highschool pole vault

[KirkB]

Yes. Get the plant and swing going smoothly, and the rest of your vault will be easy!

Keep studying vault technique and keep training hard. Lots of repetitions on the highbar, until you get in the groove ...

Good luck!

Kirk Bryde

[vquestpvc]

I believe it is the simplest of fixes regarding a free take off. Do "runovers" (vaulting on the ground) continuously. The elements of a free take off are so incorporated in this drill. First you have to jump up on the pole. Key word being jump. Secondly, you have to have your top hand high at take off. Thirdly, the trail leg will instinctively be back and long preparing to land on it in the front (but no bumping of the pole with the trail leg......extend off the trail leg foot instead). Try not to "free take off" doing this drill; sarcasm sometimes is lost in the written word. Of course one can be completely uncoordinated and not do this drill, but perhaps that individual should not be vaulting. So, one must jump up on the pole, extending their top hand completely up while swinging through in front of him or her landing on the take off foot. This also helps in developing the drive leg. To determine if you are doing this drill well one should finish in a straight line and with some speed. Additionally, as one gets better, raise the top hand for this drill. Now, no matter what you're doing in the pit, a four step drive drill, six step inversion drill or a full approach, you want to get as close to the feeling of taking off that you have with "runovers". If my vaulters are having difficulty at a meet taking off, they are asked to go do a few runovers. Recently one of my vaulters was losing it and could not take off correctly at which point he was asked to do runovers. He returned to the pit to PR. Isn't the top pretty? A vaulter will never maximize his or her performance without a good approach and take off. Sometimes when being "under" the fix isn't to move back, but to ask yourself: "am I jumping up on the pole. And regarding the swing to inversion, ask a soccer player if he'd be able to kick a ball very far if he doesn't extend the kicking leg. Can't be under and extend that trail leg to a successful inversion.

[KirkB]

Kirk Bryde

[loganvaulter]

ok ive got another question for you kirk. ive gotten a better take off but im still not consistently inverting. the only thing left to blame is my swing, i keep my leg straight and strong through the whole swing, but for what i can tell and from what my coach says, i am swinging to early, im guessing this is stopping me from inverting but why? and if so what can i do to hold my c longer?

[KirkB]

I doubt that you're swinging too early, but I'd need to see some vid before I know for sure.

Maybe you're swinging too LATE!

Or maybe you're not swinging as well as you think you are.

Or maybe the root cause is in your plant or takeoff?

Kirk Bryde

[KirkB]

I don't believe that you can easily learn to invert without daily access to a high bar.

Logan: Just quoting some wisdom from Alan Launder - author of the From Beginner to Bubka (BTB) books. Have you read BTB2?

And are you following his advice?

It's not just ACCESS to the highbar that's needed - you actually have to USE IT daily!

Or at least a minimum of 3 days a week (if not 4 or 5).

Kirk Bryde

[vquestpvc]

Five days? Your take off improved in five days? Maybe a little better, but not good enough to invert well. You'll need literally 100s of reps to get to the point where you can learn to keep the trail leg back at take off, stretching out the muscles, whereby the "whip" will take care of its self. The horizontal bar is advantageous to learning the leg whip (for that matter learning to vault.....high hands, eye focus, taking off with trail leg back, etc, etc, etc), but unfortunately most HS vaulters don't have access to one. Good news, it can still be learn with proper technique through short approach take off drills; see attachment......not one rep on a high bar, but literally 100s of take off drills. Bad news, takes time, patience and the eye of a good looker on........coach, etc. A cue we use is taking off high on the take off foot extending off the toe. It means for a split second you are holding the trail leg back before it whips.

[loganvaulter]

kirk, i think i figured something out today. the weather is bad here today so no vaulting but i was in doing rope drills testing a few things. i think i am swinging late, this is partly because i am not always doing a free take off so i am behind the pole. (when it bends before im off theogroung ) on top of the fact that my coach has been stressing holding your c longer, i think that when i hold it to long i loose the flex and get a not only late but weak trail leg. this leads me to the rope drills. i was testing this. i did a few where i held my c from take off as long as i could then wiped my leg down . on these is was noticeably harder to invert, i has to pull with my arms. and i paused , it was not fluid. on a few other i worked on not waiting as long and wiping my trail leg when i still had the flex. it was a night and day difference, it was very fluid and took not were near as much upper body effort , then i looked at the vids. and i saw that on the one i did best at inverting i was not only free take off but also had a sooner and more powerful swing where the others the position of my swing relative to the bending pole was way behind. this is in part my take off but also i think i need to focus more on really wiping my trail leg when i still have the flex. how does this sound?

