissors is a style that uses a straight
approach with the jumper landing on his/her feet in the pit. Flop
style jumping requires a curved approach with the jumper landing
up-side-down in the pit.

If you try to do scissors jumps from a curved approach, you will have
to come out of the curve and run the last stride of your approach in a
straight line with your body oriented vertically, and then jump to
land on your feet. This will be teaching you to abandon the curve and
run the last stride of your approach in a straight line - rather than
staying in the curve till you get your takeoff foot on the ground as
you must do for the flop.

If you are going to practice scissors (which I don't object to) you
should do it from a straight approach and not from a curved approach
with a straight last stride. Doing it from a curved approach will just
foul up your approach for the flop takeoff.

Glen Stone



--- In highjump@yahoogroups.com, "LaMonte Forthun" <lamontef@...> wrote:
>
> I respectfully have to disagree with your points unless a jumper is
> spending half their workout doing scissors jumps. I'm talking about
> doing maybe 5 or so scissors at the beginning of whatever jumping
> workout we might be doing, which don't think is enough to promote bad
> habits such as not getting hips up or causing slow rotation. If that
> were the case I wouldn't want my jumpers playing basketball since
> doing layups would cause a lot more problems.
>
> Although, I would say that at a certain skill level it's not as
> important a drill to do since I don't have to worry as much about them
> jumping up as I did when they were first learning. I still like it at
> the beginning of certain jump workouts (not all) for the jumpers to
> get the feel of jumping straight up. Even experience jumpers tend to
> lean in at take off at times, since they ultimately need to get into
> the pit.
>
> Monty Forthun
>