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Fosbury Flop

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20 pointsakkartik14 comments

Dick Fosbury died last year. I love the story of him arriving at the Olympics, as a 21 year old, with his own technique that he has developed even as he was advised against it.

He was given a blue and a white pair of spikes by Adidas, and he wore one color on each foot.

He went on to win the gold medal, and his technique went on to dominate the sport.

Apparently he started to develop his technique already at age 16, which is seriously impressive: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Fosbury

My grandfather was a high jumper in the former Soviet Union, and he crossed 1.85 m in the 1950s using the "straddle technique": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straddle_technique

Looking for the specialist terms in English, I found a paper with a bunch of geeky figures to compare the different techniques :) https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-mechanics-of-the-c...

Similarly[^1], Pete Gogolok transformed NFL placekicking:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Gogolak

https://time.com/6590292/super-bowl-field-goal-kick-history-...

Other examples of a single athlete transforming a sport?

[^1]: Gogolak didn't invent a new kicking technique—he kicked like he knew from soccer. But he was the first to kick this way in the NFL. So I realize it's not quite the same as Fosbury.

Julius Erving, Dr J, in basketball brought a revolution in style, I guess based on leaping ability and some center of mass awareness that made him seem to float or walk in the air. I'm not sure if he was the first from a general trend (on playgrounds, say) or if others adopted his style, but it really changed the game. Wilt, Russell, Kareem, and or Larry Bird had phenomenal abilities, but it wasn't something anybody could copy.

skateboarding is full of this stuff, its a bit different since there's usually no objective measurement like height, but take the Ollie and the Kickflip for example.

The technique was only possible because of better pits. Landing on your neck in a pit of sand and sawdust isn’t advisable. A foam rubber cushion makes a huge difference.

Interestingly the page mentions that the jump was possible because of better landing sites (made of foam). Really surprising !

Back in high school I was a state almost-champion in high jump a few times. The technique doesn’t leave much room for error once the bar is taller than the jumper. Sure was a lot of fun though.

I wonder how common are back or spine problems amongst dedicated high jumpers these days? E.g. chronic issues after the end of the career.

As compared to Fosbury flop, the older "straddle technique" must have been much easier on the body, or not?

Having "high jumper's genes", I nearly crossed 1.90 m in high school by simply mimicking the Fosbury style as seen on TV -- or, rather, simply by using brute force. I do, however, still remember that this jumping session caused serious back pain afterwards. I was also completely exhausted. An interesting experience, turns out you do use a surprising, immense amount of explosive power while jumping. In particular when you don't know how to jump properly. :)

The thing that really opened my eyes was how important the pivot/twist/transfer of power is as you plant to jump. It’s really incredible. Once you teach your brain “just jump high as fuck, you’re not going to get hurt on the landing” it’s a game-changer.

My best was 1.98m, and I am of about 1.93m height.

Given his penchant for exploring jumping techniques, it is probably unsurprising that Fosbury would retire to become an engineer!

Cultural evolution (both in terms of materials and practices) is a nice lens to view the history of Track and Field. There are many other innovative techniques in the sport, not all of which became IAAF legal: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXGB51C_dRE

Got any picks for past, present, or future 'Fosbury Flops' of programming languages (which could use a game-changing technique!)? And no, language-X-on-ChatGPT doesn't count! :-)

No. There is no silver bullet, magic trick, or secret technique that will improve programming. Take time to develop a deep knowledge of your tools and domain, and communicate well on projects, are the only true, proven methods I can offer.

If you looked at Windows applications programming pre-VB, I'd argue Visual Basic represented a 'Fosbury Flop' of sorts (concepts live on, if not the product). :-)

Something Pretty Right: a History of Visual Basic https://developers.slashdot.org/story/23/03/18/1525205/somet...

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