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i am 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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this is josh lodge an australian high
jumper what's your personal best
the high jump two minutes 22
that's pretty high the world record is
uh sotomayor from cuba
it's about
this high eight foot and a half an inch
245
uh same height as a full full men's
volleyball net can you tell me about
what it's like to be a high jumper it's
just really fun like everyone who sees
it i know always wants to do it right
yeah exactly
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so can you teach me to jump as high as
you
uh
i don't know
he knows that he can't tell me about the
technique that all the modern high
jumpers use so they do the fosb flop so
that's with the j curve to run up
generally you have a a straight-ish sort
of part and then the last part of the
run-up is because it's half straight
half half curved yeah
so that you can have more speed
and it puts you in the right position
to then
get the rotation and go over on your
back and what foot do you take off on uh
you take off on your left foot
yeah yeah that's right if you can only
really think about one thing
drive up that leg tell people to drive
up that way
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so what did i do wrong there well how
much time do we have
[Applause]
you started on the wrong foot come on
you can get this
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so before the fosbury flop the main
technique that people used was a
straddle 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 bar
and um
did they go up frontwards or also they
were they went over the bar on on their
front they still required some sort of
mats for the straddle but i'll show you
a scissor uh that was another one that
was from the days when you had to land
on your feet the days of sawdust so i
think that was more like before the 50s
pretty much the same as the take off to
possibly flop and then you just land on
your feet yeah you land on your feet
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it's a really old one and
it's what they did when they didn't have
any mats so really adding the mat really
changed the way people jumped yeah yeah
and obviously without having to worry
about landing safely they could
they could jump higher regarding the the
physics of it why is the fosberry flop
the superior technique
well
i've heard that it allows your center of
mass to actually pass 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
of mass is it's under the bar whereas
like the other techniques they seem to
you know you have to have your whole
center of mass clearing 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 a flop my coach
used to talk about it like a hose so the
water coming out of a hose you you only
need to get each bit above the bar at
the right time as opposed to all of it
at once
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so
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[Applause]
you