Why You're Failing at Landing Mechanics: Teaching Young Athletes to Absorb Force and Protect Their Knees and Ankles

It’s almost never the jump.

It’s the landing.

One second. One rep. One “tiny” knee cave or ankle collapse that nobody talks about because the kid didn’t limp off the field… this time.

And if you coach long enough, you start seeing the same story on repeat:

• The 13-year-old who “just grows weird” and suddenly their knees look like they’re trying to high-five each other on every rebound.

• The soccer kid who’s always “rolling an ankle” but somehow never gets stronger at stopping and sticking.

• The basketball player who lands like a 2x4—stiff, loud, and high-risk—then wonders why their knees ache after tournaments.

Here’s the truth: landing is braking. And braking is a skill.

The good news? You don’t need fancy tech or a PhD to coach it. You need a simple model, a few high-payoff cues, and a progression that teaches athletes to absorb force instead of letting force absorb them.

And yes—this matters. In one landmark prospective study, specific biomechanical patterns (including knee valgus loading) during landing were shown to predict ACL injury risk in athletes (Hewett et al., 2005).

The misconception that keeps kids getting hurt

Most parents (and a lot of coaches) think “safe landings” means: “Land softly.”

Landing quietly is a nice clue, but it’s not the whole game.

A kid can land quietly and still:

• collapse the arch and dump into the inside of the ankle,

• let the knee cave inward,

• rotate the pelvis and trunk so the knee gets twisted and loaded in a bad position.

So instead of chasing “quiet,” we coach force absorption:

Foot → knee → hip → trunk working together like shocks on a car.

If one shock is busted (stiff ankles, weak hips, poor trunk control), the others take the hit.

That’s why ankle mobility matters more than people think. Limited ankle dorsiflexion range of motion has been linked with landing mechanics that can increase impact forces and affect knee motion (Fong et al., 2011).

What “good” landing mechanics actually look like (coach version)

When I’m watching a young athlete land, I’m not nitpicking angles. I’m looking for three big wins:

Stable feet (the “tripod”)
Heel, big toe, little toe—foot stays glued without collapsing in.

Knees track over toes
Not perfectly vertical. Not forced outward. Just… in line. No dramatic “knee kiss.”

Hips load like brakes
A good landing doesn’t look like a mini-squat only at the knees. It looks like the athlete “sits into the hips” while keeping the torso controlled.

If you want one visual: I want a landing that looks like the athlete could freeze for two seconds and take a picture.

That “stick” matters because it’s a window into control. The Landing Error Scoring System (LESS) was developed as a practical way to identify jump-landing errors, and research supports it as a valid and reliable clinical assessment tool (Padua et al., 2009).

The real-world athlete scenario I see weekly

A 14-year-old shows up for training. Fast. Competitive. Jumps high. Everyone says, “They’re athletic.”

Then we do a simple drop landing.

What happens:

• They hit the ground and the knees dive in.

• Their trunk tips forward and rotates.

• The feet slap down, and the ankles cave.

They’re not “lazy.” They’re not “weak.”
They’re untrained at absorbing force.

So we don’t start with max strength or crazy plyos.

We start by teaching the body how to organize itself under impact.

The simple 10-minute landing fix (2–3 days/week)

You can plug this into warm-ups, strength sessions, or team training. Keep it crisp. Coach it hard. Make it a skill block.

1) Snap-Down to Stick (2 sets of 5)
Start tall. Quick “athletic drop” into a quarter squat and freeze.

Cues:

• “Land like you’re on thin ice.”

• “Knees over shoelaces.”

• “Own your feet.”

Pass standard: freeze 2 seconds without wobble, knee cave, or heel pop.

2) Drop Landing to Stick (2–3 sets of 3)
Step off a low box (start small), land on two feet, stick.

Coaching upgrade: film from the front for 10 seconds. Kids learn fast when they can see it.

3) Lateral Hop to Stick (2 sets of 3/side)
Small side hop, land on one foot, stick.

Cues:

• “Quiet + locked-in.”

• “Don’t let your knee dive in.”

• “Show me balance like a statue.”

This is where ankles and knees get exposed—because sport is rarely straight up and down.

And if you want a simple add-on for ankle protection, balance training has strong support: a balance-focused program significantly reduced ankle sprain risk in high school athletes (McGuine & Keene, 2006).

4) Add chaos (after 2–3 weeks)
When the athlete can own the basics, we layer sport reality:

• coach points left/right mid-air,

• catch a ball while landing,

• land and decelerate into a shuffle.

Because the game doesn’t happen in perfect reps.

