The Fosbury Flop is a high jump technique where the athlete crosses over the bar back-first and headfirst, arching their body so it curves over the bar in a smooth arc. Developed by American high jumper Dick Fosbury in the 1960s, it replaced older face-down methods and remains the dominant technique used by virtually every competitive high jumper in the world today.
How the Technique Works
The Fosbury Flop has three distinct phases: the approach, the takeoff, and the bar clearance. Each phase feeds into the next, and the whole sequence takes only a few seconds.
The approach is a curved run, typically shaped like the letter J. The athlete starts running in a relatively straight line, then curves toward the bar over the final several strides. This curve isn’t just for positioning. Research on flop mechanics has shown that the curved run causes the athlete to lean away from the bar, which sets up the body to rotate properly during flight. The lean created by the curve is more important than any spinning momentum built up during the run itself.
At takeoff, the jumper plants their outside foot (the foot farthest from the bar) about two to three feet from the bar’s base and drives off one foot while swinging the opposite knee and arm upward. Competition rules require that the takeoff come from a single foot. Most of the rotational energy needed to clear the bar is generated in this brief takeoff moment, not during the approach. The athlete essentially converts forward speed into upward lift.
Once airborne, the jumper rotates so their back faces the bar, then arches deeply over it. The head and shoulders cross first, followed by the hips and finally the legs, which kick up and over at the last moment. The jumper lands on their back on the cushioned mat behind the bar.
Why the Back Arch Matters
The real genius of the Fosbury Flop is a physics trick involving the body’s center of mass. Your center of mass is the single point where all your body’s weight balances out, roughly around your midsection when you’re standing upright. In most activities, your center of mass stays inside your body. But when a flop jumper arches deeply over the bar, bending at the back with arms and legs hanging below, something remarkable happens: the center of mass actually passes beneath the bar while the body itself passes over it.
This means the jumper doesn’t need to propel their entire mass over the bar’s height. They only need enough vertical force to get their center of mass close to bar height, then use the arch to thread their body over the top. According to analysis from Stanford University’s physics program, this is the core mechanical advantage that makes the flop superior to older techniques. It allows athletes to clear heights that their raw jumping power alone wouldn’t reach.
What Came Before the Flop
Before Fosbury’s innovation, the dominant technique was the straddle, where the jumper crossed the bar face down with legs straddling it on either side. The straddle required the athlete’s center of mass to travel above the bar, demanding more vertical force for the same clearance height. It was also technically demanding, requiring precise coordination of the legs during flight.
Fosbury himself struggled with the straddle as a high schooler in Medford, Oregon. He regularly knocked the bar off and often failed to clear five feet, which was the minimum qualifying height at many high school meets. His experimentation with going over back-first grew out of that frustration, and the unorthodox style drew plenty of skepticism early on. For years after his Olympic debut, coaches debated whether the technique was even safe.
The 1968 Olympic Breakthrough
Fosbury brought his technique to the world stage at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. On October 20, he won the gold medal by clearing 2.24 meters (7 feet 4.25 inches) on his third and final attempt at that height, setting both an Olympic record and an American record. He had first cleared seven feet during the 1968 indoor season at Oregon State University, and his Olympic performance was considered a surprise by many who had dismissed the technique as a novelty.
The win forced the track and field world to take the flop seriously. Within a decade, it had become the standard technique at every level of competition. Today, the men’s world record in the high jump stands at 2.45 meters (8 feet 0.3 inches), and every world-class jumper uses some version of the Fosbury Flop.
The Role of Foam Landing Mats
One detail that often gets overlooked is that the Fosbury Flop couldn’t have existed without a change in equipment. Older high jump landing areas used sawdust, sand, or low stacks of padding. Landing on your back from seven feet onto sand would be dangerous. The introduction of deep foam landing mats in the 1960s made the back-first landing safe and practical. Without that equipment shift, Fosbury’s technique would have been physically punishing at best and injury-causing at worst. The two innovations, the foam pit and the flop, enabled each other.
Common Mistakes When Learning
The flop looks fluid when elite athletes do it, but beginners frequently make errors that reduce jump height and increase injury risk. One of the most common is leaning back too far during the final stride before takeoff. This forces the lower back to absorb heavy braking forces, keeps the foot on the ground too long, and causes the jumper to lean into the bar instead of rising above it. The result is over-rotation: too much backward spin that sends the jumper crashing onto the back of their neck or high on their shoulders rather than landing flat on the upper back.
Coaches working with younger athletes focus on keeping the final stride active and upright rather than sitting back into it. Another common error is throwing the lead arm or head aggressively over the bar during flight, which generates excess rotation that’s hard to control on the way down. The goal is smooth, controlled arching, not a violent flip. The technique rewards precision and timing far more than brute force, which is part of why it took over the sport so completely. Jumpers who master the mechanics can clear heights that seem to defy their raw athletic power.