PoleVaultPower.com

Do you need a break from vaulting?

Most of you reading this don't have a choice. All the schools around you put their pits away, and you won't get to touch a pole again for a few months.

This article is not for you.

The article is for the kids who are lucky enough to live somewhere where they have access to year round vaulting.

So, do you need a break?

There are two sides of this issue to consider: the physical and the mental. Two different things that are often related.

The physical is pretty easy easy to figure out. Do you have any nagging injuries? Back problems, shin splints, bad knees/shoulders/whatever...

If you can't vault without pain, or if injuries are holding you back from training, now is a good time to take a break. If you are suffering from serious problems, you may need to take a break from all activity (SAMI!!), but most people just need to change what they are doing.

What can you do without pain? Swimming is usually a good one for injured vaulters. Bar work in gymnastics is a good thing for kids with leg problems to work on. Can you run? Can you lift weights for certain parts of your body? Can you do core strength work?

DO IT. Use the time off to rehab your injuries and to become better athletes.


Then there is the mental side of things. This is often trickier.

Are you excited to go to pole vault practice? Do you have fun at practice? Do you still have the energy and enthusiasm to complete your other workouts (cuz you're doing more than just vaulting, right?) Are you improving?

Taking a break will help you reload for the next long season. Don't sit on your butt for a month, but stay active doing other sports and working on your areas of weakness. Find things to do that are FUN. Ultimate frisbee, basketball, gymnastics... whatever you enjoy but are normally too busy to do, make an effort to spend time doing these things.


This is just a start, I hope other people have things they can add.

When i first started my break from vaulting around the start of july... i couldnt get my mind off it for a month. Then i was shooting hoops one day and i thought.... "im going to become as good at basketball as i can". So i started dedicating myself to basketball. Obviously, it takes more than that to REALLY get your mind of vaulting, but it was the only thing i could think of to really keep my mind off it. The most important thing to a pole vaulting offseason (mental aspect) in my opinion, is to acknowledge that the off-season will help you, and that you can enjoy yourself during your break.
I've been doing tons of sprints and lifting with fellow vaulters.... Playing pick-up football games, and just enjoying ourselves... because we know how hard we will be working come indoor season.

If you are injured, the most important thing to remember during an off-season is to avoid setbacks. I have a tradition of set-backs with shin splints, trying to come back too early before i give proper rest time, and build up time in my training. Take the time off you need, and build back slowly, VERY slowly. The last thing you want to do is take 6 weeks off from all running, then jump back into your training too hard, only to set yourself back again at the end of your off season.

I have to chime in here.

Becca hit the nail on the head (I think thats how the saying goes.)

My story:

My sophomore year was pretty awesome, though I didn't realize it at the time. I was consistently jumping well over my PR, and was All-East Region, but I still had expectations that were WAY too high for that point in my vaulting life, and I was not satisfied. I worked hard all summer without break, came back to school last year (Junior year) and worked out with our sprints coach. Coach Boogey, the sprints coach, has a work ethic like no other and he whipped us into shape with quantity and quality of his workouts, and in the weight room, I PR'd all of my lifts, some by 40 pounds. This sounds really good, but by the time the season came around, I was worthless. I had pretty much been going nonstop for 16 months, and I didn't record a single official PR last year, my junior year.
To make matters worse, with the mindframe I was in, I figured I had to work harder to get out of the slump, which was completely counterproductive. I was in such bad shape mentally, I had actually decided to quit vaulting. That was this past June.
We decided that the best thing for me was to take the summer off. I got an internship here in Blacksburg designing and programming small microprocessor circuit boards (which was awesome, I LOVED going to work), and picked up my newest non-pole vaulting hobby: mountain biking. I took the summer off all of my rehab schedules, and just worked, rode and visited friends.
I missed vaulting too much and changed my mind, like veryone told me I would, and this year is polar opposite. I am working SMARTER and not HARDER this year, and I am vaulting (voluntarily) better then I have my entire life, that I am just in the process of getting back into good shape.

Long story short: Take some time for yourself, and work SMART, not HARD.

I have a completely different outlook on this year, and if I stay healthy (knock on wood) I am 100 percent sure that I will have enough PR's this year to make up for my antics last year. I am actually enjoying coming out to practice, something that rarely happened in the past 365 days.

Thats my story.

Hello, Becca, yes I did see my name up there

With the school/group that I vault with, we have the school outdoor season which goes from February to mid-June, followed by a three week break or so (usually until just after the fourth of July) for our coach to go on vacation and everyone to adjust to summer, vaulting during the summer twice a week, maybe a week or two off once school starts up again, and then vaulting two to three (when it starts getting dark at 4:30pm) nights a week until the dead period before track.

Of course, the offseason practices are never mandatory...they're there for you if you want to keep on vaulting, and the group that comes is made up of vaulters from a lot of different schools in the area (strangely enough, pretty much all girls...but that's another conundrum). Summer practices are all about being safe and having fun working on technique because, let's face it, if you're not loving what you do, you're not going to make much worthwhile improvement. We rarely do long runs, just short technique stuff and drills on the ropes, swings, pulleys, etc. This is supplemented, of course, by a more rigorous weight and running schedule than we would be doing during the season. In the fall, we still work on technique but gradually get back onto longer runs in prep for Summit and season.

