High Jumping for Dummies: Useful Information for Beginners

High jumping is a track-and-field discipline that refers to the group of vertical jumps. Every jump consists of such stages as run, stand off, clearance, and landing. High jumpers need to have perfect physical skills and abilities to be able to perform well. These competitions take place both in winters and summers. It became an obligatory men’s Olympic discipline in 1896, while 1928 saw the first competitions among women. The given article is going to present the main rules that govern the given kind of sport.

General Information

The competitions take place at a special sight represented by a horizontal area covered with special synthetic materials. The area should be big enough to make it possible for athletes to take at least 15-meter run. The best variant is when it is possible to perform a 25-meter run. A landing place has dimensions of 5x3x0.5-0.75 meters, and it is made of foam. There should be a backlash of 10 cm between the landing place and the posts.

By the way, the posts bear a vertical bar of 400 cm long, 2 kg weight, and 25-30 mm in diameter. It is made of either plastic or metal. This bar should be of a light color with 3-4 transversal lines of a darker hue. This construction should be so that provides an opportunity to fix the bar at a height of 250 cm. The distance between the posts is 2 cm bigger than the length of the bar.

Athletes take turns to perform jumps; their actual order is determined by a coin toss. It should take no more than a minute for an athlete to perform a single jump. When there are 2-3 athletes left, the time given reaches 2 minutes. Thus, 3 minutes are given to the last participants of an event.

An initial height and the order of its changes is determined by the regulations of this or that event. In general, every following height is 2-3 cm higher than the previous one. It is up to an athlete to start overcoming any of the heights. The only requirement is that this height should not be lower than the initial one. Thus, every athlete is given three attempts to overcome a single height. It is also possible to omit a height or to preserve attempts for the following height. If an athlete manages to perform three unsuccessful attempts in a row, he or she is disqualified.

The results of a competition depend on the greatest height that was overcome by a particular athlete. If it happens that two athletes have the same results, one of the following scenarios can arise:

• the first place is awarded to an athlete who managed to overcome the last height for the lowest number of attempts;
• We make dozens of free sports predictions every day.
• if this number is also the same, a victory is given to an athlete who showed fewer unsuccessful attempts over the competition.

An attempt is said to be unsuccessful if a player:

• kicked off from the ground with two feet;
• either failed to go over the bar or made it fall.

If the referee is sure that an athlete overcame a height successfully, and the bar felt because of external factors, this jump can be considered successful. However, it does not work when it comes to decisive jumps.

History

Competitions in which athletes were forced to jump over a few horses were extremely popular in ancient Germany. Some tribes of Central Africa, however, have been paying special attention to festivals, in which participants have to compete in high jumping. As for the Olympic Games, high jumping had not been an obligatory part of this event from the very beginning. To tell the truth, it was not until the 19th century when the discipline became officially Olympic. High jumping appeared thanks to gymnastics, rather than to athletics.