In a recent episode of Samurai Jack, they have him meet a group of ape like creatures, and a human raised by them. They are great jumpers by nature but aren’t the best fighters. The apes agree to teach Jack to jump as good as them if he teaches them to fight. After a couple scenes of the apes learning o fight, they go to Jack. The apes tie a number of rocks around his wrists and ankles, and then a giant boulder on his back. He then begins training, which includes; climbing rope, running on a vine, on rocks, jumping, and all that stuff to just get his body used to the weight. After a couple more scenes, he takes the weight off and he gives a small hop which sends him high into the air.
Is this type of training safe? How much weight can someone put on to help their jumping ability? How long does one need to train with the extra weight? And can you see a great improvement in your jumping ability if you train like this?
It seems good in simple theory, but I think one would sustain an injury like a stress fracture or at least muscle strains before any real progress could be made
Unless it was done very incrementally, but then it’s really pretty impractical, and still probably there would be some injury.
I think you’d be better off using those shoes that made Mel Torme think that Kramer was “special” on Seinfeld
the ones that third person Jimmy sold. “Jimmy likes Elaine’s new dress,” “Jimmy holds grudges, Jimmy’s gonna get you Kramer”…
You’ve just made me think of my favorite Steven Wright bit:
“Sometimes I like to pick up a hitchhiker, and then not say anything to him for about fifteen minutes. Then I’ll turn to him and say, ‘So, how far do you think you’re going? . . . <pause for laughter> . . . Put on your seatbelt, I wanna try something. . . <Pause for laughter> . . . I saw this in a cartoon once, but I’m pretty sure I can make it.’”
Sounds like something from the DBZ school of training.
I think this might be a better question for the GQ forum since people do use weights in training. Like those ones you can wrap around your wrists and ankles. I don’t know how useful they are but someone in that forum would be the best source for any answers.
My only issue with the episode is that Jack must still somehow lose the fight in the end since he never uses the gate to go back in time. Had it been something else like some valuable item Aku stole perhaps even Jack’s sword it would have been smoother in the overall contextof the series. It’s an excellent stand alone episode however, and even someone unfamilliar with the series could enjoy it.
He didn’t have to lose the fight. Most of his fights with Aku end with Aku transforming and flying away whenever he gets a scratch.
Samurai Jack can jump good. Aku can fly. He was seen flying away with the portal at the show’s start; despite his surprise, he could just get free and do it again.
Also yeah, this is now my favorite episode. It rocked.
It hardly need be said that people cannot really learn to jump 50 meters in the air, no matter how hard they train. Personally what I think Jack achieved was not tremendous leg strength, but rather the near-levitation common in Asian martial arts movies. The weights were simply a traning tool to get Jack to give up trying to rely on his muscular strength and focus his ki on levitating.
Well, expanding on this question, if you had weighted clothing (like the training techniques in DBZ) and wore progressively heavier and heavier weights/clothes over a very gradual period, would it be feasable that you could move and strike with great (not necessarily superhuman, but impressive) strength?