The Sport of Jumping

Table of Contents

• Origin
• Equipment
• Rules of the Game
• Characteristics of a Good Jumper
• Additional Information

Origin

The sport of jumping is linked to ancient Greek warfare. Considering that the Greek countryside is covered by many ravines, soldiers' ability to jump long distances would certainly have facilitated rapid movement across the countryside during battle. In the ancient Olympic Games, jumping existed primarily as a component of the pentathlon, and was seldom held as a singular event.

Equipment

Unlike modern jumping, where the only equipment is a jumper's footwear, the original olympians used stone or lead weights called halteres.

Halteres appeared in various shapes, some resembling dumbbells or telephone receivers. Others were simple cones with depressions for the hands of the athlete. [picture]

Halteres weighed between 4 and 8 pounds. They were used as a means to increase the distance of a jump. Jumpers held onto the weights until the end of their flight, when they thrust them backwards.

Rules

The jumping pit was roughly 50 feet in length. On one side of the pit was a fixed point called the bater. The bater was the point from which all jumps were measured. Jumpers had to hit if before take off, and could not exceed the foremost edge.

The length of the jump was recorded with a wooden rod called a kanon.

Characteristics of a Good Jumper

A good jumper needed to be able to achieve great speed within the limited runway distance. Power was important because good spring off the bater was necessary to achieve distance out of a jump. Coordination was also essential. This included figuring out and executing the synchronization of kicking, of swinging the arms, and of throwing off the weights into the air.

Additional Information

The jump was considered one of the most difficult of the original olympic events, principally because of the timing and coordination (See Characteristics of a Good Jumper). For this reason, the jump was at times accompanied by a flute player, whose sounds underlined the rhythm and musical flow of a properly executed jump.