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Why your high jumper clears 1.60 and then misses 1.65 three times

The bar went up five centimetres. Almost nothing about the jump should have changed, and a phone can show you what did.

It is the most frustrating pattern in the event. Two easy clearances, daylight over the bar, and then three attempts at the next height that do not look like the same athlete jumped them.

The jump did not get harder

Five centimetres is small next to what a good approach produces. An athlete who floats over 1.60 has, on that jump, more than enough to clear 1.65. What changed is not the physics; it is everything the athlete does about a bar that now looks higher.

• The approach speeds up. Running harder at a higher bar feels like the obvious answer and it shortens the last steps, which is where the plant is set.
• The takeoff point drifts closer. A bar that looks intimidating pulls people towards it, and a plant too close means the athlete is still rising into it.
• The athlete leans at the bar rather than away from it, which cuts the hip rise the plant was about to buy.
• A hesitation appears, half a check step two strides out, and the plant loses the speed the run spent five seconds building.

How to find out which one it is

Film the successful attempt at the lower height and the failed attempt at the higher one from the same spot, and compare them. This is the whole diagnostic, and it takes one practice.

The number to compare is hip rise as a share of body height, because it does not care what the bar is set at. If hip rise is the same on both jumps, the athlete jumped just as well and the miss is about where they jumped from and what they did in the air. If hip rise drops at the higher bar, the approach changed, and the bar height is not the problem. The run-up under pressure is.

What StatLap measures, and what it does not

The high jump and vault analysis reports hip rise as a share of body height, takeoff angle, and knee fold and extension. Compare and Ghost will put the two attempts side by side, or one over the other, from any two clips already on the phone.

It does not judge what happens over the bar. Back arch, hip clearance, trailing heels, whether the bar was touched on the way up or the way down: none of that is measured, and a single side-on camera is a poor witness to most of it. It also does not know whether the jump was successful; you do, and you have to tell it which clip is which.

The drills for the approach half

Short-approach scissors over a low bar, which isolate the plant from the height entirely. Five-step curve runs with no bar at all, which fix the curve and the plant foot before any height is added back. Both exist because the plant is decided by the run, and the run is easiest to change when there is nothing to be intimidated by.

The comparison only works if both clips come from the same camera position and roughly the same height. Move the phone between attempts and you have measured the phone.

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