The Influence of the Upper Extremities Movement on Take-off in Vertical Jump

Abstract

The positive influence of the upper extremities swing on the effect of take-off in jumping is well known. Such movement is used in vertical jump, long jump, high jump and others. This effect causes increase of the ground reaction force produced by each segment (Luhtanen and Komi, 1978) and in addition the upper extremities swing has also a coordinative meaning, for example while double overarm movement at running is to be change into parallel movement at take off (high jump), There are also such situations like in basketball and volleyball (Wielki and Dangre, 1983; Wilkerson, 1983) in which the desired arms swing is limited by the other task which has to be performed like blocking or passing the ball. Loss in the height of the vertical jump -while the arms swing is not executed -and diminishing ground reaction force at take-off and the possible changes in biomechanical variables during take-off, are the object of this experiment.