Location of body centre of mass of Polish high jumpers

Assessment of sport performance is based on mechanical analysis of a movement. In high jump there are two main sequences: a run-up and a jump. The efficiency of a high jump can be described taking into account location of a centre of mass of a jumper while acquiring a standing up-right position and then at the highest position over a bar during a jump. The difference of those locations is taken into account in calculating efficiency of high jump index [5] – see Fig. 1. Since the configuration of a trunk acquired over a bar is usually bent (Fig. 2), so detailed, individual data are needed while locating a centre of mass of the trunk (here, Erdmann’s procedure was used where trunk was divided onto five segments – fig. 3 [3]) and then of the whole body. The aim of this paper was to obtain location of body centre of mass for up-right position of sportsmen specializing in athletics’ high jump in order to use this data for calculating efficiency of high jump index.