.....BOING!!!!!!

February 2, 2009 12:14 PM

What is the highest ever jump done from standing? And how do people train to jump extremely high in martial arts and other jumping disciplines?
posted by Not Supplied to sports, hobbies, & recreation (10 comments total)

Either 1.8m or 1.9m
posted by furtive at 12:16 PM on February 2

Ah, yes but that is the free standing jump in athletics....it's been a while since that was an event, so I'm thinking that the record might be have gone up a bit somewhere else. Cheers though.
posted by Not Supplied at 12:18 PM on February 2

The record for the running high jump is 2.45m, so that should give you an upper bound. As for training, here's an active forum dedicated to vertical jump training.
posted by jedicus at 12:25 PM on February 2

I don't know about highest but the short video here has some impressive box jumps.
posted by ctmf at 12:29 PM on February 2

here even. Sorry.
posted by ctmf at 12:30 PM on February 2

I would bet that if you stop by a book store (or maybe do google's in-book search) and check out the Guinness Book of World Records they'd have something in there.

Doing this google search shows a couple hits that might have data (but I can't see at work).
posted by inigo2 at 12:32 PM on February 2

Back in the days I thought I could become a good track and field athlete, one of the tests done to see if I had made any progress, was to measure how high I could jump straight up from standing.

However, most of this is based on genetics, the amount of fast twitch muscles one has. Only a part is determined by training, and learning how to use your whole trained body to release its energy to jump.

From standing, I could easily jump on of those boxy things then, used in PE lessons, for which I can't find the correct English word. That was 1.40 meters high.

However, when it came to measuring how high my centre of gravity came from the ground while jumping straight up from standing, I hardly ever scored more than 65 centimetres. Only the real giants in the sport could jump over 70 centimetres easily. Their names were whispered.
posted by ijsbrand at 1:48 PM on February 2

Here is some interesting info:

"Two Feet High Kick - The Two Foot High Kick, an Inuit Games event, requires extreme focus and a vertical jump that rivals any basketball player. The Games record holder in the open men's category is Brian Randazzo of Team Alaska. He jumped 8 feet 8 inches at the 1988 Games held in Fairbanks, Alaska. " Artic Winter Games
posted by Foam Pants at 1:54 PM on February 2

Popular with basketball players and traceurs (free runners): Air Alert 3 (claims to add 8-14 to a person's vertical jump)

Air Alert 3 (heads up, it's a pdf)
posted by bradly at 2:13 PM on February 2 [2 favorites has favorites]

Weightlifters are surprisingly good at jumping. They don't train exclusively at it, but it just happens. Not sure how they get to that point, though. Some results from Google.
posted by Xere at 6:13 PM on February 2