Former Olympic decathlon champion Erki Nool and renowned jumping coach Yevgeniy Zagorulko of Russia shared their expertise and experiences at the European Decathlon Conference held in the Estonian capital city of Tallinn earlier this month.
Over 75 athletes and coaches from six countries – Estonia, Latvia, Belgium, the Netherlands, Finland and Norway took part in the two-day conference where the main focus was on the jumps discipline of the decathlon event.
The Conference, a part of the 2011 European Athletics Summit Series, was hosted by the Estonian Athletic Association.
Zagorulko, who has coached the likes of Olympic champion Andrey Silnov, world champions Anna Chicherova and Ivan Ukhov, analysed key questions of high jump based on examples of his own trainees.
He also spoke about specialised trainings and physical indicators needed for successful high jumping.
Zagorulko organised a training session with Estonian young decathletes and analysed their techniques and gave invaluable tips to help them maximise their potential.
Sydney 2000 decathlon gold medallist Erki Nool during his presentation admitted that despite holding the best ever long jump result 8.22m by a multi-eventer, he didn’t bring his whole potential to fruition.
He seldom used full run-up during training sessions and therefore was unstable while hitting the take-off board during competitions.
Former long jumper Tíµnu Lepik shared his knowledge how it was possible to be among the best long jumpers in the world with average speed abilities. Both – Nool and Lepik – stressed how important it is for decathlete to keep his strong disciplines constantly up to high level.
A student from German Sports University Gaspar Epro analysed the world’s top decathletes’ – Roman Sebrle, Ashton Eaton, Aleksei Drozdov and Thomas Van der Plaetsen – high jump techniques using 3D video analysis.