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Minimize Joint Impact with Elite Basketball Landing Techniques

By Lauren Martinez
October 09, 2025
4 min read
Minimize Joint Impact with Elite Basketball Landing Techniques

The Unseen Chain Reaction: How a Stiff Ankle Can Reshape a Young Athlete’s Entire Body

Watch any basketball game, and your eye follows the ball. But if you want to see what truly determines an athlete’s longevity, you need to watch what happens after the shot. The landing. It’s a moment of immense, violent force that the body must somehow accept and neutralize. For young athletes, whose bodies are still developing, how they manage this force isn’t just about performance—it’s about building a foundation that can withstand years of play.

The common narrative focuses on the knee, and for good reason. But that focus is misplaced if it doesn’t start lower. The latest research points to a compelling chain of events that begins not at the knee, but at the ankle. One specific limitation—restricted ankle dorsiflexion, which is simply the ability to bring your shin forward over your foot—can set off a biomechanical domino effect with consequences for the entire lower body.

A recent study involving basketball players performing stop-jump actions revealed this connection with startling clarity. When an athlete’s ankle doesn’t have the necessary range of motion to dorsiflex sufficiently upon landing, the body isn’t just going to give up. It compensates. It finds a way to complete the movement by demanding more from the joints above. The knee may be forced to bend inward or extend too far forward, and the hip might not be able to sink into a stable position. This isn’t a minor technical flaw; it’s the body redistributing dangerous levels of force to structures that weren’t designed to be the primary shock absorbers. The ankle’s stiffness, therefore, doesn’t just create a local problem. It rewires the entire landing pattern, placing the knee and hip under unfamiliar and excessive stress.

The Myth of the “Soft” Landing

We tell our kids to “land softly,” but that instruction is practically useless without showing them what that actually feels like in their own joints. “Softness” is a biomechanical outcome, not an intention. It’s the result of specific, coordinated angles and timings.

The goal is to increase the time and distance over which the body absorbs the impact of landing. Think of the difference between dropping an egg on concrete versus into a pillow. The concrete stops the egg instantly—a short time and distance for force absorption, leading to a mess. The pillow slows the egg gradually over a longer distance. The body operates on the same principle. Research analyzing jump shots shows that the most significant factor isn’t the height of the jump, but the technique of the descent. A “hard” landing, often characterized by a heel striking the ground first with a straighter leg, results in ground reaction forces that can rocket to several times the athlete’s body weight. All that force travels up a nearly locked leg with nowhere to go but into the joints.

A “soft” landing, in contrast, is characterized by a midfoot or forefoot contact, immediately followed by a rapid, controlled flexion of the ankle, knee, and hip. The ankles, knees, and hips all bend in a synchronized wave, acting like a spring compressing. This coordinated flexion is what increases the time and distance for force dissipation. The muscles, not just the ligaments and tendons, do the majority of the work. This is the hidden mechanics of a soft landing: it’s a full-leg engagement, a controlled collapse that turns the entire lower body into a shock absorber.

Moving Beyond Static Stretching to Dynamic Control

Knowing that ankle mobility is critical, the instinct might be to add more calf stretches. While flexibility is a component, it’s only half of the equation. The other, more neglected half is neuromuscular control—the brain’s ability to confidently use that new range of motion under dynamic, unpredictable conditions. An athlete might have sufficient dorsiflexion when slowly leaning into a lunge in a quiet gym, but that means very little if the body refuses to access that range when coming down from a rebound in a crowded key.

This is where training needs to become more thoughtful. Drills should progress from building mobility to ingraining that mobility into sport-specific patterns. A simple but profoundly effective starting point is the Depth Drop to Hold.

  • The Drill: Have the athlete stand on a low box (12-18 inches). They step off the box (don’t jump), land quietly in an athletic stance, and immediately hold the bottom position for a two-count.
  • The Focus: The cue isn’t “bend your knees.” It’s “sink your hips back and down as if sitting in a chair” and “keep your knees behind your toes.” This encourages the hip to initiate the movement and demands that the ankle dorsiflex. The hold at the bottom forces the body to find stability in that deep, flexed position, building strength at the end range of motion.
  • The Progression: Once this is mastered, the drill evolves into a Rebound Landing. From the box, the athlete jumps forward and up slightly, simulating catching a rebound away from the basket, and then lands with the same controlled, deep flexion and immediately holds. This adds horizontal momentum, which is a more realistic game demand.

The value of these drills isn’t in the number of repetitions, but in the quality of each single landing. It’s about creating a new, safer default pattern for the nervous system. The research on patellar tendinopathy supports this approach; it found that athletes with tendon pain exhibited altered landing patterns, often landing with less flexion—a stiffer, more rigid reception of force. By training the body to confidently find depth and control, we directly combat this tendency.

The conversation about injury prevention in youth sports often centers on what not to do. But a more powerful approach is to focus on what we can build: intelligent movement habits. By understanding the critical role of the ankle as the first link in the chain, and by redefining “soft landing” as a full-body mechanical skill, we can equip young athletes with techniques that protect their joints not just for this season, but for a lifetime of loving the game.


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Athlete DevelopmentInjury PreventionBiomechanicsYouth SportsPhysical Training

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