Why does my high jumper's trail leg clip the bar?
The lead leg clears clean and the bar comes down anyway, usually because the leg that was still on the ground a moment earlier never got tucked or turned in time.
The lead leg clears clean, the hips clear clean, and the bar still comes down. Most of the time that means the trail leg, the one still on the ground an instant earlier, is the one catching it.
What has to happen for the trail leg to clear
Once the body rotates over the bar, the trail leg has to tuck tight at the knee and turn through fast enough to clear before it straightens out again. A trail leg that stays long, or turns late, is still partly extended when the body has already started coming down on the other side, and that is what catches the bar.
Common causes
- The knee never folds tight enough during clearance, so the leg is longer than the gap it needs to pass through.
- The hips turn too late, so the trail leg is still roughly square to the bar at the moment it needs to already be turning away from it.
- The jumper opens up and starts looking for the landing before the trail leg has actually cleared.
What the Film Room can show
The Film Room's high jump setting reports hip rise as a share of body height, takeoff angle, and knee fold and extension. A trail leg that never folds tight through clearance tends to show up as a flatter knee fold number through that part of the jump, which is the closest signal the report has to a trail leg problem specifically.
It does not separate the trail leg from the lead leg. Both legs are moving past the bar in the same frame, often with the trail leg partly hidden behind the body or the near leg from a side-on angle, so a single 2D camera cannot tell you on its own which leg produced a given reading. Watching the clip back frame by frame is still the only way to confirm it is the trail leg and not the lead leg or the hips.
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Related
Why does my high jumper's lead leg stay bent going over the bar?
A free leg that never straightens usually costs height that a good plant already paid for, and it is a hard fault to see once the athlete is rotating.
Read →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's plant foot point away from the bar?
A plant foot that turns away from the bar instead of pointing down the runway usually still clears, which is exactly why it goes unnoticed for seasons.
Read →