Nobody films their landings. Everyone films the peak — the straddle, the T, the moment worth posting — and the camera usually gets lowered right as the feet come back down. Which is a shame, because the landing frames are where a jump quietly decides how long your season lasts.

Here's what to look for, and it takes one slow-motion watch: at the instant your feet touch the floor, are your knees bending — or are they nearly straight, with a stiff little bounce as the floor sends the impact back up?

Why straight legs at touchdown matter

Your knees are shock absorbers, and they only absorb when they bend. Land with soft knees and the force of the jump gets spread over inches of smooth deceleration. Land with knees close to locked and that same force arrives all at once, and it travels — up the shins, into the knees, rep after rep after rep. One stiff landing is nothing. A hundred a week is how shins get angry, and angry shins have ended more jump seasons than any fault at the peak ever has.

That's why coaches flag this one gently but every single time. It's not about style points. A stuck, soft, chest-up landing is the skill that keeps every other skill trainable.

The tricky part: straight-leg landings rarely feel like anything. In the air your attention is on the jump; by touchdown, the rep is mentally over and the legs do whatever habit says. So this fault almost never gets fixed by trying to remember mid-jump. It gets fixed by making the landing its own skill, trained separately, until soft is the only way your legs know how to come down. Video helps keep it honest — film side-on and the knee angle at touchdown is right there; CoachVision reads the same clip and gives your landing its own measured score, so the least glamorous part of your jump finally gets a number that can improve.

Two quick notes that belong in any honest article about landings. First: practice on a sprung floor or mats, not concrete or grass — a forgiving surface makes soft-landing practice safe while the habit builds. Second: if your shins or knees already hurt, the first move is rest and a chat with a qualified professional, not more drilling. Technique fixes are for healthy legs.

The drill — Stick-the-Landing Drills

Take the jump almost entirely out of it. Small straight jump — a few inches is plenty — and land with feet together, knees soft and visibly bending to absorb, chest up. Then freeze for three full counts, like the judges are watching. No steps. No wobble. No bounce.

The freeze is the teacher. You can't freeze a stiff landing — the bounce gives it away instantly — so holding three still counts forces the soft knees that absorb quietly. Chest up matters too: a landing that folds forward is a landing that's still fighting for balance.

Do 3 sets of 10 stuck landings. The rule that makes it work: stick ten in a row before you take the landing back to a full toe touch. Miss one — a step, a wobble — and the count restarts. It sounds strict, and it is, because the payoff is enormous: legs that finish every jump softly, automatically, for as long as you jump.

Great landings never get the applause. They're the reason you're still there for the applause.