Halters and the long jump
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Posted by Fotopoulou Sophia in Non Famous section |
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Halteres, are hand-held weights that were first used in the standing long jump in the eighteenth ancient Olympiad in 708 BC. They may have been used either to make the challenge more difficult or to extend the jumping distance.
The hand-held weights that Greek pentathletes swung in the standing long jump increased the power the jumper's muscles generated and so lengthened the distance they leapt1. Even without the power boost, the weights, called halteres, would have put an extra 17 cm on a 3-metre jump.
Ancient Greek athletes are often shown with hand weights, called halteres, but no one knew the purpose of the weights. The athlete on this urn is swinging the weights behind him at the end of his jump.
Historians have long wondered whether Greek athletes carried halteres to make the long jump more of a challenge, or whether the weights somehow improved their performance.
It is known from the painted urns that Olympians began each long jump in a standing position, rocking their halteres back and forth. The athletes took off as their arms swung forward toward their highest point; then they jerked the halteres backward near the end of the leap.
It is interesting that by making the body heavier overall performance would increase. Swinging a weight transfers the body’s center of mass forward at the beginning of a jump, pulling the body up and ahead. Shifting the halteres behind the body at the end propels a leaper’s legs ahead of both the weight and the rest of the body.
Carrying halteres also better exploits the athlete’s physique, adding power from the upper limb muscles that are normally underutilized during a jump. In this way, the swinging weights increase the amount of force the athlete can generate, which translates into greater power and speed. Upping the athlete’s mass also increases the momentum, so he can travel further before landing. But there’s only a certain range of weights that worked: If the halteres are too light, they have little effect; if they are too heavy, the jumper is bogged down.
These halteres were made of stone or lead and weighed 2?9 kg, which we calculate would increase a 3-metre jump by at least 17 cm, indicating that their purpose was to boost the performance of pentathletes. Halteres may therefore be the earliest passive tool that was devised to enhance human-powered locomotion.
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