between the two, in general is there much of a difference in vertical jump tests between high jumpers and long jumpers?
And could a high jumper become an effective long jumper and vise versa?
depends if the high jumper can run fast or not 
i would hope they could! :rolleyes: of course there are those freaks who are 7 feet tall, but for we normal folk… it’s all about speed conversion!
agreed… but I don’t think you need sub 7 60m speed to be a great high jumper. You’d be hard pressed to find a 25+ ft long jumper who couldn’t run under 7.
Height seems to play a bigger role in the high jump as well… but you only have to look as far as stefen holm to see that even little 5’10" white guys can jump 7’8" on occasion.
As far as vertical leap… you’d have to look into stats but I don’t think you would find too much information supporting one or the other as being better. Both events require some explosive legs.
High Jumpers ususlly carry MUCH less bodyweight. A lot of them lose a lot of weight before comp. Usually highjumpers say 1pound less BW, +1cm hight…
So you think it would be easier for a long jumper to convert into a high jumper?
I would say yes… but you also have to consider the technical aspect of high jumping. I think a good long jumper would have most of the physical qualities to be at least a respectable high jumper, but if they can’t figure out how to do right, they aren’t going to jump very well.
I would say no - usually LJers are too heavy for HJ. They would have to lose a lot of bodyweight.
HJ usually do not have the necessary “horizontal” speed - as Newton stated above.
I agree with both your points, but who do you think would have the easier transition?
With HJ being so slight do they do ANY weight work?
This line of questions comes from the fact that i’ve recently been asked by a father to get his daughter stronger. She competes in the HJ.
Hard to tell. But maybe looking at athletes doing both could shed a little light on the matter: Decatlets and Heptatletes.
World class multi event athl. are usually much closer to world class specialists performances in the LJ than the HJ.
(Females jump close to/over 7m, males to 8m, but usually never more than 1.90, 2.10)
Maybe because Deca/Heptatletes need a lot of strenght (doing throws, too) and do 2-3 sprints (100, 100/110H, 400) and other events close to “sprinting” (LJ, Vault). But it might be a good example for athletes trained to a high level of strenght and still HJ.
Interestingly for Heptatletes the trend goes to very slim, tall athletes. 20 years ago they used to be much bigger.
Possible transition depends strongly on the body-type of the athlete, too.
But once you are a strong, heavy athlete you’ll have to starve yourself back to HJ.
From what I saw a lot of them do weights. But strenght development seems to be based on doing a lot of plyos.
Any HJs on the board?
I definitely agree with the body type of the athlete comment. After I switched from just being a long jumper to doing the decathlon, my long jump actually increased slightly. My high jumping did not improve at all however even with improved technique over the bar. The jump in weight from 175 to 185 didn’t seem to hurt too much in the LJ, but I definitely felt it (mostly in the knees and hips) while taking off for the HJ.
As far as strength work… with the high jumpers I have worked with, they tend to natually be quite slim and are able to tolerate lower body strength work without really putting on any weight. We stuck mainly to the major lifts and did fairly low reps. Plyo’s are also great for increasing “strength” without putting on lbs.
I started out as a high jumper and when I turned multi-eventer I had to pick up LJ. Standing at 5’6 I can jump 5’4" after 4 years of work, but switching over to LJ I jumped over 17 feet right away with almost no practice and sketchy technique.
Interestingly enough, I found that my best jumps came when I used the same exact takeoff that I would for a high jump- going for height. From that standpoint I think it would be harder to convert from a horizontal jump to an up-down jump.
Alright so a longjumper wouldn’t make the best highjumper, then how come triple jumpers could? Take Christian Olsson, his personal best is 7’6" :eek: Is it because he looks more like a high jumper or do TJers and Hjers have more in common?
Oh and newton, Stefan Holm jumped 7’9" this summer .
Thats probably because the trend in body type for top triple jumpers is now closer to high jumpers than long jumpers. Also the time for application of strength when the foot lands are almost identical.
Decathletes are better are long jumpers because they are physically closer to LJers than HJers. They are too small and too heavy. About High Jumpers and weight lifting, from witnesses at a World Indoor Champs few years ago in Japan, they saw Sotomayor deep squat 5 sets of 5 reps of 400lbs, then 5 x 5 bench steps both legs carrying 310lbs, then 8 double-foot jumps carrying 350, 310, 265, 220lbs. However, i think LJers have better results than HJers for standing Vertical jump tests asw ell as SLJ, as HJers usually have less explosive power.
Squat is a staple exercise for high jumpers. I bet there are very few elite high jumpers that don’t squat. Stefan Holm does deep squat but his weights are probably not close to the weights lifted by Sotomayor.
Decathletes tend to excell in the long jump because it is not a technically very demanding event and because decathletes tend to have good sprint speed and very good power. However, don’t forget Christian Schenk who won the 88 Seuol decathlon and in that very competition high jumped 227 in old fashioned straddle style!
Lots of thoughts.
Upper body mass is contra-indicated for a successful high jumper. Non-performing weight, “along for the ride” is disadvantageous.
Speed properly advantaged, is key to both but clearly more primary to LJ than HJ.
Those high jumpers that don’t “bring the speed” have to leverage limb length and apply force over as long a ROM as possible and do the same with the free limbs to counter the lesser speed/horizontal kinetic energy available to those with faster approaches. What length lever and how high/where to place fulcrum in order to move the boulder? so to speak. Even so, the speed that this is performed at is still important.
