The Bryde Bend (Jump to the Split)

[volteur]

ah i'm just a little frustrated right now with the current job i have - so much money is spent in this institute on high performance and all i see are wrong fundamentals everywhere. Wrong postures, wrong strength/technical balances, wrong rhythms, wrong psychologies. And only a few of the coaches are open enough to be able to change. Egomania abounds. I'm so lucky NZ Vaulter has already educated himself so well in the coaching side of the sport and has the right brain to move forward in understanding quickly enough. I'm also glad he is a good enough athlete to develop quickly in his vault training. He had 10.90 and over 7m in his recent past before he thought injuries were going to stop his career, hence his move to coaching and developing a 13 year old girl from 2.70 to 3.95 in 8 months). Now we are working together on this girl there could be a Youth title next July for her as a 15 year old. Now he is back training and learning the free model or Petrov model, although i can't say i'm using the Petrov model exactly i am following the same fundamental principles. I could probably say i'm following the Petrov/ Julian Shuravetsky model but even that doesn't describe it. I'm following the Winter model of athletics inspired by Shuravetsky senior and junior, senior in the sense of overall understanding, programming, periodisation. Shuravetsky junior in terms of technical understanding. Petrov as the best technician in the sport i'm aware of. Lydiard as the best conditioning expert in the sport. Cerutty as the best overall coach - conditioning, technique and psychology. Bruce Lee as the master of human mechanics. I'm sure they are the main ones but really i learn something off just about everyone, whether it's to do with sport or simply life, personal stuff, interpersonal stuff, spiritual stuff and so on.

Kirk, continuous learning is the key for me and i can see this strongly in you. I can see this strongly in North America far moreso than my native Australia. This particular forum is a key example. This and letsrun.

Kirk i think one month with Petrov and you would have his understanding well into your brain. When you say you preceded Petrov i can't agree totally but i do agree your mind is such that you are already thinking along those lines. One month. Go to Formia for a holiday man

peace back at ya

[powerplant42]

Let me know if you do, maybe I'll come with you!

[KirkB]

Before I tell you about my 1971 Pac-8 Championships Meet, I felt compelled to do a little last-minute research ...

You already know how strongly I feel about the Laws of Physics. And I don't believe in HOROSCOPES at all. I'll admit to reading HOROSCOPES once in awhile for the FUN of it, but that's about it. There's no scientific basis for HOROSCOPES .

But is there any scientific basis for BIORHYTHMS? I've often wondered about this over the years, but I've never really read much about them. After the Pac-8, my friends told me that "my BIORHYTHMS must have peaked on that day". I didn't know whether to believe them or not. Back then, you couldn't just google any topic to research it in 60 seconds or less. You'd have to refer to the dictionary, the encyclopedia, or maybe go to the library to research the topic. I didn't bother to do any of that.

Today, I finally GOOGLED "biorhythm athletic".

You know how you wake up, excited about the meet that's going to start in a few hours, and you stretch your muscles out, in kind of a yawning way? Especially if you've been training really hard, and then rested the day before the meet? My muscles were telling me that they were ready for a GREAT day of vaulting!!!

I had a feeling that I was about to "hit it lucky" in the Pac-8 Meet. I was finally healthy, I felt strong, and I was well-rested. I woke up the morning of the meet feeling ENERGIZED! And full of CONFIDENCE!

Today would be the day that I would vault over a bar set at SEVENTEEN FEET! I knew it! I could FEEL it! This wasn't just blind, brash optimism or wishful thinking. It was calm, matter-of-fact CONFIDENCE.

So was that my BIORHYTHM peaking on the perfect day?

Well, I got my answer in less than 60 seconds. This link ...

http://www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/cu ... o=ED262014

... happened to be just what I was looking for - a scientific analysis of "The Relationship between Record Setting Athletic Performance and Biorhythms".

Conclusion: "... there is no reason to believe that university record setting would be influenced by biorhythms in any manner".

That's good enough for me. Case closed.

