If you want to improve your jumps and become a faster, more injury-proof athlete, this core workout is a must-do. In this post we´re going to break down coach Ryan Baily´s top five core strength exercises that his track and field athletes do every day. If you are neglecting to train your core, your athletic performance is suffering. Core strength and stability are often overlooked in training for the long jump, high jump, triple jump, and sprinting events in track and field. To sprint fast, you have to master the hard post. This is impossible without a strong core. To jump high or far, you have to engage your hips. You can’t do this without solid core stability.

An important element for jumpers is obviously core stability. It’s probably one thing is very neglected. If our athletes do not have the necessary core to be able to withstand some of the demands that we put them through, we’re going to be in trouble. We can’t really move forward a lot until we’re very strong in the core.  

CORE EXERCISE #1 – Mountain Climbers

The first drill is just a regular mountain climber. Then we’ll advance this to make it a little more long jump specific.

CORE EXERCISE #2 – Advanced Mountain Climbers

The single arm and leg mountain climber is a more advanced core drill. We basically are going to eliminate an arm and eliminate a leg, and then we’re going to switch. We can do those as long as we can.

CORE EXERCISE #3 – Dead Bug

This other core drill allow us to work the transverse abdominis. This is important because we spend so much time in hyperextension, where our back is kind of bowed. Track and field were notorious for that, but we got to get out of that movement. So another drill is going to be the dead bug, and we’re going to kind of make it specific to the long jump. The movement is kind of the same that we would have with our knee up and arm up. We’re really focused on pressing our belly button and our hips into the ground, keeping them as tight as we can, really pressing that belly button in that bottom core into the ground.  

CORE EXERCISE #4 – Split Lunge Jump

In the next drill we’re going to grab a med ball. One of the biggest mistakes we make in jumping is we let the torso drop over the hips. The hips have to be engaged the whole time. So we’re going to create some weight and disperse it out in front of them to really allow us to focus on keeping our torso perpendicular to the ground. We’re going to do this with a split lunge jump. So we have the head up and the chest up. We’re not seeing how high we can jump. We’re just going to get a little more extension. When we get more advanced, we can do this drill where we’re jumping over the knee and so forth. It’s a great staple as part of a warm-up to any jumping movement that we’re trying to do.

CORE EXERCISE #5 – Side Plank Crunch

For the last drill we’re going to get into a side plank, we’re going to extend fully, and then we’re going to do like a kind of a side plank crunch. We’re going to bring our elbow to our knee. We’re going to do that on both sides so many reps.

Training Frequency & Key Info

As far as core stability is concerned, it’s probably the most neglected thing we do as coaches because it’s just boring. But in reality it’s absolutely critical. Not necessarily crunches or sit-ups, but there are certain core stability exercises that are so important and it’s not just neglect. Even in the weight room sometimes it’s neglected. Strength coaches don’t have time when they’re trying to teach certain lifts. Even if your high school athlete is in PE, they might not do any core stability or core drills that day, but it can be done every day. It’s going to help us stay healthy in general, but it’s also going to activate our entire system. We think about we need to get all the skips in to activate our system or we need to do something quicker, but in reality we can activate the whole system by simple core exercises.

Core exercises are a big part of Ryan Baily´s athletes´ warm-up. They do it every day. It’s the foundation for everything they’re trying to achieve. When we talk about we want to create stability in athletes, forget it if our core is not stable. That´s not going to happen. So we have to have strength in the core. We want to get athletes in a hard post. Forget it if we’re not strong in the core. We want to get athletes that we want to get their hips engaged. If they’re not strong in the core, they’re going to really struggle. So every event we try to do, especially in the jumps, if the core isn’t strong and stable, we have already lost. We are going to be fighting an uphill battle.

Bibliographic references:

• Outperform. (2022). 5 Core Exercises to Take Your Jumping and Sprinting to the Next Level [Video file]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/wNmEH6Nabs0?si=9deD-mDm7y1ecy3y