Jump video is the cheapest coaching tool that exists — one phone, propped against a water bottle, and suddenly you can see the things you can only feel. But most jump clips teach almost nothing, because the filming choices quietly threw the information away: feet cut off at the bottom, the landing missing, the snap smeared across two blurry frames. Good news — every one of those is a setup decision, and the setup takes two minutes to get right.
The checklist
Whole body in frame, head to feet, the entire time. This is the rule people break most. If your feet leave the frame at the peak or your head clips out on the approach, the most important measurements — how high, how wide, how soft — become guesses. Frame generously; you're small in a big frame is fine, cropped is not.
Keep the approach AND the landing in frame. The jump starts before the jump: your set — the sink and swing where all your height comes from — is the most diagnostic half-second on the clip. And the landing frames are where knee softness and stumble steps live. Start recording before you begin, stop after you've frozen the landing. That's where the story is.
One jump per clip. A highlight reel of five jumps is fun to watch and hard to learn from. One rep, cleanly bounded, keeps the analysis honest — you know exactly which jump the feedback belongs to.
60fps if your phone has it. The snap happens fast — legs from straight-down to straddle in a fraction of a second. Standard framerates catch it in a couple of frames; 60fps catches the whole journey, including whether your T arrived before the peak or after it. It's one settings toggle, and it roughly doubles what your video can tell you.
Fitted practice wear. Loose clothing hides the exact lines you're filming to see. Fitted tracks better, both for your own eyes and for any software reading the clip.
The right surface. Film at the gym on a sprung floor or mats — not concrete, grass or a trampoline. This is a safety point before it's a video point: repeated jump landings belong on a forgiving surface.
What video can and can't show
Set expectations honestly. A good clip shows your set depth, jump height, leg lines, chest angle, arm timing and landing — the big levers. What no camera angle reads reliably: your toe point and your hand shape. Those are your coach's at-practice checklist; don't grade them from film. Where to put the camera matters too — front-on for straddle width and the T, side-on for chest drop and the landing — and it's worth alternating week to week.
Clips filmed this way are exactly what CoachVision is built to read: one jump, whole body, phone-quality video in, and measured scores for height, legs, chest, arms and landing out. The better your setup, the more the read can see — the checklist above is quite literally the app's wish list.
The drill — Mirror Arm Snaps
While the camera handles the jump, the mirror handles the details between filming days. Face a mirror: clasp, high-V, T — hit each position sharp and freeze it a full second. The mirror is instant, free video review for the one piece of your jump you can rehearse standing still, and it never lets a lazy T slide by.
Do 3 rounds of 10 snaps. Then, next practice: prop the phone, frame head-to-feet, one jump, 60fps — and go collect some evidence.