But I thought I'd better check a few more sites, so the next one was actually a not-so-bad explanation of the 3 cycles - the Physical, Emotional, and Intellectual Cycles. You can find that link here: http://www.shengwuzhong.com/english.htm

I did find another link here ... http://www.faniq.com/blog/Sports-Biorhythm-Blog-10625 ... called "Sports Biorhythm - Scott's Sports Rhetoric". But he used so many bloody technical terms - trying to convince me (overkill) of his trust in biorhythms in predicting sports performances - that I decided that his title was correct - Sports "RHETORIC". Ironically, he over-sold his scientific arguments to the point that I just decided that his entire blog was useless.

So going back to the 2nd link, which didn't seem like rhetoric, I found out that apparently ...

"Biorythmic cycles start at the day we are born and run for a lifetime. They are triggered by hormones released at birth and your birth date is day one for each of the three cycles. These cycles are independent of environmental cycles such as day and night or the seasons."

Hmm ... although apparently not affected by the sun or the seasons, that sounds an awful lot like a HOROSCOPE to me! You mean to tell me that these hormones that are released at birth set your BIORHYTHM for the rest of your life? And that these 23, 28, and 33-day cycles are EXACTLY 23, 28, and 33 days each, from the moment you're born?

So these cycles are on exact multiples of the time it takes the earth to rotate around the sun, but they're unrelated to "day and night"? Nope, sorry ... I don't buy it.

To me, it sounds like a BIORHYTHM is just a HOROSCOPE in sheep's clothing.

OK, I guess I've got this post out of the way. I might have "hit it lucky" in the Pac-8 Meet, but I think I can finally conclude that it wasn't because of a peak in my BIORHYTHM, or when my physical, emotional, and intellectual cycles intersected.

My crude calculations tell me that these 3 cycles might (I'm not sure) intersect about once every 29 years.

Perhaps Volteur can come up with a theory (hopefully scientifically based) about how my BIORHYTHM on that day coincided with the FIFTH DIMENSION of PV? haha, just kidding!

Next post, I promise less chaff, more wheat!

Kirk

[volteur]

fantastic a chance to talk about metaphysics in this thread again - just kidding Kirk.

seriously though i haven't looked into biorhyhms at all but i have been developing an understanding of astrology these past 5 years. It began with a friend of mine who had known about is for a long time and had been looking at it in his own people orientated way. It started with him pointing out a few things about some people we both knew and each of these little insights seemed eerily correct to me. So i looked into it but nothing made real sense to me. Later he pointed out a few things about myself which also seemed eerily on the money but again my readings didn't lead to any insights of my own. fast forward a year and i started going out with a woman who had also been into it most of her adult life and then one day she gave me a book which finally showed me the angle i was looking for.

See astrology can be approached from two directions and my long term friend, who i first met in the leadup to World Juniors back in 1990, was able to understand the behavioural side of it naturally, the way people behave angle. Not for me though. I was of a different kind of thinker and it was this book which explained the geometry of astrology that led me to see it's amazing accuracy. This geometry or physics way of looking in seemed to me without flaw. I understood it quite completely over a few weeks. So now i had renewed faith there was something up and plunged into the behavioural side and began to find little connections all over the place. Now a few years on i am in no way able to see behaviors like he can but i am on my way.

Having been a student of psychology ever since university i can now say that astrology is more a accurate and more complete way of looking into ones own behaviour and the behaviour of others and the behaviour that exists between people. I would suggest to anyone who is good at looking outside the square to check it out. The final nail in the coffin so to speak came when i had my full chart read by an actual astrologer. As i went into the meeting with her i quickly discovered she not only knew me better than i knew myself, but she was careful about bringing up certain things about myself that i would find hard to take. She was in effect a counsellor of the highest order and led to to understand some of the ways i behave and how to go about working on myself in the future to overcome these difficulties.

if anyone is interested check out http://www.astro.com and under my astro put down the details of your birth and simply see what it has to say to you. Whilst still generic in a sense and less detailed than what an actual astrologer would give you it is far more detailed than any newspaper would provide. Astrology works on cycles just as biorhtyhms do, just as everything in the universe does. Just think about the cycles within and around us and you will see the extreme importance of them. The day, the month, the year, the breathing cycle, the heart beat cycle, the cycle of the seasons, the cyclical way we tend to train with micro, macro and meso all interacting throughout the training year. Everything is cyclical. Hell the rhythm we follow when we leave the ground to do a vault is cyclical. Gravity causes this.

cycle away

[powerplant42]

Try reading someone else's horoscope and see if it still applies to you... the power of suggestion is one of the most powerful psychological forces out there.

