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Hello this is my 2nd year pole vaulting and my best so far this year is 10feet. About a month ago when we actually started to pole vault, I had a sloppy vault and it felt like I pulled my left tricep(I'm a righty). It felt okay for a while until I started going up on my pole and bending it a little. Now everytime I pole vualt there's just a throbbing pain in my left tricep which really messes everything up. Because of this pain I can't really keep my bottom arm straight, therefore, hugging the pole and leading with my hips instead of chest. Even if I have an extremely low grip it's almost impossible to keep my bottom arm straight. Is it common at all to have a messed up tricep due to pole vaulting? Besides icing it is there anything I can do to help my tricep? And how can I stop from hugging the pole and leading with my hips right from the start? Thankyou.

Sharif16 wrote: Because of this pain I can't really keep my bottom arm straight, therefore, hugging the pole and leading with my hips instead of chest. Even if I have an extremely low grip it's almost impossible to keep my bottom arm straight.

you should never keep your bottome arm completely straight when your vaulting.. you need to have it bent to some extent so that when you're trying to get inverted and take off on top, you dont get stuck with your bottom arm locked out.
watch bubkas left arm during the vault at 2:03 in the video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-b8OKuHLR68&feature=related
see how its bent? that may not have been the best example of it but if you watch alot of his other vaults you can see that he never makes his bottom arm straight

and with the injury my only advice is ice then heat ice then heat and try not to make it any worse.. i had some what of the same pain your talking about my first year but i took a week of and pretty much lived with an ice pack on my arm and a heating pad next to me
Best Of Luck