Standing Vertical Between Short and Tall Groups
Jenna Gerhardt and Sophie Ketterling
INTRODUCTION
A standing vertical measures how high an athlete can jump in the air in
inches with a jump that does not involve an approach or any steps.
Vertical jumps can range from all sorts of heights, and athletes worldwide
work to increase their vertical. What we wanted to know was simple.
Who has a higher standing vertical, short, or tall female volleyball
players? Volleyball is a sport that involves a lot of jumping and lateral
movement. It is one of the sports where jumping high is very beneficial,
so we wanted to know what height group could jump higher. We
hypothesized that taller players would be able to jump higher because
taller people generally work in the front row while playing volleyball, so
they are hitting and blocking and using their legs and jumping muscles
more than back-row players.
METHODS
We split 19 female volleyball players into short and tall-height
groups. There were 11 in the tall group and 8 in the short group. The
first step was to measure their heights with a tape measure in feet and
inches. After recording heights, we pulled out the PlyoMat. A
PlyoMat is a device used to record standing verticals by having
athletes stand on the mat, and then jump as high as they can. The
PlyoMat will measure the distance in inches the athlete was off the
ground. They then took turns on the PlyoMat. They were told to
squat down and jump as high as possible using their arms and legs.
Each player had three attempts. We recorded all their standing
verticals in inches. We used all three attempts in our project to
increase validity. Then, we averaged out the attempts to give the
results.
RESULTS
Our results showed that short volleyball players have a higher
average vertical than tall volleyball players. The shorter volleyball
player's average vertical was 24.2" versus the taller players' 23.5".
However, there is no statistical significance in our data, seeing as
the P-value was greater than 0.05 (p value=0.13). What this means
is that there is no relationship between a tall person having a short
vertical and a short person having a tall vertical.
Average Standing Vertical of Short and Tall Groups
24.4
Average Standing Vertical
24.2
24.0
23.8
23.6
23.4
23.2
23.0
Tall Short
Figure 1. Comparing tall and short female volleyball players standing
vertical means. The tall group mean=23.5 and the short group mean=24.
DISCUSSION​
Our hypothesis was refuted by our data collection. We assumed that tall
people would have a higher vertical because they jump more in the game.
However, through our data collection, we found that on the women's
volleyball team, short people have a higher average vertical. ​
These results were interesting. We found that just because athletes are
shorter, it doesn't mean they can't jump high. After gathering data, we
thought about how shorter athletes could jump higher and thought it might
have something to do with their weight and their power when jumping.
According to NCBI, body fat has a negative relationship with vertical
height. Furthermore, athletes could be affected by past injury. Even though
these thoughts crossed our minds, we also remembered our data was
not significant so the results may not be the case for every team and every
player.
LITERATURE CITED ​
Abidin, N. Z., & Adam, M. B. (2013). Prediction of vertical jump height from
anthropometric factors in female athletes. The Malaysian Journal of Medical Sciences :
MJMS, 20(1), 39–45. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3684376/​
Marián, V., Katarína, L., Dávid, O., Matúš, K., & Simon, W. (2016). Improved Maximum
Strength, Vertical Jump and Sprint Performance afte