Kinetic Assessment of Vertical Jumping: Application to Training and Monitoring Athletes

Dear Colleagues,

Vertical jumping (namely squat, countermovement, and drop vertical jumping) is widely used as a method for training and monitoring athletes in a range of sports. Force platforms are being increasingly used to assess vertical jumping performance, in both research and applied settings, due to their ability to illustrate the kinetic and kinematic (through numerical integration of force-time records) strategies employed to achieve a given jump height. Quantifying a vertical jumping strategy is, indeed, considered to be more useful to athlete training and monitoring than calculating jump height alone; however, there is a distinct lack of rigorous applied scientific studies that have included such detailed data analyses.

The aim of this Special Issue is to expand on this area of research by providing new insights into kinetic assessment of vertical jumping, as it applies to both training and monitoring athletes. The studies published within this Special Issue should help applied practitioners and researchers to: 1) establish robust vertical jump kinetic assessment methods; 2) identify practically meaningful kinetic and kinematic vertical jump variables; and 3) understand how the latter change both acutely (e.g., in response to acute training factors, such as volume/load/coaching cues) and chronically (e.g., across a season or specific training/competition cycles).

Dr. John J. McMahon
Guest Editor

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