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What a good high jump takeoff looks like

The height comes from the plant, and the plant is made possible by the approach, which is where most of it goes wrong.

High jumpers spend most of their attention on the bar and most of their problems on the curve. The takeoff is the moment everything gets decided, but almost nothing about it is decided at the takeoff.

What the plant is doing

The plant converts horizontal speed into vertical lift. That conversion is what the hip rise measures: how far the hips actually travelled upward, as a share of the athlete's own body height, which makes it comparable across athletes and across a season.

A poor plant shows up as a small rise regardless of how fast the approach was. The athlete ran quickly at the bar and none of it went upward.

The curve does the work

The lean created by running a curve is what allows the athlete to plant against the ground rather than beside it. Straighten the curve and the plant has nothing to push against. Most takeoff faults are approach faults wearing a disguise.

• Five-step curve runs with no bar, so the approach can be fixed without anything to be afraid of.
• Short-approach scissors over a low bar, which isolates the plant from the height.

Film side-on, level with the plant foot, and watch the hips through the last two steps. StatLap reports both the hip rise and the takeoff angle, which together tell you whether the athlete is jumping or simply running past the bar.

A single side-on camera cannot see rotation into the bar, which matters a great deal in the flop. Treat these numbers as the takeoff half of the picture.

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