Reading this this thread got me reading up about the high jump.
Official track and field rules state that you must take off on one leg (cite). For a start why is this? Is a two-footed take off somehow dangerous?
Secondly, if two-foot was allowed, how high could someone actually jump? I’m kind of guessing this would be higher than the current world record (2.45m), so is there an “unofficial” record? I’m thinking some kind of flip-flop gymnastic run up here could be the technique.
Maybe it’s mostly tradition. In skating all jumps must land on 1 leg or else they deduct points.
a) You seem to have already answered the title question: that, yes, by the rules, you must take off on one leg
b) I can make conjectures about two-legged high jumps — I am thinking that there’s no elegant way to do an approach and then lift off from both legs, i.e., the attempt to not be taking off from one leg would involve slowing down and losing momentum — but I dunno if there’s a GQ answer available, unless there is one for your “unofficial” record maybe – ?
c) Am I the only one to have read the thread title as do you have to take off one leg?
There used to be a standing high jump event, in which you jumped from both legs.
You can’t jump as high with both legs as you can with one, I believe because you can’t get your center of gravity as high unless you raise one leg in the process. The high jump marks even in the early years were much higher than the standing high jump. The gap between is even larger today. A running start wouldn’t make any difference.
I meant to ask “**why **do you have to take off on one leg”
That’s the danger of DUI (Doping Under the Influence).
And anyway, it should have been “on one foot”.
But I’m still thinking, gymnasts. They seem to get some pretty good height on the floor routines. Looks way over head height to me. I know (generally) they’re pretty short, but 2.45m doesn’t look beyond impossible.
…and I would have thought that a standing two-foot jump would be higher than a standing one-foot. So a moving two-foot would be higher than a moving one-foot?
Old guys like me remember when the high jump was done with people going over on the stomach. Then Fosbury invented his flop which now everyone uses to go over on their back.
I doubt this very much. If you watch they spin around their center of gravity. They might move that center of gravity up a few feet but most of the time some part of the body will be close to the floor.
Look at your ceiling. There are very few houses in which a living room ceiling is more than 2.45 m (8 ft.) off the ground. Mine is a good height but nowhere near 8 feet. You’re essentially saying that a spinning gymnast would fly to your second floor. Not a chance.
Plus, the mats gymnasts perform their routines on are very springy. High jumpers take off from turf.
Hmm… 8 feet is the standard height, but yours is nowhere near this? Is it less than 7? Would a tall person have to hunch to visit you?
Tall people have to hunch not to see the dust on the top of the refrigerator and other tall items. 
By nowhere near I meant around 7’6". Since even the world’s best high jumpers find those additional six inches a major challenge they are significant.
Thisguy certainly would have got close!
Quote:
“Dick Browning was a tumbler who learned much as a protégé of fellow Gymnastics Hall of Fame Honoree, Charlie Pond, inventor of the Pond Twisting Belt. He actually gained notoriety when Life Magazine wrote about his feat of high jumping 7 ft. 2 in. by approaching the bar with a Round-off, Flip-flop, and Back flip over the bar. At the time his height over the bar was a world record by 4.5 inches, but due to the two-foot take off, it was disallowed as a T & F record”
The scissors technique was the style in the 50s when I first started watching the Olympics. Then Dick Fosbury used the flop method to gain the gold medal at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City and high jumping was never the same again.
Having said that, you do still see athletes using the old scissor jump but it is quite rare.