The jump is finished, and then comes the little tax: a step to the side. A hop backward. A quick shuffle that everyone pretends not to notice, including you. The peak was strong, the T was sharp — and the landing quietly gave a piece of it back.
Sticking a landing — feet together, frozen, chest up, zero steps — reads as control, and control is what the whole jump is being judged on. A stuck landing retroactively makes the jump look intentional. A scramble makes even a big jump look like something that happened TO you.
Why you step
Steps and wobbles at touchdown come from a short list, and video sorts them quickly.
Sometimes the problem starts upstream: a chest that folded at the peak or a body that drifted off-balance in the air will always land disorganized — no landing drill fixes a jump that arrives sideways. Watch your peak frame first; if you're folded or tilted up there, start there instead.
But often the jump is fine and the landing is simply untrained. The legs arrive stiff, the floor bounces the impact back, and the body takes a step to catch the rebound. Or the feet come down apart, the base is unstable, and the shuffle is just the feet negotiating their way back together. Both of these share a root: the landing was never treated as a skill. It was treated as the thing that happens after the skill.
Here's the reframe: the jump isn't over when your feet touch. It's over three counts later, when you're still standing exactly where you landed. Train to that finish line and the steps disappear, because the freeze forces everything the landing needs — soft knees to absorb quietly, feet together for a stable base, chest up for balance.
A side-on phone clip makes the whole story visible: knee bend at touchdown, feet position, and whether there are stumble frames after contact. CoachVision reads exactly those frames and gives your landing its own measured score — which means the part of your jump nobody films finally gets measured, and measured things improve.
The drill — Stick-the-Landing Drills
Shrink the jump until the stick is easy, then grow it back. Small straight jump — inches, not effort. Land feet together, knees soft and bending to absorb, chest up. Freeze for three full counts, like the judges are watching. Count them honestly: one-one-thousand, two-one-thousand, three-one-thousand. Any step, wobble or bounce during the freeze means the rep didn't count.
Do 3 sets of 10 stuck landings. The standard that makes it work: ten in a row before the landing graduates back to a full jump. In a row is the drill — nine good landings and a shuffle is a restart, because the jump you compete will only get one attempt at sticking.
When you take it back to full toe touches, keep the three-count freeze. Every jump, every practice, frozen finish — it costs three seconds and it rebrands your entire jump from "big" to "controlled and big."
The peak gets the gasp. The stick gets the score. Train both.