Why It's Almost Impossible to Jump Higher Than 50 Inches | WIRED

jumping high is an important skill for a lot of sports and in certain circles of the internet it's even become its own niche competition the standing vertical is one of the critical tests at the NFL Combine and has long been a gold standard for assessing human leaping ability so who jumps the highest you might think a dunk legend like Michael Jordan would own the vertical leap record but the highest jumpers actually aren't basketball players football players actually have the highest vertical jump in basketball yeah most people would think well basketball guys jump more so they have the highest but you know football players are used to starting from a static position which is what a vertical jump is the NFL combines top leaper Gerald sensabaugh once hit 46 inches and then there's the extra inch higher that USC football player Josh Emmitt or Beibei was once measured jumping so what's the limit today we're gonna look at why jumping from a standstill to higher than 50 inches is almost impossible the Box jump which has been made popular in part by CrossFit workouts has gone viral on the Internet and it's easy to see why this is heaven under who set the Guinness world record for a standing box jump at 63 and a half inches he set the record for single leg jump - to find out what it takes I trained with hunger learn how to cheat the analogue vertical jump test perfect there's another end and talk to the scientist about why some people like Evan Hunger can jump so much higher than the rest of us his muscles are capable of doing bigger portals in New York we flew him out to San Francisco to show us how he jumps so high so this is ridiculous this is up to almost my chin we're 60 inches right so this is 5 feet 60 inches yep that's insane and that's three and a half inches shy of the world record which you set that's correct right ok so like how how I can't even think about how to do this what do you do mentally and physically to prepare for and then actually execute a jump like this I will train jumps sporadically but not very often but a lot of weight training and usually just focus on the lower body so I'll be squatting three times a week and I said I get closer the squats change in variation in reps and sets they get heavier and less reps and like making you a lot stronger for a one time explosive movement right mentally I think the mental game is just as hard as the physical game but the problem is like mentally you can't really prepare too too much for it but I find what I'm coming up to the box I try not to think of anything Unger train for a year before he set his record I didn't have that kind of time but with his coaching I got 234 heads then 38 inches that's a bike and then 42 inches alright this is 30 inch box 3/4 inch plates we're at 42 inches high before I began to really worry about cracking a shin Unger had me jumping to 46 inches thing is I'm not technically jumping back because remember the NFL Combine record is also 46 inches and I'm nowhere near as athletic as a pro football player now there are lots of different kinds of jumps there's running jumps high jumps triple jumps but the standing vertical jump is used in the NFL Combine and by sports scientists because it's a good measure of explosive power the Box jump looks amazing but it's not just pure vertical jumping it's actually a complex move that builds on top of a vertical jump by pulling your feet up towards your hips interestingly about a century ago there was an Olympic event called the standing high jump and it was pretty similar to box jumping this guy American Ray Erie was the reigning champion he once cleared a bar at 65 inches if he were alive today he'd probably give Unger a run for the box jump title but we wanted to know how Unger might stack up against today's NFL Combine jumpers so he and I both jumped in front of a measuring tape watched him rise as you can see he out jumped me by a lot it was hardly scientific but it looks like he's cruising two nearly three feet that's almost 90 centimeters here's the thing exactly how high he jumped depends on how you measure it you start from a standstill with his feet flat on the ground or the moment before takeoff when he's on his tiptoes depending on your form and how big your feet are the difference could be 10 or more inches either way it's a very impressive jump like a look at this guy needing a standing vertical John big oh my god what a monster right that's spy Oh mechanist pastéis de pinna and my specialty is trying to understand the mechanics oh ha a fleas jump are actually pretty intuitive the way to get the biggest possible height is to have a big vertical velocity at the end of the tables so how do you do that de pinna says it's all about moving up as powerfully as you can for as long as you can before leaving the ground ok so you would think that you would go and you would crouch yourself bend your legs grandma and be down there and then wait and say ok let's go and then you you sure must to extend your legs as powerfully as you can to get out from the ground the problem with that is that when you're down there waiting to start your jump you're making a force that is submaximal he's just needing to make the force that you need to hold a downward position and to be able to go upward you need to make a fourth of this bigger than that he says there's an even better way so what you do is instead of starting at the bottom you start standing up so you're standing up and then you relax your muscles completely so you your legs turn basically into wet noodles right and your gravity is pulling downwards so you go down yes you're using your muscles to slow down this downward motion you're activating those muscles you're pre tensing the muscles so at the very bottom point you have all of your vertical range