Fosbury Flop

About Fosbury Flop

The Fosbury Flop is a style used in the athletics event of high jump. It was popularized and perfected by American athlete Dick Fosbury, whose gold medal in the 1968 Summer Olympics brought it to the world's attention. Over the next few years the flop became the dominant style of the event and remains so today. Before Fosbury, most elite jumpers used the Straddle technique, Western Roll, Eastern cut-off or even Scissors-Jump to clear the bar. Given that landing surfaces had previously been sandpits or low piles of matting, high jumpers of earlier years had to land on their feet or at least land carefully to prevent injury. With the advent of deep foam matting high jumpers were able to be more adventurous in their landing styles and hence experiment with styles of jumping.

The approach (or run-up) in the Flop style of high jump is characterised by (at least) the final four or five steps being run in a curve, allowing the athlete to lean in to their turn, away from the bar. This allows the centre of gravity to be lowered even prior to knee flexion, giving a longer time period for the take-off thrust. Additionally, on take-off the sudden move from inward lean outwards produces a rotation of the jumper's body along the axis of the bar, aiding clearance. Combined with the rotation around the jumper's vertical axis produced by the drive leg (think of an ice skater spinning round on the spot) the resulting body position on bar clearance is laid out supine with the body at ninety degrees to the bar with the head and shoulders crossing the bar before the trunk and legs. This gives the Flop its characteristic "backwards over the bar" appearance, with the athlete landing on the mat on their shoulders and back. While in flight the athlete can progressively arch their shoulders, back and legs in a rolling motion, keeping as much of the body as possible below the bar. When an athlete performs the Flop, it is possible for them to clear the bar while his or her center of mass does not. In fact, the body's center of mass can be kept as much as 20 cm under the bar. While the Straddle style required strength in the take off knee and could be used by relatively burly athletes (cf. Valeriy Brumel) the Flop allowed athletes of a slender build to use their co-ordination to greater effect and not risk the knee injuries which they had previously suffered from other styles.

Predominantly, athletes using the Flop use a "J" shaped approach, where the first three to five strides head in a straight line at ninety degrees to the bar, with the final four to five being run in a curve as noted above. Some athletes prefer to run all of their strides in a curve and this is known as a "C" shape approach. This was the approach used by Fosbury himself but can lead to errors and inconsistencies in speed, foot placement, angle of approach and body attitude at take-off.