So, do I think that you need a break? Well, if you're feeling excited about it and your body is too, then I think that at least when you're in the position where, as a high schooler with decent coaching, your most needed work is technical, you should go right ahead. However, I wouldn't recommend that if you are into other sports at the time, you give them up just so that you can train year-round. Go do them and perhaps not pole vault as much...it's not going to hurt you (unless it is something particularly risky) and you'll just be all the more psyched to get back into vaulting.

High-intensity vaulting, training, drills all twelve months of the year is not something that I would recommend. Make training fun and focus on different things (more lifting and sprinting than long run vaults) during the summer. They now suspect that my back (and feet) were just from overuse injuries, since I tended to look at pain and think, "Well, if I can't push through it, what drills can I do?" and then do those drills for the entire length of the practice. Not smart, I know that now.

Mentally, I think that it varies from person to person. However, I feel that the high school (this is about high schoolers, mainly, isn't it?) elite vaulters may be under a more demanding mental strain than the rest of us. I can't even imagine what it must feel like to have that constant expectation to win and pr every time, and then to have well-meaning people push you to do your best so that you can get that title, that offer, that scholarship.

If vaulting feels like a job, TAKE A BREAK! Get away from it for a while, think about why you started in the first place, and then come back ready to just have fun again. That's the most fulfilling thing that I have ever seen. Ryan Shuler (GB HS, now going to Cal) decided to do soccer again his senior year, and every time that he came out to say hi at practices he would say how much he couldn't wait to get back. He loved soccer, but not being able to pole vault all of the time made him realize why he was doing it. He had his hard times, but then we can all remember when he blew it up at those last meets. Sometimes the most rewarding thing for a coach or a teammate is not to see someone pr (although that is always great!), but to see their face light up in a way that you know they wouldn't rather be doing anything else in the world.

So, to end this very longwinded response: vault if you can and more importantly WANT to, take a break if your body is rebelling, and take a step back (or more) if you're not having fun. Vaulting is such a unique and fantastic sport that you might as well be having the time of your life when you're doing it (unhindered by any mental or physical blocks). Think about how much more successful you are when you're doing something that you're passionate about than when you're doing something reluctantly because you are required to.

Note: No vaulting for who knows how long. I can ride the exercise bike and do minimal weights/exercises/stretches that don't focus on the back (or at least any arching of it). In another five or so weeks if the back has improved significantly, I can begin jogging (by this time the feet will have healed). After that, more training for the back and progressing to running, sprinting, and vaulting hopefully by December. You know that I'll be excited to get back to it again! (and no, I won't overdo it and hurt myself)

amen to that!! Perfectly said... even opened my mind a little, since i start vaulting into my junior year next sunday, with very high pressures and hopes. But its all for the fun of it!! Great post

hmmm, samis pole vault sounds fun , no wonder i like it there too;)
i think the most important thing about taking a break is the mental part. i chose to not take a break this summer at all. i was worried that in the long run that would burn me out, becuase just by the time the school season is over, i will have been vaulting for over 20 months. when you think of it that way, it sounds ridiculous, but its not like that whole time i will have been doing hardcore stuff.
throughout the whole month of august (when i should have taken a break), i took what i like to call an 'active break.' i vaulting only two times a week, and when i was there i was just having fun and relaxing and talking with my friends, while i was still able to learn a lot. it was only vaults on small poles from 3 rights. meanwhile, i kept my vaulting time limited to the time at practice. once i left practice, there was nothing involved in pole vault. i would think over how i did that practice just for a little bit, but then i forced myself to not mentally be a part of pole vault the rest of the week. and i did absolutely no conditioning or other kind of exercises. pole vault took up about 5 hours of my week, and then the rest of the time was anything but pole vault, going to work, taking trips, hanging out with friends, whatever.
i feel like im gonna start doing conditioning workouts in a little bit so i can get in stronger shape kinda gradually, but im not gonna worry about starting that up right away, cuz i know that i will be more occupied with pole vault in the not too far future.
even though it might have been better for me to absolutely no pole vault in august, i think this way was still really good. because i was so relaxed and enjoying myself instead of stressing, im going to keep that in mind the whole year. i think i will be able to do the best i can at vaulting this year if i find that happy medium between relaxed and having fun, and being intense and competitive, cuz by being a little of both i can vault higher and do well at meets while having fun doing that and working to get those wonderful PRs.
and samis right-the more amazing thing you can give back to your coach is not a PR, but the genuine love for vaulting!

One important part of an off-season can be getting rid of bad habits in your vaulting. This happens when you get rid of the muscle habits, to an extent, that you build up by doing the wrong thing too many times. Problem with this is, you get rid of good muscle habits too. But if you take that time off, then come back in very controlled, you will build up the right muscle habits again. I just think its healthy at a certain point to re-learn some of your technique, because you usually end up re-learning it better than you learned it before.