-Angle of run:
The greater the angle of run, the more the cross-bar forces an athlete to jump up, vertically, but the more difficult it is to drive a straight leg up from a close take-off, and the greater the lateral distance over which arms and legs must clear the bar. The smaller the angle of run, the shorter the lateral distance becomes, but the greater the tendency to dive and slide along the bar. Most great straddle jumpers have run at angles of 30 to 40 degrees.-Length of run:
The run must be long enough to give gradual and smooth acceleration to the desired speed at the take-off. If such speed is slow, the run need be no longer than seven strides; if fast, 13 strides may be found to be effective.
-Speed of run:
If a jumper has the leg power and conversion technique to use it, the greater the speed of the run, the greater the body momentum that can be converted upward. It is suggested that a jumper's speed should be their natural fast rhythm. This may be too fast for best jumping now. Thye jump better today if they slow down. But power training of related muscles and better technique in the gather and take-off will make effective use of such speed and enable the athlete, in the future, to jump nearer their real potential.
-The method of run:
All high jumpers use three or four fast steps just prior to the take-off. They differ in the number of preliminary steps, the number of check marks, the speed of the early steps - and therefore of the later ones - the lowness of the crouch, and the angle of body at E the take-off. In 1960, when jumping his best, John Thomas took three slow and four fast steps. Later, influenced by Brumel, he ran longer and faster, but never fully mastered such increased momentum. Brumel took four easy steps and seven fast. The Swedish jumpers - Petterson, Nilsson, et al took three short steps, to a first checkmark, six accelerating steps, to a second check-mark. and four very fast steps to the take-off; 13 in all. If the run is long, two checkmarks should be used; though as the technique of the run is mastered, the second will be of lesser importance.
-Great high jumping requires three essentials:
1: Competitive competence:
Self-confidence, concentration of physical-emotional mental energy, self-control and reckless abandon
2: Adequate power:
Such power in the related muscles makes full use of a maximum approach to each of the many phases of high jumping.
3: Mastery of skill:
The many phases of skill in the gather, the takeoff, the upward thrust of the arms and lead leg, and the mechanics of an efficient clearance action must be mastered in part and as a whole. Such mastery leads toward complete automatism, to the point where high jumping becomes an artless art. Conscious intelligent practice of the many parts of action gradually loses all consciousness of those parts. A great champion jumps holistically as a unit - the run-gather-take-off-spring-clearance are merely words by which to transmit and comprehend ideas. Only the ideas are partial; only the words have separate entities; the high jumping action from first step to landing is an inseparable whole.
