0:01 If I asked you whether the average
0:03 person could jump further while holding
0:06 this extra 10 pounds or without it, what
0:08 would you say? Well, today I'm going to
0:10 be testing out an ancient Greek jumping
0:12 technique that has confused scientists
0:15 for centuries. Does holding weights
0:17 while you jump make you jump further
0:20 than you can without them? Around 3,000
0:22 years ago, a Greek athlete is said to
0:25 have set a record long jump of 55 ft.
0:29 That's 16.8 m. The ancient record
0:32 written in Greek says Phthalos jumped 5
0:34 feet more than 50 feet and through the
0:37 discus 5t less than 100 ft. So what's
0:40 going on here? Were the ancient Greeks
0:42 superhuman? Well, a key to cracking this
0:44 question comes when we look at ancient
0:46 depictions of long jumpers. They always
0:48 have something in their hands. These are
0:51 called halteries. They were basically
0:53 ancient dumbbells or kettle bells. The
0:56 Greeks used them to work out and train.
0:57 But why would they have them in their
1:00 hands during actual jumps? Surely
1:01 holding more weight would shorten your
1:03 jumping distance, right? But in
1:06 Aristotle's famous work, Progression of
1:09 Animals written in 350 BC, he says
1:10 something pretty interesting.
1:13 Hence, athletes jump further if they
1:14 have the weights in their hands than if
1:16 they have not. For in the extension of
1:18 the arms, there is a kind of leaning
1:20 upon the hands and wrists.
1:23 These are two 5 lb weights. Surely if
1:27 I'm carrying an extra 10 lbs, about 4.5
1:29 kilos, I can't jump further than I could
1:31 without them, right? And even if I
1:33 could, could it really make someone jump
1:37 55 ft? That's absurd.
1:39 But I trust Aristotle enough to try
1:42 this. So, here we go. Okay, first let's
1:44 just do a jump
2:00 Okay. 92 in just over 7 and 1/2 ft.
2:01 Okay. Now, let's try it with the weights.
2:25 Whoa. Way further.
2:27 No way.
2:30 With the weights, that's 98 in. So, is
2:32 this just a fluke or was it in my head
2:34 and I tried a little harder with the weights?
2:36 weights?
2:38 Well, to test this, I went to the gym to
2:40 get some unsuspecting victims playing
2:42 basketball to test this ancient Greek
2:44 physics problem. And after some
2:46 convincing, they were willing to try it
2:48 out. And the results were clear. The
2:51 weights made everyone jump further that
2:53 I tried it on. It took a few jumps to
2:55 get the timing right with the hands, but
2:58 everyone did better with the weights. In
3:00 one case, this girl got almost a foot
3:02 further holding 2 and 12 lb weights in
3:04 each hand.
3:07 Okay, this is blowing my mind.
3:08 Everything about this tells me it's
3:10 wrong. Holding more weight shouldn't
3:13 make you jump further, should it? In
3:15 2005, researchers measured the distances
3:18 of standing long jumpers with and
3:20 without weights. They found that on
3:22 average, holding weights increased
3:25 jumping distance by about 12 cm or 4.7
3:28 in. In one case, one jumper in the study
3:32 improved by 44 cm. That's 17 in. So, how
3:34 is this working? Why does holding more
3:36 weight make you get further when
3:38 jumping? Well, in doing this myself, one
3:40 thing I noticed is that it's kind of
3:42 like you throw the weights out in front
3:44 of you and then you use the inertia of
3:46 those weights to kind of pull you
3:48 forward as you throw the weights
3:49 backwards. So, there's definitely a
3:51 benefit in changing your landing and the
3:53 center of mass so you can throw your
3:55 feet out further in front of you. But in
3:57 one of my test subjects cases, he didn't
3:59 even use the weights to swing behind him
4:01 and he still jumped further with the
4:03 weights. So, there's more to the weights
4:06 than just shifting your center of mass.
4:08 Researchers studied the ground reaction
4:10 force when you jump with weights in your
4:12 hands. They found that as you increase
4:14 the weight in your hands, the ground
4:16 reaction force ramped up more slowly
4:18 over a longer time than the unloaded
4:20 jumps. Meaning that there ends up being
4:22 more area under the curve for the orange
4:24 line here compared to the others, which
4:27 means more overall impulse. And the
4:28 reason this matters is because muscles
4:31 aren't perfectly linear actuators. At
4:33 slower contraction speeds, they can
4:36 sustain high force for longer. So, more
4:39 horizontal momentum is generated if you
4:41 can push for longer or slower. This
4:43 means you can get a longer jump even
4:45 though you're carrying more weight. Now,
4:47 obviously, there's a limit to how much
4:49 weight makes you increase your jump.
4:51 These same researchers tested with even
4:53 heavier weights and found that the ideal
4:56 load is about 5 to 6 kg. If you go
4:58 higher than that, the added weight
5:00 reduces your distance. So there, we've
5:02 solved it. Holding weights makes you
5:04 jump inches, even a foot further than
5:07 without them. Okay, but wait, that's not
5:09 50 feet further. How did that ancient
5:13 Greece guy Phthalos jumped 55 ft? Well,
5:14 to solve this, we have to look at our
5:20 hand. 1 2 3 4 5. Because we have five
5:22 fingers, the number five was the basis
5:25 of mathematics. Greeks considered it a
5:27 special number. In their Olympic events,
5:29 they held a pentathlon that had five
5:31 events with five trials each. Their
5:34 wrestling competitions went five rounds.
5:36 So, what if their standing long jump
5:39 wasn't just one jump, but five jumps?
5:41 When standing long jump was an Olympic
5:43 event, the gold medalist jumped around
5:47 3.2 m on average. Multiply that by five
5:51 and you get 16 m or 52 feet, just shy of
5:53 Phthalos's record. So the current
5:55 consensus among scholars is that they
5:57 didn't mean one jump in that sentence,
6:00 but they actually meant five jumps. Now
6:02 these were gold medal winning jumps. So
6:04 it would be hard to hit that distance
6:07 five times in a row, if not impossible,
6:09 unless you had an extra boost. With
6:11 extra weight in their hands or
6:13 halteries, it's very plausible that a
6:16 trained athlete could exceed 55 ft in
6:19 five jumps. And that's exactly what
6:21 Phthalos probably did to earn a place in
6:24 history, still being talked about 3,000
6:26 years later as a great long jumper. I
6:28 wonder if any of our current athletes
6:30 will be talked about 3,000 years from
6:32 now. What do you think? So, thanks for
6:34 going through this mystery with me. And
6:36 a special thanks to all my subscribers
6:38 who helped me get to 5 million
6:42 subscribers finally. 5 million. [Music]
6:43 [Music]
6:46 It's so amazing to see and I truly
6:47 appreciate you watching and learning
Chrome Extension