[KirkB]

i think that when i hold it too long i lose the flex and get a not only late but weak trail leg.

Very good observations! You can still have a powerful trail leg if you hold the C too long, but you definitely lose "efficiency" as I explain below.

If you haven't already seen it, I refer you to this thread: http://www.polevaultpower.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=23600 which I just bumped today. Understanding Superpipe's analysis, and following his advice here is key.

I'm not sure if you've read my Bryde Bend thread, but if you have, and in case you didn't read the very last posts in that thread, and subsequent posts where I talked about the efficiency of my short run vaults in comparison to my competition (long run) vaults, I want to be perfectly clear that my short runs were far more efficient than my long runs. You should NOT pause in the C.

You need to STRETCH to the C, but then immediately pop back out of it as you begin your VIGOROUS downswing.

I think that this verifies what you've just discovered through your own vid analysis and experimentation on the rope.

Search for keywords "kirk downswing" (no space between "down" and "swing") and you will find other relevant posts re this.

The way that Agapit and DJ (and some other posters) have quite rightly explained this in various posts, Agapit's CONTINUOUS CHAIN MODEL (search for that thread) describes how the CoG must ALWAYS be moving UPWARDS without ANY passive states. HOLDING the C position is a passive state that loses valuable time in getting the CoG up as high as possible as quickly as possible. Agapit focuses on the CONTINUITY aspect of this, and DJ explains the TIME aspect of this quite well.

Once you understand this theory, and once you believe in it, then it's just a matter of putting it into practice in all of your training!

Kirk Bryde

[loganvaulter]

another question, would creating more space with my arms help with my swing?

[KirkB]

... would creating more space with my arms help with my swing?

No!

"Creating more space with my arms" means doing something with your BOTTOM arm to alter the way the pole bends, or alter the way you swing.

Both of these are wrong, wrong, wrong!

The bottom arm should not be used to initiate your swing. It should be top arm only, using your top hand as the fulcrum of your swing.

A smooth, tall plant, free takeoff, good jump on takeoff, quick C, and vigorous trail-leg whip is all you need to improve your swing.

I personally never worried about what my bottom hand or arm was doing. I only used it during my run to balance the pole, and after takeoff I only used it for a bit of balance - no push, no pull, no nothing.

Once I finished my downswing (roughly when passing the chord), then about half of the weight of my body started to be distributed off my top arm and onto my bottom arm. It was only during the upswing/inversion that the muscles in the bottom arm began to be used strenuously, in unison with my top arm muscles and core muscles (just like in a kip to handstand on highbar).

Kirk

[KirkB]

... would creating more space with my arms help with my swing?

No!

"Creating more space with my arms" means doing something with your BOTTOM arm to alter the way the pole bends, or to alter the way you swing.

Both of these are wrong, wrong, wrong!

The bottom arm should not be used to initiate your swing. It should be top arm only, using your top hand as the fulcrum of your swing.

Note that I'm referring to the Petrov Model.

A smooth, tall plant, free takeoff, good jump on takeoff, quick C, and vigorous trail-leg whip is all you need to improve your swing.

And don't think that you need to "create space with your bottom arm" to bend the pole. It will bend naturally just by the force of the top arm on impact.

I personally never worried about what my bottom hand or arm was doing. I only used it during my run to balance the pole, and after takeoff I only used it for a bit of balance - no push, no pull, no nothing.

Once I finished my downswing (roughly when passing the chord), then about half of the weight of my body started to be distributed off my top arm and onto my bottom arm. It was only during the upswing/inversion that the muscles in the bottom arm began to be used strenuously, in unison with my top arm muscles and core muscles (just like in a kip to handstand on highbar).

Kirk