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