of motion for the upward motion available to you still any muscles are already pre tense it's called the counter movement jump under and I both tried it and not surprisingly he jumped way higher than me I asked dr. de pinna why he has better muscles his muscles are capable of doing bigger forces in New York basically this means that he has a bigger cross-sectional area of muscle and the main movers really we're talking quads and glutes if anyone knows how lucrative a solid jump is it's Joel Smith he's a coach who runs an online jumping Academy for athletes who want to improve their leaping abilities he watched me jump and offered some suggestions for how to improve we all know squats deadlifts front squat we think strong legs it'll help I view it as a way to create tension so right now if we can create more tension in your legs by getting stronger you will have the capability to jump higher so it is possible that I could get better at jumping but I'll probably never get too Unger's level that doesn't mean I couldn't have a higher vertical jump I went to sparta science to talk with founder Phil Wagner from a research standpoint vertical jump has been associated with performance in a variety of sports he works with pro athletes including NFL hopefuls to post their best vertical leap on an analogue measuring device called a vertex using it is simple just subtract the highest you can reach while standing from the highest you can reach while jumping the difference is the height of your jump kind of because for as easy as the vertex is to use it's also really easy to cheat just make your standing reach as low as possible because you've had a lot of elbow damage right right Wagner showed me how I could add a few inches with a fake injury Wow you can't even get close let me walk through this thing actually with my short of my shoulder tipped up yep my fingers extended my arm all the way straight and they walks through again no fake injury fully stretched out yeah look at the difference that 45 seems a lot closer now then I jumped right and jumped again this time using another trick some toe bounce which amplifies the counter movements later it is yep okay so how did I do so what's considered probably average quote-unquote average for an NFL vert would be in the mid 30s about 35 so you did about a 33 inch purchase there no warmup a little cheating no warmup the schedule but here's the other thing scientists can't even agree on the best way to measure vertical jumps there's the analog Burrtec there's video analysis and then there's forceplates which measure an athlete's force on the ground to calculate the height of their jump they're harder to cheat they're also at Wagner's company uses and thanks to their proprietary equipment he says they're also far more accurate at measuring a vertical leap so fourteen point one inches that's half first jump that's half yeah after three average jumps the force plate brought me back down to earth and more than halved my vertical leap to wait for it fifteen inches is actually not a bad score it's real now that might sound like a big difference but remember the vertex isn't very precise you can cheat it with the arm extension trick and it's measuring your jump from a flat-footed start even though your body is fully extended at the peak of your jump the force plate just uses the speed you leave the ground to determine your jump height Wagner says the highest any athlete has achieved on the Sparta plate that includes pros he can't talk about it's about 30 inches but he doesn't think worth the limit just yet I believe that we're capable of getting up on this you know to a 40 inch vertical jump really yes I know that song right now is 30 is about 29 30 that's correct it's a fight between gravity and muscle drop some weight and you might float a bit higher if I lose 10 pounds making a jump higher yes as long as you don't lose the capability making force with it's in proportion so it counts as the ratio before she can make on the ground or muscle tension that you can make divided by body weight or body mass so the ratios for counts so if you can make your body mass be one half which is impossible or imagine if you make it be one half that'll be amazing the problem innocent to get the booty for force it's also one half of the ones before you have the same Wagner says better nutrition careful training and injury prevention could see athletes cruising even higher I think the true limiting factor is how well can we allow individuals to recover and that's why monitoring is so important I how do we can do to add capacity on each of vigil without having a setback so it's possible we'll see somebody with a greater vertical leap someday but for now bear in mind that what some of these athletes are doing is already almost impossible [Music]

Channel: WIRED

Views: 6,489,083

Rating: 4.7789273 out of 5

Keywords: jump, jumping, record, combine, slam dunk, robbie gonzalez, vertical standing jump, vertical leap, vertical jump, nfl combine, vertec, box jump, evan ungar, basketball dunk, maximum vertical, combine vertical, jumping high, high jump, highest jump, nfl combine high jump, highest you can jump, highest jumper, best jumper, standing jump, jump high, highest, jump height, almost impossible, highest possible jump, combine jump, vertical, vert, 50 inch vertical, wired

Id: tn0lqMuGguw

Length: 11min 46sec (706 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 24 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/Blitqz21l]

It's actually a really interesting watch. But it explains a lot about how to fudge the system as opposed to the title.

Which leads me to the last point, he never actually explained the title of why it's nearly impossible to have a 50inch vert.

[u/folorain]

Tell that to Taryq Sani

[u/V-ballislife]

Well there’s this kid called Taryq Sani. 50.7 😉