Why can't Xu Zhu jump 50 feet horizontally?

[Wu Wudi]

It makes no sense to me why XZ can't jump 50 feet. XZ can jump 30 feet vertically with no momentum. The most elite NBA athletes, which you can count on 1 hand, can barely do a standing jump of 3 feet. Last year, when the draft measurements were taken, none of the NBA prospects could do a standing jump of 3 feet although several came close. So we've established that XZ can jump 10 times higher than a world class athlete which is an amazing feat.

It's been brought up already that XZ wasn't capable of jumping across a 50ft chasm.
The world long jump record is 30 feet. With a standing vertical leap of 30 feet, XZ should easily be able to jump 50 ft, which is less than 2 times what the best athlete can do in the real world.

I realize this is ficition, I just want to discuss is the reasoning for a someone in Wuxia to be able to jump 10 times higher than a world class athlete but not be able to jump twice as far.

[CC]

It shouldn't be that way. But thats just how JY wrote it. I don't think JY carefully considers the cross-novel and cross-feat implications when he writes things like the limits and abilities of martial arts and inner energy.

If Xu Zhu can jump way past a palace wall while carrying 2 bodies and 2 large blocks of ice. He sure should be able to jump >5 zhang horizontal distance if he directed that same energy into a 45 degree trajectory.

[Ken Cheng]

The ground is much closer when one jumps horizontally.

[K2Grey]

XZ was pretty psyched up when he was jumping the 30 foot wall.

Probably he didn't want to risk the 50 foot vertical leap. He does tend towards underestimating himself.

[CC]

XZ was pretty psyched up when he was jumping the 30 foot wall.

Probably he didn't want to risk the 50 foot vertical leap. He does tend towards underestimating himself.

That part had the narrator saying that 'no matter how good the qing gong, you can't do it'. And Xu Zhu leapt, and started falling before he flung the chain out. So he couldn't have done it anyway.

Another way to look at what I think JY 'messed up' and why people like XZ should be able to jump >5 zhang. If he could run so fast that people only saw a 'blur', try to imagine a guy running past at say 75mph (actually thats not fast enough to be a 'blur' yet but lets use 75mph), if that same guy can just follow an Olympic long jumper's take off at that kind of velocity, he'll beat 5 zhang easy.