Breaking jumps

     Okay so admittedly I heard of the term "breaking a jump" from the parkour generations guys. Breaking a jump just means basically getting yourself to do a jump that you're having difficulty going through with. When I say  "jump" it can be anything involving having to traverse to something with a bit of air time, be it a cat leap, kong to precision, or even just a plain old precision.
  
     Only yesterday did I realize that I had tried and true methods for breaking a jump. I had been using them subconsciously for years now but it never occurred to me to take a more systematic approach. Breaking a jump can take a lot of time (or none at all if you get enough practice in). This problem comes up when the physical reality of a jump doesn't match up with limitations set up within one's mind.

    For the most part, you know you can make the jump, but you can't get yourself to do it. You'll stand on the ledge or railing and look at your landing point, get off, look away, get back on, stare for a bit, get off, etc. It's frustrating to say the least. It's all about freeing your mind. If you can broad jump something on the ground, that distance is immutable. It doesn't change, 10ft on the ground is 10ft anywhere else. There's a logical process to make your mind realize this but it requires that you override your instincts and understand your ability. You must learn to trust yourself.

There are several ways to break a jump:


Break it down into its subsequent parts
You've got your take off, air time, and landing to figure out separately. If you can do all of those safely and individually then you can bet that you've got it all together. Sometimes just knowing how that landing is going to feel will aid in the jump.

Do a progression if you're worried about the distance.
That's right, so what if it's a 30ft jump? Start out with 2ft and move up incrementally however you feel comfortable. The prevailing thought at the time should be something like "well, I can do it at this distance, what's a foot more?"
That's how you find and push your limits.

Finally, visualize!
Chances are you've been doing this throughout the entire process but not in the most conducive way. You're visualizing what it would look like to not make it and get horribly maimed. This is where your awareness must kick in (if it hasn't already). If you think about how you're going to fall, you probably will. See the right way to do it, where your body position will be in the air. Remember  how everything feels. It's possible to do a jump 100 times perfectly without getting fatigued or anything if you can see those repetitions in your mind. That's the power of visualization. It allows you to train so much harder that your body would allow.

If after all of these methods, you still can't bring yourself to do it, the damn thing is probably too far and it's time to save it for another day and move on. Don't ever be discouraged if you really tried everything and couldn't do it. Instead make the jump a motivational tool which you can use to help you train for the day that you do make it.

Eventually you'll get to the point where it's not you that jumps, but that jumping itself happens to occur and you're there to experience it.