There are a few excellent articles/research papers on the high jump and jump training. Many of these articles are available online. Here you will find links to those articles and books that I think are the best.
The following two articles I consistently went back to over my 10 years of training. In my opinion, anything by Jesus Dapena is great, but these are my two favorite.
Often the most ignored part of building a high jumper is what goes on away from the high jump pit. This type of training should account for more than half of an athlete's time at practice, but often takes a back-seat to the technical work. You should be able to teach and refine the technical aspects of the high jump in two 12-week seasons. What does that leave you with when the technical aspects are mastered? Your athlete better have a good base of weights, bounding, and speed, because once the technique is learned further gains will come from the work away from the pit. In the absence of this, get ready for the athlete to plateau at a mark and stop improving altogether. The following two articles are must-reads.
Wilson, Greg J., Robert Newton, Aron Murphy, and Brendan Humphries. “The optimal training load for the development of dynamic athletic performance.” Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, Vol. 25, No. 11, November 1993. 1279-1286.
Moura, Nelio Alfano and Tania Fernandes de Paula. “Training Principles for Jumpers: Implications for Special Strength Development.” New Studies in Athletics, Volume 16, Issue 4, 2001. 51-61.
Jacoby, Ed and Bob Fraley. Complete Book of Jumps. Human Kinetics, 1995.
This book gives a good technical explanation of the high jump as well as some good information on training.
Click on the book to go to the google page with sample pages and places to buy (opens in new window).
Martin, David E. The High Jump Book. Tafnews Press, 1982.
This book is great for the dedicated high jumper or coach. It will be a little much for the jumper/coach who isn't fully committed to improvement. Great point of view writings from some of the best jumpers from the 70's about competitions and training as well as a technical review of the event by the author.
Click on the book to go to the bestwebbuys page on this book (opens in a new window).
The High Jump section of http://www.hurdlecentral.com/TrainingTechnique.html has some decent stuff. It is of varying degrees of usefulness, but it's a good list of studies. I don't have time to sort through them all now and pick and choose the best. For now I'll just leave it as a link.
Shin splints are a difficult condition to deal with as a coach and an athlete. I encourage all athletes, coaches, and parents that are dealing with this to read all of the following page: http://www.watfxc.com/TF/TF%20Education/shin_splints.htm
