Going Higher: The Evolution of the High Jump
Imagine standing at the end of a long runway, staring at a thin horizontal bar set higher than your own head. Your goal is to run, launch yourself into the air, and clear that bar without knocking it down. This is the high jump, one of the most exciting events in track and field. While it might look like athletes today all jump the same way, the technique for reaching these heights has changed drastically over the last hundred years.
In the early days of organized sports, most athletes used a simple method called the Scissors jump. To do this, a jumper would run toward the bar and throw one leg over, followed quickly by the other. They would stay mostly upright, landing on their feet in a pit of sand or sawdust. While the Scissors jump was easy to learn, it was not very efficient. Because the jumper’s body stayed vertical, or upright, they had to lift their entire weight very high to clear the bar. This limited how high anyone could actually go.
- Vertical:
- Positioned straight up and down.
- Efficient:
- Working in a way that gets the best results with the least amount of wasted energy or effort.
- Center of mass:
- The central point where the weight of an object or body is balanced.
- horizontal:
- Parallel to the ground or running straight across from side to side rather than up and down.
- breakthrough:
- An important advance or discovery that leads to progress or a new way of doing things.
- technique:
- A specific method or practiced way of carrying out a physical skill or task.
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About this explanatory article passage for Upper Elementary
“Going Higher: The Evolution of the High Jump” is a explanatory article reading passage about High Jump History, written for Upper Elementary. It takes about 4 minutes to read (586 words) and comes with an interactive quiz and a printable worksheet with comprehension questions and an answer key.