But “here’s the rub”… who was faster? King Carl or Mike? That being the case, what was the difference that resulted in Mike having the better long jump? While I have asked Randy about my theory as to the answer here, he has avoided confirming or denying. But having watched tape of the 2, my answer to this seeming contradiction has its roots in the earlier paragraph. Oddly enough, more of a HJ technique leading to a LJ WR if you accept my logic.
Tall high jumpers are advantaged in that their COM starts higher than someone shorter.
As for Multis that jump, Kluft was around 1.89 or so in HJ this past year.
Front side component strength (the vasti) is critical to both. LJ because of the high speed at change of direction and HJ because of the more pronounced change of direction vs. horizontal. At the end of the eccentric phase at plant, the glute/ham/gastroc become the primary mover. But if you dont get thru the eccentric phase you aint gonna save it with the posterior chain et al. Think 400m…where is the race won? The first 300 or the last 100m?
The resultant angle for a LJ is about 16 to 20 degrees where as in HJ you need to be going far more vertical at TO.
You might be surprised at how low some elite high jumpers standing VJ is/was.
Stones comes to mind (7’ 8" HJ off less than a 38" vert)
Who is faster, Carl or Mike? The answer isn’t that obvious, actually, seeing at run-up speeds, there’s not much difference, Carl still get a slim advantage, but comparing run-up speeds and speeds at take-off, Mike has the smallest loss, while managing to have a greater take-off angle (up to 23-24°).
Your example with 400m race “Think 400m…where is the race won? The first 300 or the last 100m?” may lead to a more complex issue: the obvious answer would be last 100m, but actually, the last 100m speed is statistically very dependant on the first 100m section speed, just like for 100m races, the last 20m is very dependant on the first 30m speed. To transfer this to Long-Jump, the highest is the initial speed, the more difficult will be the transition between the race and the flight (jump). To take a classic example, Drechsler had her best jumps with 10m/sec speeds than with 10.2m/s, and was able to jump 7m with full run-up at only 9.45m/s… And to make a parallel with Lewis and Powell, Lewis and Drechsler were much faster at 100m races, but in the LJ run-up, Powell and Chystiakova were much closer. Think in therm of specific speed and strength you’ll get the answer about why Mike jumped farther than Carl.
About Klüft, last year in Paris she just missed a 1.97 jump, and many observers after her preliminary jumps thought she would pass 2m that day.
You and I agree…I think???
You leave out that Powell employs an extreme off center penult step when viewed against Lewis. This would require greater specific strength as you mention. He does this, I believe to gain a greater takeoff angle as you confirm, 23 - 24 deg vs. Lewis around 20. Greater lowering resulting in a greater TO angle at ground release. However, if you have specific speed-readings for the last 10m along with resultant TO velocities I am interested in seeing them because at present I believe 2 things about Powell. One being that he arrives at the board at a lesser rate than does Lewis. Two, that employing the off center penult had to decelerate him more than a more traditional / closer to center line penult. Deceleration vs. the gain in takeoff angle vs. Carl’s inefficiencies at plant entry and TO exit is the difference. The actual velocities, tracking of Mike’s C of Mass “thru the zone” so to speak, would be of great interest. Your statement that Mike’s specific speed and strength is accurate but I believe that most specifc to his success was the unique penult.
The 300-100 idea while able to be made complex, to me seems pretty straightforward when you view it as, the end result being slaved to that which precedes it. Going back to Lewis/Powell, while Carl was faster. If Powell wasnt “fast enough”, all the mechanics in the world would not have made up for the loss.
As for Kluft, I am sorry to say that each day my belief in the sanctity of her and fellow countrymen’s performances is less and less. A “blown Achilles” on a non-takeoff leg, 3 straight steps into a HJ approach put my personal opinion over the top on this.
Yes, i think we agree, reading your last post! Powell was very fast , but we are always faster or slower compared to somebody else.
I have some numbers for comparisons between Powell and Lewis in Tokyo, but i’m perplexed about their accuracy as different analysis give different numbers. However, some of the numbers confirm your feelings.
by JAAF/IAF biomechanics team
POWELL // LEWIS // Parameters
8.95 // 8.91 // Official distance
9.00 // 8.91 // Effective distance
10.79 // 11.23 // run-up 11 to 6m
10.94 // 11.26 // run-up 6 to 1m
9.09 // 9.72 // Horiz speed at TO
3.70 // 3.22 // Vert speed at TO
23.1 // 18.3 // Projection angle at TO
by Gideon ARIEL
POWELL // LEWIS // Parameters
8.95 // 8.91 // Official distance
8.98 // 8.91 // Effective distance
10.79 // 11.23 // run-up 11 to 6m
10.94 // 11.26 // run-up 6 to 1m
9.27 // 9.11 // Horiz speed at TO
4.26 // 3.37 // Vert speed at TO
24.6 // 20.3 // Projection angle at TO
2.40 // 2.23 // Length of 3rd last stride
2.47 // 2.70 // Length of 2nd last stride
2.28 // 1.88 // Length of last stride
James HAY
gives for Powell Horiz speed at TO 9.8m/s and angle of projection 23.2…