Jump Farther's Origin Story

Hello there! My name is Tyler Lewis and I am the creator of Jump Farther. The goal of this blog is to educate people on the fundamentals, science, and everything else that goes into becoming a great jumper. To start, let me tell you my story.

As a young boy, I was always the super energetic kid, jumping over everything, climbing trees, racing kids on the gravel roads of pennsylvania on the weekends and playing soccer. This of course led to me being incredibly successful on the soccer field, scoring absurd amounts of goals against my very very young competition of around age 7-8 and thinking I was the most athletic kid in the world.

As it turns out, my atheltic prowess in 2007 would be short lived as I would dump sports all together at the age of 11 for seemingly no reason. In 2012, I watched live as Usain Bolt obliterated the competition at the olympics in London for 3 gold medals. I sat on the floor of my small bedroom staring up at the tiny box television in my room in awe and told myself on that day that I would do everything I could to be just like him. I ran up and down the block in my neighborhood every day... for a week or two... and then went back to playing call of duty religiously.

Moving forward, going into highschool, my atheltic abilities stemmed as far as playing a little basketball in the nieghborhood and honing in my thumb skills on a controller. I was 5'7" 145 pounds, but I had drive. I signed up for cross country to make friends before freshman year and... was absolutely horrible. I was so bad that I ran a 29 minute 5k and knew that long distance running was not my calling. My strength based genetics would never allow me to excel so when track and field season started, I decided I would be a long jumper and high jumper... really so I did not have to run as much anymore.

Low and behold, I was horrible at this too. I jumped 14 feet my first meet at long jump and only cleared 5 feet in high jump 2 times before the end of my freshman year. I was NOT discouraged. I knew if I put the work into jumping every day and taking training seriously on the track and in the weight room, I could at least stand next to the competition.

I ran cross country all 4 years of highschool but it was never my forte. I came out to the first meet of sophomore year and jumped... 19 feet 3 inches in long jump and a measely 36 feet in triple jump. High jump was long out of my portfolio at this point but these numbers actually were encouraging for me. I then however got a stress fracture in my heel and it hindered me from jumping for the rest of the year.

My junior year of highschool I was muscular, fast, had confidence and was ready to put in the work. I finally got a good coach as well! The 1992 USA Olympic Games Triple Jump athlete, John Tillman. He gave me all of the tools to succeed and pushed me to be better. I jumped 42 feet my junior year and 45'5 my senior year in triple jump. I qualified for the national championship and achieved all of my goals by joining the track team at Appalachian State University. I realized that without the great coaching of Coach Tillman, I would never have found that passion or had the tools to succeed. I want to spread all of the information about horizontal jumping that I have learned to help you achieve your goals.

In my third year at App State right now, I have learned so much, I have had a stress fracture in my spine, and a torn groin and still push forward because of my dedication to jumping into sand just like you!

I am still working hard and are by no means the best jumper ever, but I hope this blog can help people who have even more potential than me to achieve their potential!

Please feel free to come by once a week where I'll be posting articles about technique, fundamentals, training exercises, staying in shape in the off season, what weight workouts to do, the science of jumping, and so so much more! Thank You

Best,

Tyler Lewis

TJ/LJ