I’m reblogging the 2025 post “Working on a Simple Plan to Stay Fit?” mainly because I finally tried the dollar jump challenge again. They should call it the dollar bill jump chump challenge because there’s an easy way to win it. There are variations of it and one involves grabbing your ankles instead of grabbing your toes. The trick is that you can’t do this by jumping forward.
Nobody ever tells you that, for obvious reasons. I vaguely recall reading about jumping backwards over the dollar bill, but I never tried it until a couple of days ago. It works!
You shouldn’t try this unless you’re in pretty good condition.
I blogged about this back in April of 2021 (“Bigfoot, UFOs, and the Dollar Bill Jump Challenge”). I mention the ankle-grabbing variant, yet never tried it. I tried jumping backwards while holding my toes two days ago, but couldn’t jump over the dollar bill.
This is a center of gravity problem, and this link will take you to the website that explains it.
The section below explains the basic issue with the dollar bill jump challenge although it leaves the dollar bill out of it:
The section below explains the basic issue with the dollar bill jump challenge although it leaves the dollar bill out of it:
“TOE HOLD BET YOU CAN’T JUMP FORWARD ON YOUR TOES! THE SETUP: Hold your toes with your hands. Keep your knees slightly bent. Try to jump forward in this position. THE Fix: You can jump right around the block backward but you’ll not get one single bound forward. A backward jump is possible because the support base moves first and the center of gravity maintains a balanced state. To jump forward, your center of gravity must move ahead of your base. Holding on to your toes prevents you from making the balance shift. Without shifting your center of gravity, your leg muscles would have to be strong enough not only to lift your body off the ground but also to support the unbalanced position you would be in while jumping. We’ve heard that football players have such strength in their leg muscles, but we’ve yet to find someone who can do this stunt.”
Well, I saw a guy do it, but I didn’t have a way of filming it so I can’t prove it happened.
Leave a Reply