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  • I'm about 1.75 meters tall, but some of the world's best high jumpers can clear more than half a meter above that.

  • This is Josh Lodge on Australian high jumper.

  • What's your personal best?

  • I don't know.

  • Two minutes 22.

  • That's pretty high.

  • The world record is sort of my off from Cuba.

  • It's about this high eight foot and 1/2 an inch to 45 uh, same hot as a full full men's volleyball net.

  • Can you tell me about what it's like to be a high jumper?

  • Just really fun, Like everyone who sees it I know always wants to do it, right?

  • Yeah, exactly.

  • So can you teach me to jump us eyes here?

  • Ah, you know, uh, you know is that you can tell me about the technique that all the modern high jumpers use.

  • So they do the first B flops, so that's with the J curve to run up, generally have a a straight ish sort of pot.

  • And then the last part of the run up is because it's half straight, half have curved.

  • Yeah, so that you can have more speed and it puts you in the right position, too.

  • Then get the rotation on.

  • Go over on your back.

  • And what?

  • What do you take off on?

  • You take off when you left foot?

  • Yeah.

  • Yeah, that's right.

  • You can only really think about one thing.

  • Drive up that, like, tell people to drive up that way.

  • What did I do wrong, man?

  • How much time do we wait?

  • You started on the wrong foot.

  • Come on.

  • You get this.

  • So before the Fosbury flop, the main technique that people use was ah, straddled.

  • Yeah, the straddle.

  • Or I think it was also known as the Western roll.

  • With that technique, athletes came on a much sharper angle to the bar in a straight line, and they took off from their leg closest to the box.

  • And, um, did they go up front words or where they went over the bar on on their front, They still required some sort of mats for the straddle.

  • But you was, uh that was another one.

  • That was from the days when you had to land on your feet for days of sawdust.

  • So I think that was more like before the fifties, pretty much the same as the takeoff to us before.

  • And then you just land on your feet.

  • Yeah, You land on your feet.

  • It's a really old one.

  • And that's what they did when they didn't have any mats.

  • So really, adding the Matt really changed the way people jump.

  • Yeah, Yeah, on Obviously without having to worry about landing safely, they could They could jump regretting the physics of it.

  • Why is the Fosbury flop the superior technique?

  • Well, I heard that it it allows your center of mass actually passed underneath the bar.

  • Your entire body clears the bar, but not all at once.

  • So you're keeping like your legs and your arms sort of underneath the bar.

  • If you average where your center mass is it, it's under the bar.

  • Where is, like the other techniques they seem Thio, You know, you have to have your whole center mass cleaning the bar.

  • So technically, it's it's harder like you.

  • You're getting your mass up higher in order to clear the bar.

  • Yeah, that would make sense because with the straddle technique, when you go over, you've got half your body going over the bar all at once.

  • Yeah, whereas in the flop My coach used to talk about it like a host.

  • So the water coming out of a hose, you only need to get each bit above the bar at the right time.

  • As opposed to a love it at once, huh?

I'm about 1.75 meters tall, but some of the world's best high jumpers can clear more than half a meter above that.

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