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Can You Guess this High Jump Technique?

You are here: Home / Coaching / Can You Guess this High Jump Technique?
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June 21, 2013 by Jimson Lee 3 Comments

Last Updated on February 12, 2016 by Jimson Lee

There was a video going viral on Kenyan High Jumping.  The “appeal” was two athletes using non convention high jumping techniques (not the Straddle nor Flop) and the bar “appeared” very high.  Plus no fancy crash mat… just sand from the old days!

A closer look at the video shows the bar was slightly over 6 feet or 1.83m.

kenyan high jump

(Credit goes to Michael Stewart for filming this video, as he spent the first three months working in Kenya’s Great Rift Valley for a Canadian NGO called Run for Life, which primarily uses running to promote education and job skills at schools around the world.  He shot the high jump video while attending a track meet outside the town of Mosoriot.)

I am not taking anything away from them (I love healthy drug free competition) but their technique was something to think about… what is it?

Here is the video on YouTube:

High Jump Bar Clearance

In the book Track & Field Omnibook by Ken Doherty, he distinguishes nine bar ­clearance techniques and the athlete credited with pioneering each (except for the first):

  1. Scissors
  2. Modified Scissors (Page, 1887)
  3. Eastern Cut-off (Sweeney, 1895)
  4. Eastern Trail-leg Shift (Oler, 1914)
  5. Eastern Back-to-the-bar (Larson, 1917)
  6. Western Roll (Horine, 1912)
  7. Straddle (Stewart, 1930)
  8. Dive-Straddle (Cruter, 1938)
  9. Flop (Fosbury and/or Brill, 1968)

POP QUIZ

Okay High Jump experts, who can identify the technique used by the 2 Kenyans in the video above?  It’s not the flop or straddle!

READ  The No False Start Rule Change

Category iconCoaching,  High Jump,  Track & Field

About Jimson Lee

I am a Masters Athlete and Coach currently based in London UK. My other projects include the Bud Winter Foundation, writer for the IAAF New Studies in Athletics Journal (NSA) and a member of the Track & Field Writers of America.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Ryan Banta says

    June 21, 2013 at 7:12 am

    Modify scissors

    Reply
  2. OKtav says

    June 21, 2013 at 8:13 am

    Well my friend of course we can guess…It’s previous to the straddle and in the Romanian language is called the “scissors” – The OLD Coach – Constantin Dumitrescu – was a specialist of it with 2.04 PB. (1.82m tall, period 1954 -1960, running, jumping and landing on surface earth – talented jumper but never been capable to change his jumping technique and adopting the straddle – no problem as coach he trained few european and world champions in new styles that he never experienced :) ). Is the person I was talking about with your guest Kenta Bell …Here you can find a picture of him jumping at 2.02 at army championships in that technique…

    http://sportlogic.wordpress.com/?attachment_id=3238

    Meanwhile boys in the video are doing it a little bit differently I think… It is more flexible as style, allowing personal approaches and personal adapted biomechanics of the jump.

    Reply
  3. Jim Cary says

    June 22, 2013 at 12:21 pm

    I’m saying it’s the Eastern Cutoff.

    Reply

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