“Does this stuff actually work… or is it just trendy?”

The reason landing mechanics training is worth your time is simple: movement patterns can change when you train neuromuscular control on purpose.

A well-known neuromuscular and proprioceptive training program showed effectiveness in reducing ACL injuries over a two-year period in female athletes (Mandelbaum et al., 2005). More recent work in youth populations also shows neuromuscular training can improve landing biomechanics linked to knee injury risk (Hopper et al., 2017). And neuromuscular training interventions have been shown to change the kinetics and kinematics of jumping tasks—meaning athletes don’t just feel better, they often move differently (Chappell & Limpisvasti, 2008).

Zooming out even further, school-based neuromuscular training programs have also been studied in randomized controlled designs for their impact on sport-related injury incidence (Barber Foss et al., 2018).

Translation: when you coach this consistently, kids don’t just “look better.” They move safer.

Quick self-check at home (parents: this is gold)

Have your athlete do 3 drop landings from a low step and watch from the front.

Red flags:

• Knees collapse inward on contact

• Feet cave in / arches flatten hard

• They can’t stick the landing for 2 seconds

• One knee/ankle looks way worse than the other

If you see that, don’t panic. It doesn’t mean injury is guaranteed.

It means you just found the next “easy win” in their training.

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If your athlete jumps a lot—basketball, volleyball, soccer, football, lacrosse, cheer—then landing mechanics aren’t optional. They’re your insurance policy.

In our Sports Performance Training, we don’t just “make kids tired.” We coach the skills that protect them when the game gets chaotic:

• landing + deceleration mechanics

• ankle mobility and foot stability

• hip/trunk control for knee alignment

• progressive plyometrics that build bounce and safety

If you want, book a movement + landing assessment and we’ll show you exactly what your athlete is doing on impact—and give you a step-by-step plan to clean it up.

References:

Barber Foss, K. D., Thomas, S. M., Khoury, J. C., Myer, G. D., & Hewett, T. E. (2018). A school-based neuromuscular training program and sport-related injury incidence: A prospective randomized controlled clinical trial. Journal of Athletic Training, 53(2). https://doi.org/10.4085/1062-6050-173-16

Chappell, J. D., & Limpisvasti, O. (2008). Effect of a neuromuscular training program on the kinetics and kinematics of jumping tasks. The American Journal of Sports Medicine, 36(6), 1081–1086. https://doi.org/10.1177/0363546508314425

Fong, C.-M., Blackburn, J. T., Norcross, M. F., McGrath, M., & Padua, D. A. (2011). Ankle-dorsiflexion range of motion and landing biomechanics. Journal of Athletic Training, 46(1), 5–10. https://doi.org/10.4085/1062-6050-46.1.5

Hewett, T. E., Myer, G. D., Ford, K. R., Heidt, R. S., Colosimo, A. J., McLean, S. G., van den Bogert, A. J., Paterno, M. V., & Succop, P. (2005). Biomechanical measures of neuromuscular control and valgus loading of the knee predict anterior cruciate ligament injury risk in female athletes: A prospective study. The American Journal of Sports Medicine, 33(4), 492–501. https://doi.org/10.1177/0363546504269591

Hopper, A. J., Haff, E. E., Joyce, C., Lloyd, R. S., & Haff, G. G. (2017). Neuromuscular training improves lower extremity biomechanics associated with knee injury during landing in 11–13 year old female netball athletes: A randomized control study. Frontiers in Physiology, 8, 883. https://doi.org/10.3389/fphys.2017.00883

Mandelbaum, B. R., Silvers, H. J., Watanabe, D. S., Knarr, J. F., Thomas, S. D., Griffin, L. Y., Kirkendall, D. T., & Garrett, W. (2005). Effectiveness of a neuromuscular and proprioceptive training program in preventing anterior cruciate ligament injuries in female athletes: 2-year follow-up. The American Journal of Sports Medicine, 33(7), 1003–1010. https://doi.org/10.1177/0363546504272261

McGuine, T. A., & Keene, J. S. (2006). The effect of a balance training program on the risk of ankle sprains in high school athletes. The American Journal of Sports Medicine, 34(7), 1103–1111. https://doi.org/10.1177/0363546505284191

Padua, D. A., Marshall, S. W., Boling, M. C., Thigpen, C. A., Garrett, W. E., & Beutler, A. I. (2009). The Landing Error Scoring System (LESS) is a valid and reliable clinical assessment tool of jump-landing biomechanics: The JUMP-ACL study. The American Journal of Sports Medicine, 37(10), 1996–2002. https://doi.org/10.1177/0363546509343200