Marino Drake (Cuba)

Marino Drake answered questions for the Kangaroo Track Club athletes and fans. Marino was a great Cuban high jumper, born June18th of 1967 in Limonar, Matanzas (Cuba) with a personal best of 2.34m (7'7 3/4"). Between 1990 and 1992, he was among the best high jumpers in the world, finishing 5th at the Tokyo World Championships (1991) and 8th at the Barcelona Olympics (1992)

Jenny Hendricks

How old were you when you started High Jumping and what got you started in this sport?

Cuba has a particular system that they hand pick you when you are 11 or 12 years old.  You participate in an event were you go through 4 to 5 events were you run, jump, and throw (baseball), and the kids get selected based on their results and talent. I happened to show talent in the events of speed and jumps. That’s why I started jumping at 12 years old in school competitions representing my town, district, and all the way to state competitions. It will depend on how do you develop as an athlete and will represent your town, your province at a regional or national level.

I started at 12 years old with high jump, long jump, 60 meter dash, ball throw (baseball) and the 1000 meters race, and by 14 years old I specialized as a high jumper.

When you were just starting out in the sport, what things did you do in the off-season to improve your skills?

We as a high jumpers have to do a pre-season.  In the pre-season we have general preparation, and preparation specific of about 5-6 months.  In the general preparation we run long distances, lift weights, and even throw medicine balls and the shot.  In the specific preparation we do boundings, and plyometrics with boxes and hurdles.

In the pre-season we accumulated volume of work of about 600 jumps a session three times a week, and also lifted weights 3 times a week.  In the pre-season we high jump, but more concentrated in the technique, the approach, scissors, and in the last 2 months we took complete jumps with short approaches.  

As I was growing in age and in performance, the workout was more specific, but when I was young my coach tried to keep it general so I could be a good athlete before I could be a good high jumper.  At a younger age it is more important to concentrate on the technique and to get the correct mechanics and understand the event. It is much easier to work the mechanics at a young age than trying to correct mistakes later on.

Chris and Kale Johnson

What did you do to keep a strong mental focus?  How did you overcome nervous thoughts during competition?

Colin Belcher

I would like to ask about some of your methods of getting control of your mind in order to jump well.  And if you know of any other ways that maybe didn't work for you but other people?

Even if the athlete is a world-class level athlete they will always feel nervousness, being nervous is part of being an athlete.  It is part of competing.  Feeling nervous before a big meet or competition is normal. 

The best thing that you can do is relax.  At the same time you have to be realistic and true with yourself, and check your objectives and goals.  Going out there and wanting to be better than somebody else or improving your personal best without training, or just because you want to be better, it will be hard.

You have to be better because you put the time, the effort, and the sacrifice.  You worked hard and gave everything you had in to your training. Being nervous before and during a competition is part of the life of an athlete.

There was a time when I had a mental block with heights that were close to my personal best.  What helped me was that before I jumped I always rehearsed the jump in my mind, and would see in my mind what I wanted my body to execute technically during the jump in a very clear way, where even timing of what I was doing had to be close to reality.

Do not be concerned about the other jumpers or what is going on around you, compete against the heights, against yourself.  If you concentrate on what you need to do technically, that will take care of the objective, which is to clear the bar that you have in front of you.  Your opponents, the people, they are secondary.  Trust your training and believe in yourself.

Dayo Ologunde

What idea relating to the event did you consider most important while at the professional level?

The most important aspect for me was my pre-season, this is the time where I prepared my body for the upcoming competition season, and this doesn’t only include the long and hard workouts, but also technique, psychology.

Now if you feel that you are doing your workouts right and putting your mind and body into it, like the weightlifting, the multi jumps, hurdles, technique, speed; if you feel like you are better every day that passes because you have come to work everyday and you don’t miss practices; you honor the commitment to your coach, if you trust you coach, if there is chemistry and an open line of communication between your coach and you, when you feel like your coach is your friend, your father, it is the one that will be there for you for your victories and when things do not work for you in the way you want them to, but also if your coach is the one that will push you in the daily workouts so you can succeed; then you will have a successful season. That is how I felt when I was going to have a successful season. When at the end of my workout I did everything that my coach told me to and my coach also told me “wow………… we trained very well today.” I meant a lot to me. This means that at the end of my pre-season and because I trained well, I felt that like there is nothing that I can’t do.

I would like to add something.  This is a beautiful event and it will bring you great satisfactions and memories.  Enjoy every moment of your pre-season, your competition season, and have fun!

Joe Lopez, Hill-Murray High School

What type of drills can you do to improve your vertical?

In order to be a good high jumper, you have to be a good athlete.  This means that you have to be coordinated, agile, fast, strong, with endurance, etc.  I used to do hurdle jumps and box jumps. I used to do a high volume of jumps of about 600 jumps per session, over hurdles, on boxes, one leg two legs etc.  Three times a week and also we lifted weights were we worked calf raises, half squats, half squats with jumps, lunges, boxes, etc.  Technique was emphasized in the weight room also.

Peter McKeown, Hill-Murray High School

Do you have any kind of foods that you usually eat that improve jumps?

The high jumpers are thin by nature, you have to keep a healthy and balanced diet with natural products. But if you train in the way that you need to train in order be successful, you are going to be fine. Eating a natural and balanced diet and keeping up with your training sessions, your dedication, your strong will to push forward, will make you jump and not just the high jump, but in life.

How did you get yourself to arch your back? Did it just come naturally, or are there drills you can do?

Feeling uneasy in the beginning when you are trying to arch on top of the bar it is totally normal,

A good exercise is high jumping with the leg, but concentrate on landing on your shoulders and not flat on your back or your butt.  By landing on your shoulders, keep the momentum going and roll over, kind of like a flip.  Remember that working on top of the bar is important, but never start working on top of the bar until you finish climbing.

Brian Schletty

Marino, what do you think about the use of a box (for take off) in a high jump technique practice?

It is a good workout if the objective is the technique after the take off, because it allows us to have more time in order to learn what we need to do after we leave the ground. Otherwise we will not be able to, because a normal jump (without a box) happens too fast.

Tho Kieu

What can you do to help improve performances in jumping when you know your body is capable of clearing the new height, but never actually having done so?

This is something that happens to many jumpers.  For example, in my case I was the training partner of Javier Sotomayor, and for many years when we were doing vertical test, speed test, agility test, I tested better than him and I always asked myself, “Ok, I am a world class athlete, but why can I not jump as high as Sotomayor?” And that kind of created a mental block on me.  I was always working harder in order to keep myself competitive at a high level, and I got my best results when I went way from the high jump for a while so I could get my head out of the pressure of the event.  For sometime and when I decided to high jump again, things where clicking for me. I guess it relaxed me and the pressure of the event went away.

I would also recommend that you to be realistic with your goals, do not go for 5cm to 10cm (2 to 4 inches).  If it happens, great.  Even if you improve 1cm or 2cm  (0.4inches or 0.8inches) be happy, stay positive and keep training, because you are moving forward.

You cannot think on the heights as something that is going to decide your life, but as this great sport that makes you feel good every time that you are out there jumping. Enjoy the competition and just jump.  Never think on the height, just jump. If there is anything that you should be thinking of, it is to explode in the take-off and on the technique. Great jumps come to you (if you have trained for it, of course) you do not seek them.  Because if you seek them, you will pressure yourself and it will be hard for you to relax at the meets.

In behalf of the high jump fans and the Kangaroo Track Club jumpers, THANK YOU MARINO! Thank you for being with us, and for being such a great ambassador of the sport and young jumpers around the world.