How do you know if a high jumper is taking off too close to the bar?
Crashing into the bar on the way up and clearing it with room to spare are both approach problems, and they are opposite ones.
A jumper who clips the bar with a chest or a hip on the way up, and a jumper who clears clean but lands almost on top of the bar in the pit, look like two different faults. They are usually the same fault in opposite directions: the plant is landing in the wrong spot relative to the bar.
Too close versus too far
A plant that lands too close to the bar leaves no room for the arc to rise before it gets there, so the jumper is still going up when they meet it. A plant that lands too far out lets the arc peak before the bar, and the jumper is already coming down as they cross it, landing short and often awkwardly in the pit rather than well into it.
- A jumper taking off too close tends to hit the bar with the chest or hips on the way up, before the peak of the arc.
- A jumper taking off too far out tends to clear with room to spare but lands near the front edge of the pit, having already started descending.
- The right distance scales with the athlete's height and speed. It is not a fixed number a coach can hand every jumper on the team.
What the high jump setting reports, and what it does not
The Film Room's high jump setting reports hip rise as a share of the athlete's height, takeoff angle, and knee fold and extension through the jump. It reads the arc itself well. None of those numbers say where the plant foot landed relative to the bar, because that is a distance measured on the ground, and the setting is built to read what happens above it.
A camera framed to catch the full arc of a high jump usually cannot also show exactly where the plant foot landed relative to the base of the standards, because catching both the ground and the peak of the arc in one frame needs a wider shot than most side-on setups use. Finding the right takeoff spot is a tape-measure job before it is a camera one.
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Related
Why your high jumper knocks the bar off on the way down
Legs taking the bar after the hips have cleared is a timing fault at the top, and usually a takeoff point that drifted before it.
Read →Why does my high jumper clear the bar without their hips getting above it?
It is usually the arch working the way it is supposed to, and it is also the exact moment the Film Room already admits it cannot measure well.
Read →Why does your high jumper's plant foot never land in the same spot?
A side-on camera reads the vertical arc of a jump well and has no idea where the plant foot actually landed on the ground, which is usually the real question.
Read →