If you've ever participated in a high jump competition or seen it as part of the audience, you may have noticed that all athletes jump with their backs to the bar .In many High jump competitions, this is a rule while in others it is not done so by the regulations of this sport, but thanks to Dick Fosbury, an innovative athlete who changed this sport forever .Today Lifestyle we tell you all about the Fosbury jump and how I revolutionize the high jump.
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Dick Fosbury: the man who revolutionized the high jump
1.How were high jumps before Dick Fosbury?
Until then there were different jumping techniques, but they were all facing the height bar .Fosbury considered that the techniques used and commonly accepted until then were very complex and that better results could be achieved by performing back jumps.Until then, the technical high jumps were:
- Scissor technique : the first of the high jump techniques, now considered obsolete, consisted of simply take momentum with a run in front of the ribbon and, when approaching in the whipping phase, in a position perpendicular to the ribbon, throw one leg and then the other on it, opening and closing both quickly, like the movement of a scissor.
- Costal roller technique (western roll) : or long jump athletics.It consists of an oblique race in the direction of the bar, with a whipping phase perpendicular to this, while the beating phase equal to that of the scissors technique, with the only difference that, here, the body is slightly tilted back and sideways, facilitating the opening of legs in the air.
- Ventral roller technique : considered the easiest jump technique before the arrival of the Linden Fosbury flop to be part of the story, consists of an oblique race in the direction of the bar of 7 to 9 steps, with a beating phase perpendicular to the bar, throwing the leg that will execute the jump and raising the arms to pass the bar of so that the body is parallel to it during the pre-fall wrapping phase.
2.Who was Dick Fosbury: brief biography
Richard Douglas Fosbury was born on March 13, 1947 in Portland, Oregon, USA.Practical athletics since childhood and began to devise a new high jump technique when he was 15 years old , as the techniques of front-jump (such as of the scissors, costal or ventral roller) they would find it difficult to handle.As a student of the University of Oregon, he won the university degree to represent the United States in the 1968 Mexican Olympics, where he obtained the gold medal for the jump of higher height, with 2.24 meters.
After getting this medal, Fosbury, to the grief of many and the joy of others, retired from the sport because he considered he was not prepared for success .Not only had he become a very mediatic person for having won an Olympic medal, but also for the way he had achieved it.
3.Why The Fosbury jump revolutionized the high jump?
Our protagonist, drawing the conclusion that jumping on his back could be more beneficial than doing it straight ahead , began to prepare a new technique of jump and after many hours of training, he managed to fully refine the jump back.Before Dick Fosbury did it for the first time at the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico, nobody used this technique, which would later be called « Fosbury Flop «.
At first many doubted the possibilities of Dec k Fosbury to get a good mark with this curious system; In fact, many believed that Fosbury was a little crazy about risking his reputation, but all these doubts and mockeries failed to stop the athlete.Fosbury won that year the gold medal in athletic jumps with his revolutionary technique.
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