うたぴょんスポーツWe called this one the Bounding Championship. No trophy, no judges, just me and Uta out on a flat stretch of ground, markers laid out every 2.5 meters, seeing who could cover them with the fewest, biggest jumps.
Bounding is a jump-training drill distance runners use — you leap forward off one leg then the other, like exaggerated running strides, trying to cover as much ground as possible with each bound. It builds the kind of power that helps on hills and in a finishing kick.
How the day went
We set the course up ourselves, pacing out 2.5m gaps and marking them so neither of us could cheat on the measurements. Uta was buzzing before we even started — she loves anything that turns training into a contest, especially one where she gets to go up against me directly.
I'm not going to pretend I'm fast anymore. I'm solidly in arafifu territory now, pushing 50, and my knees know it. But bounding isn't really about raw speed, it's about hip drive and getting your leg up and out, and that's something age doesn't erase overnight. So the contest was closer than you'd think watching two generations line up side by side.
Uta attacked each jump with her usual full effort — arms pumping, eyes locked on the next marker. She's got that elementary-school lightness to her, where her body just seems to want to spring forward. I had to actually think about my technique, driving the knee, extending the hip, landing and immediately loading the next jump, while she just did it instinctively.
We went back and forth a few times over the 2.5m intervals, comparing who needed fewer bounds to clear the same stretch of ground. There wasn't a stopwatch or an official measurement beyond the markers we'd laid out — this was a backyard event, not a meet — but that didn't make it any less serious to her. She wanted to win, and she let me know about it after every jump.
By the end we were both a little out of breath, me more than her if I'm honest. The weather was good for it, nothing dramatic, just an ordinary day that turned into one of those sessions that sticks in your memory more than it has any right to.
What a parent took away from it
Doing a drill like this alongside her, instead of just coaching from the side, changed how I talked to her about it afterward. I wasn't telling her what bounding should feel like — I'd just felt it myself, in my own hips and calves, thirty seconds earlier. That made the feedback more specific: less 'drive your knee higher' as an abstract instruction, more 'did you feel that stretch right before you push off? That's the part to chase.'
It also reminded me that competition, even a completely informal one with no real stakes, is motivating for her in a way that repetition drills alone aren't. She'll do the same bounding pattern ten times if there's a number attached to it, a count, a comparison, a parent to beat.
Going forward I want to set up the markers at a couple of different spacings, not just 2.5m, so she gets a feel for adjusting her bound length rather than grooving one single rhythm. And honestly, I should stretch more before I agree to these contests. My legs reminded me of that for two days afterward.
Next time we're doing this with the markers spread a bit further apart, and I'm promising myself a proper warm-up first. For now, here's the video of the Bounding Championship itself — 2.5m intervals, one tired dad, one delighted kid.