The "how" and "why" of the ancient Greek long jump with weights: a five-fold symmetric jump in a row?

A plausible explanation for the ancient long jump records from Greek antiquity is sought on the basis of pictorial and written sources, and corroborated with practical tests. Ancient sources report that athletes jumped more than 15 m with weights in their hands, which enabled them to jump further than without these weights. It is proposed that the ancient Greek long jump was a continuous succession of five standing broad jumps, in which the landing phase of one jump was also the countermovement for the next jump. Four trained athletes jumped further with (14.64 +/- 0.76 m, range 13.64-15.63 m) than without weights (13.88 +/- 0.70 m, range 12.60-14.75 m; P = 0.001). These results show that this technique is executable, fits with ancient written and pictorial sources, and allows trained modern athletes to jump distances well over 15 m. The extra distance jumped when using weights may be due to changes in the position of the jumper's centre of mass at take-off and at landing, and an increase in take-off velocity stemming from several biomechanical mechanisms.

Peter V. Karpovich: transforming the strength paradigm.

One of the most important figures in the public's acceptance of weight training as an acceptable activity for athletes was Russian-born physician Peter V. Karpovich of Springfield College, Springfield, MA. Karpovich, like most early 20th-century educators, opposed weight training for athletes and held a low opinion of weightlifting as an activity in general. However, he became strength science's most eminent and visible advocate after witnessing a demonstration of weightlifting organized by Bob Hoffman of the York Barbell Company in 1940. Following that demonstration, Karpovich conducted several seminal studies that examined the bedrock beliefs on which the arguments normally cited against lifting were built-that it would make a person slow and inflexible-in short, muscle-bound. His research consistently revealed that those beliefs were in error. Later, he went on to collaborate with Jim Murray on the first science-based book on the subject of strength training, Weight Training in Athletics, published in 1956.