INCREASING VERTICAL JUMP

Dr. Mark Hutchinson is Assistant Professor of Orthopedics, Sports Medicine, and the Director of Sports Medicine Services in the Department of Orthopedics at the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is also chief of sports medicine for all of the UIC sports teams. Dr. Hutchinson has been working to improve the leaping ability of athletes. Working with the United States rhythmic gymnastics squad, Dr. Hutchinson and a team of therapists have used water-resistance training and spring-controlled body conditioning exercises to make remarkable improvements in the abilities of the young gymnasts.

If you could tell me a little bit about the training program that you were just involved in with the gymnastics team.

We did a study to try to improve the leaping ability in the elite rhythmic gymnasts of the United States team, the US National Team. If they have a better leaping ability they will score higher and look better. So our goal was to improve their leaping ability through a course of jump training. In addition what we wanted to guarantee we were not going to cause any new injuries so we wanted to avoid any possibility of overuse injuries just because of our training. We designed a training program for the US national team. We tested them prior to beginning the training, one month into the training, four months into the training to see how they progressed and see if we were making any significant inroads with the jump training. We tested them on a force plate that was produced by Probotics Incorporated. It's called an electronic vertical jump measuring system. The system has a little computer attached to it that will allow us to measure floor reaction time, average jump height, and explosive leg power.

How did you happen to select rhythmic gymnasts?

I've taken care of them. I'm the team physician for the US team and I've taken care of them for about a year and a half. It just happened to be the elite group that I was taking care of. In fact, we probably are going to apply this to some of the female basketball players at the university but we just haven't done that yet.

What are some of the particular skills that rhythmic gymnasts need that this applies to? How long has it been an Olympic sport and how long has the United States been involved in the sport?

This is the first year and the first Olympic games that the group competition will be part of the Olympics. It will be an official component of the Olympics. In that part there will be five participants on the mat at a given time period. One of the routines requires them to use five hoops and the other routine will require them to use two ribbons and three balls. And then they toss them, throw them, interchange them, do different techniques with them on the mat through about a two and a half minute routine. Rhythmic gymnastics has been around for a long time but it's a very Eastern European dominated sport. And so the Russians, Bulgarians, Belorussians tend to dominate and that was shown at the results of the world championships that we just came back from. The sport itself is kind of a balance and a mixture between ballet, gymnastics with the added use of apparatus. The various apparatus can include hoops, clubs, rope, ribbon or a ball.

Can you tell me about some of the particular exercises? I understand that you did a lot of this in the water.

We designed the training and it really had two components to it. One was pool training and one was Pilates which is the gentleman's name who developed a technique of training. Both of them have been shown in the past to reduce injuries. So if we're in the water we're taking away weight as they're working. Doing this stuff in the water means less chance of injury and the same thing was true for the Pilates so that's why we chose the two.

With the pool training we had the girls in the pool for an hour twice a week and they progressed through various exercises in the water to try to maximize-optimize their technique as well as to improve their resistance both for power and stamina. They would do vertical leaps, they would do split leaps, they would do turn leaps all which are part of their sport. We worked on abdominal strengthening, we worked on balance all while we were in the water. Each training session was supervised by an athletic trainer or a coach who knew the sport so that they could optimize their technique while they were performing it. And then the Pilates training, basically that we did for an hour two times a week. We progressed through a variety of exercises on it.

Let's talk about the results, they are pretty impressive.

It actually surprised me that it was as significant as it was. Basically we got the baseline before they started, then at one month the jump height had increased sixteen-point-two percent. That was a range of six-point-two to twenty-six-percent increase. So every participant increased their height, and their average was sixteen-point-two percent.

The floor reaction time is their quickness and their ability to quickly get off the floor. To improve that, our goal is to have that get smaller. They want a quicker time so they want it to be less. That decreased an average of fifty percent, ranging from sixty-seven to thirty-six-percent and once again, all of the girls improved their floor reaction time. And then their explosive power, which is a computerized calculation between the two, basically increased two-hundred-and-twenty-percent for the range seventy to three-hundred-and-twelve-percent. Which is really quite astounding.

