Now that I'm 4 months smarter, I can tell that 2 things were horrible training-wise in December:
- I forgot how to run. My technique was awful. It led to injuries, bad recovery and being slow. (fixed in February)
- I trained 6 times a week without any proper recovery day in the middle of the week. (I asked for a constant midweek rest day in Jan.)
Because I just started training with a new coach, I wanted to start a new page. I knew that I may be training too much (for me) but I wanted to give it a chance.
This is written on April 4th, 2026. These are not fresh memories as in real-time I didn't have the time to write this. I explain this here.
In general, December training usually contained (in a week):
- 2 gym days. Sometimes with plyo jumps / mobility exercises / runs before.
- 1-2 LJ trainings. 1 technique session and 1 heavier session
- 1-2 sprint sessions.
- 1 hurdling session. Not high hurdles, just rhythm practicing.
The load was very high, we sprinted a lot.
There was one speed endurance day with 300s.
We ran a lot of 20m, 30m push runs, focusing on the first phase of the long jump run-up.
The only times we ran distances like 60-100m were with small sprint hurdles, working on frequency.
I was super tired because of the hours I travelled in buses every day. I wrote about it more in the previous post.
The penultimate step conflict
I remember thinking a lot on the penultimate step. In my head - my foot HAD to be flat on the penultimate step. I enforced that in all of my jumps. What really happened though, was that when I tried to put my whole foot on the ground, my hip would drop, my speed would drop and I jumped either too high, or just poorly. That hip drop made me slow, in a bad position and exposed to injuries.
And that might be the reason I actually injured my jumping leg's (left) heel.
First competition
December 25th, 2025.
I waited 4 months (no kidding) for this. I wanted to compete so bad. I felt good, I felt ready. As the days were passing and I was closer and closer to December 25th, my left heel started hurting. At some point - even running a warmup was bad.
I took a few rest (/easy) days before the competition and competed anyway. The heel wasn't a real issue in the competition.
The competition didn't go well. I jumped 6.19m. I felt like I stopped completely on every take off (because of my low-hip-penultimate-step). I didn't know back then that this was because of the penultimate step. I was yet to connect the dots.
Recovery week?
This was the last week of December. Which means I had to be out of the apartment that week, and had to find a new apartment for the next week.
Spoiler: My heel didn't recover in that week. To be honest, I barely even trained back then.
Oh and if that's not enough (leaving an apartment + finding a new one): New Year's Eve was just around the corner and I had to buy presents and try to help there too. It was a mess of a week.
January
January was a month of many firsts.
First real full-time job.
First tech job.
First apartment in Tel-Aviv.
First apartment with friend roommates.
A new life.
The heel injury? Didn't go away.
At the end I think I did find out what was the problem.
Whether that was the root cause or not, the injury went away thanks to those exercises.
I'll write about it more in the next month.
