Long Jump Hitchkick Technique

Hitchkick is one of three long jump flight techniques, alongside the hang and the sail, and it's the one most college and elite jumpers eventually adopt. In the air, the drive leg keeps cycling forward like a stride, the takeoff leg cycles back to meet it, and both legs come together just before landing. Done well, hitchkick can add six to twelve inches over a jump that just hangs in the air. Done badly, with the cycle timed wrong, it costs distance instead of adding it, since a mistimed cycle drops the hips at landing exactly the way a hang technique does anyway, except with more moving parts to go wrong. It's also not a technique to force early. Most jumpers shouldn't start hitchkick before they can already hang consistently, since the progression from a half cycle to a full one and a half takes real reps to groove, and rushing it usually just adds a new way to lose distance rather than a new way to gain it.