Jumping with Halteres-Dumbbells

[Guest guest]

Books on the history of weight training and athletic competition often refer

to the ancient Grecian practice of jumping with small hand-held weights

called halteres (e.g. see Webster, " The Iron Game " ), an exercise which they

contended allowed them to jump further. Well, a recent study published in

the Scientific American involving computer simulations has now analysed the

effect of jumping with halteres and found that the Grecians really did know

something that many people do not even know today.

A lesson from this? What about returning to this ancient system of training

and exercising by running and jumping with dumbbells each weighing about

3-5kg? What about re-introducing the DB Jump as a sporting event with

2.5-3.0 kg DBs (in each hand) for women and 3.5-5kg DBs (in each hand) for

men? Would anyone care to try this exercise or event and report their

findings with and without hand-held DBs?

Read the following report for more details:

<http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa003 & articleID=0000C554

-BA87-1DD2-B37B809EC588EEDF>

[Excerpts given ....]

Scientific American, Nov 14, 2002

Hand Weights Enhanced Ancient Athletes' Performances

Graham

Most performance-enhancing tricks used by today's Olympic athletes can only

be detected using high-tech laboratory tests. But ancient Olympic athletes,

it seems, used a more obvious method to improve their results: hand weights.

According to a report published today in the journal Nature, standing long

jumpers used stone or lead pieces known as halteres to travel farther.

Although it might seem that jumping with lead weights would be a

disadvantage, Alberto Minetti and Luca Ardigo of Manchester Metropolitan

University found that holding halteres of a certain size could actually

propel a long jumper farther...... They found that a jumper swinging a pair

of halteres weighing a total of 6 kilograms experienced a take-off speed 2%

greater than his empty-handed counterpart did. ..... halteres only became a

hindrance when their weight exceeded about 10 kilograms.

The team further found that skilled swinging of the weights--that is,

thrusting them forward on take-off and backward just before landing--could

add 17 centimeters to what would have been a 3 meter jump...... Minetti and

Ardigo conclude that athletes in ancient times had worked out these

advantages for themselves...

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Dr Mel C Siff

Denver, USA

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Supertraining/