[volteur]

this is true powerplant but only because all horoscopes share the same underlying fundamental factors which are then specifically applied in a certain pattern for an individual. If you only look at newspaper or magazine horoscopes you will get highly generic versions, after all they only give 12 options and whilst people do fall into these 12 categories, of the 6 billion odd people alive today .5 of a billion are not identical. It is when things become specific to the exact time of the day they were born and the exact place on earth they were born does astrology start to be come specific for you as an individual.

Did you do the astro.com experiment on yourself?

[KirkB]

fantastic a chance to talk about metaphysics in this thread again

Yikes! I should have know better than to bring up horoscopes and biorhythms on this thread.

I wasn't worried so much about getting side-tracked talking about horoscopes, because they're "out there" in the 5th dimension, I'm sure.

I did expect some negative feedback about biorhythms, though, since there seems to be stronger claims that they're scientifically based. But after doing my research yesterday, I'm convinced that biorhythms are also in THE 5TH DIMENSION!

I'm really fascinated by both these topics. In fact, they're so fascinating that they deserve a thread all their own, don't you think? Perhaps the "Metaphysics - the 5th Dimension of PV" thread?

hint, hint.

Kirk

[KirkB]

Well, my next post was going to be about my 1971 Pac-8 Meet, but that will have to wait.

Instead, here's some nostalgic thoughts I had today, inspired by a few other active PVP threads, including ACvault's "The wrong idea and the possible dangers" post: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=16403 ...

and also the last paragraph of Tim's second post on his "Chronicles" thread: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=16386

Rainbow Girl mentioned a lot of things that reminded me of my start ...

... athletes of very average natural ability levels can generally achieve success (at the local level) if they work really hard to learn the technique. This does require ... the time and effort needed to improve both their technique and physical abilities (improve on their weakest points).

Obviously as you reach the higher levels of prep vaulting and into college, physical limitations will weed out the less gifted, but we are just talking about regular high school vaulting.

That's what I thought too, but somehow I progressed on to college, with some success in my last two years. It took some luck to get a college scholarship, and a LITTLE BIT of high-jumping ability (read on) but mostly hard work and determination. Even if you don't reach all of your goals, you can still have fun trying!

The point is that you have to BELIEVE that you can clear the bar at whatever height you set it to, else you're doomed from the start. And that bar is a metaphor for ANY challenge that you might meet in your life.

And you know what? Even if you have "physical limitations", you can overcome these too! Just ask me ... or read on ...

Stubborness, bull-headedness, and a total disregard for PERCEIVED physical limitations are important attributes of aspiring young wanna-be vaulters. Just ask me.

There is a difference between kids who lack physical abilities and kids who are reckless daredevils.

Hmm ... I didn't realize that! I was both!

I am slow as dirt. When I started track ... I ... had horrible running form ... I wasn't very good at pole vault either ... But I worked really really hard, my running form improved ... I can honestly say that few ... worked as hard as I did ...

Ditto.

If I had tried to succeed in the hurdles, maybe I could have made it to tri-districts, but certainly not to state.

At about age 14, I once tried hurdles at a Jr. Development meet. I knocked down every hurdle, and came last. My uncle laughed so hard that I never ran another hurdle race. He didn't mean to insult me, but that was the reality check that I needed to realize that maybe I needed to start specializing in some event OFF the track. Little did I realize at the time that you needed to be fast to be a good pole vaulter. Thank goodness no one laughed at me when I pole vaulted. Seriously, if a coach only picks sprinters to vault, then I wouldn't have made the cut.