I'm guessing just that because of their ages, without this kind of training their leaping wasn't going to get that much better?

I don't think it would have changed. Realize that this is the same group that just represented the United States prior to this at the Pan American games and got a silver medal. It's the same group that just went to the four continents tournament with most of the major competitors in the world and got second place in hoop apparatus. They were already at a very high level and it wasn't that it was just going to magically jump up like that. I think that what we did madee a significant change.

Can we talk a little bit about the Pilates method, it's been around for a long time although I hadn't heard of it before.

It's been around since the 1940's it was actually developed by a man named Joseph Pilates. It's been used successfully in the past for rehabilitation and optimization of a variety of types of athletes but particularly dancers and particularly ballet. And so the Boston, and New York and some of the famous ballet companies have used it before. The reason it's been a benefit is that it seems to train the body without involving a significant amount of impact or repetitive strain and it tries to focus on integrative control of the muscles. Breathing, flexibility, strength and body awareness. Really what it is and it's going to be hard to describe over the Internet, but basically it's a table that has a movable or floating center part of it which can be hitched up to springs. And there's a foot plate-springs or ropes, and there's a foot plate on the bottom so that you basically push on the foot plate and your body slides along some rails and the resistance can be controlled by springs. You can adjust this thing to work on different motions. It can just work a variety of things in a pretty safe fashion.

Is it what's called the reformer?

Right, and in fact the reformer is basically the table that you lay down on. Pilates is a trademark name and Pilates training is and they have two brands one of which is more of a stand up type of thing and the reformer which is laying down. So basically it's important for anybody who tries to reproduce our study that that's what they have to use to do exactly the same thing we did. I don't think it makes that much difference myself but I think that technically from a research perspective they would have to have that.

It almost sounds as much mental as physical, or that mental is a big part of it.

It's interesting. I think it is and I think if somebody is going to have a significant benefit over a month that there was some mental connections that were made and some technical learning that was made in the leap training both in the water and on the Pilates that made the significant difference. Because you wouldn't think that over a month that you're going to be able to significantly improve motor strength quite as quickly. And so I think some learning happened over that time and I think part of it is- both Pilates and the pool allows the girl to do the leap but it slows it down and you're kind of floating in the water and I believe it gives them an opportunity to kind of visualize themselves leaping, improving their technique by slowing it down a little bit also.

Is the Pilates method a physically demanding workout? Would it be like doing a circuit with Nautilus? From what I've read it doesn't seem to be so demanding physically.

It's not quite as demanding. You can vary the spring loading and you can vary the resistance to make it more of a work out but you can't put as much weight as you can as a circuit training for really gross strength building.

I just read an article saying Pilates is becoming popular in Hollywood. A lot of actresses are making use of it. What other athletes do you think might be able to improve their games with some of these techniques you've been studying, and have developed?

I believe that if you break sports down by their leaping ability demand, which ones demand leaping ability, and I think virtually all of them could benefit from this type of training if it's a high demand leaping sport. You simply have to change the protocol a little bit so that the people aren't worrying about split leaps and side leaps which are going to be something that are demanding for rhythmic gymnastics. If you're going to work with a basketball player you're going to want more of a vertical leap. If you're going to work with a hurdler you're going to want them to work with a straddle leap. But I think anybody that has a high demand sport could get good benefit from it. So I would say some track and field people could benefit from it in terms of hurdlers, long jumpers, high jumpers, volleyball players, basketball players. And actually volleyball and basketball we're going to work with the university athletes here to see if we can make improvements with the collegiate athletes at the university.

So do you think when you get to Atlanta and this team gets out on the floor folks are going to really notice the difference?

I think if the crowd gets behind them that the girls could be a surprise medal contender. But as it would start from the results of the world championships you would have to bet that the winners would be like Bulgaria and Russia, Ukraine, some of the old standards.