So in conclusion, certainly to be a world-class pole vaulter, you need a certain level of athleticism that some people will just never have. But I do think it can be a sport for nearly any high school athlete provided they are not reckless and are willing to work hard at it.

On the one hand, I agree full-heartedly with Rainbow Girl. On the other hand, I did become a "world-class pole vaulter" (9th highest SB in 1971). And I was infamous for being "reckless".

The difference, I think, is that I was a late bloomer. I never shaved until I was about 17-18 years old, and my physique matured accordingly.

The lesson learned here is that you should not be discouraged from trying to become a pole vaulter in high school just because you're skinny, slow, or unathletic. I was all of those - especially in Jr. High.

As coaches, I think it vital that we recruit the best kids on the track team to the pole vault. But I also think that we should not run away that slow kid who is working their tail off. That kid could be a great coach someday.

Or a world-class vaulter! You never know! That's the thing! You will never know how good you can become if you don't try. And try. And try. Coaches should not give up on kids lacking athleticism, and kids should not shy away from pole vaulting just because it's DIFFICULT at first. If it wasn't DIFFICULT, it wouldn't be nearly as FUN and CHALLENGING! If you think like I do, that is. It's all in your ATTITUDE!

I'm living proof that pole vaulters are made - not born. To say this even stronger, pole vaulters are SELF-MADE. As a fledgling vaulter, your success depends much more on YOUR attitude and YOUR determination than on any god-given talent, or super-coach.

Like Becca, I too was a very slow, ungifted athlete who was simply willing to practice harder than anyone else to become good at something.

This was a fairly long pre-amble, and it's getting late, so I'll leave the story of "My First Vault" until tomorrow ...

Stay tuned.

Kirk

[KirkB]

My First Year of Vaulting

My story goes back to when I was in Grade 6 ...

I was reminded of my first vault by Tim's mention of his first vault in his Chronicles post yesterday. (A very, very interesting thread, BTW. Tim, you have a very interesting story to tell, and you know how to tell it! Go for it!)

Perhaps the story that I'm about to tell belongs in the Historical forum, or maybe even the Pre-Historical forum , but it's a precursor to how I arrived at my BB technique, so here goes ...

My sister and I attended a two-room elementary school on Sumas Prairie (an hour's drive from Vancouver), and before school, at recess, at lunch, and after school while waiting for the bus, we high-jumped. No pit - just grass. With about 40 students in the school in Grades 1-6, I was actually one of the best jumpers - only my sister jumped higher. Perhaps that's where I gained my self-confidence and ego - thinking that I was a pretty good athlete. Everything's relative!

We had Sports Day in Stanley Park, Vancouver every year - the big school event of the year - and I would always win a bunch of ribbons. High-jump, three-legged race, you name it. Yeh, I was a gifted athlete all right ... I forget how many were in my grade, but if you divide 40 by 6 grades and split the boys from the girls, they were basically "participation" ribbons!

As if HJ training at the school wasn't enough to guarantee a blue ribbon, my sister and I rigged up a pair of standards and cross-bar in our farm-yard at home. Sometimes we'd practice for hours, just for the sheer joy of clearing the bar and seeing how high we could go. She was a year older than me, and we were pretty good competition for each other. But mostly, we just worked on our PRs. We used the scissors technique, and a bamboo crossbar. It was too thin, so it had a big dip in it. Part of our technique was to aim at clearing the part of the bar where it dipped the most.

I had heard of pole vaulting before, probably from reading about the 1960 Olympics (or some other track meet) in the newspaper. I don't really remember how I first heard of it, but I had a vague idea of what it was.

My sister usually jumped a bit higher than me. Then an idea struck me! I found a 1"x3" piece of wood, about 5 feet tall. Again, I don't remember too many of the details, but I remember whittling two handgrips, to prevent slivers and to make it easier to grip. The grips were perhaps a foot apart, and my technique was much more like a "high-jump with a boost" than traditional pole vault technique. I eventually cleared 5-4 with it that year.

One funny story ... I had been practicing my new HJ-with-a-boost technique for a couple days, while my dad was away at work. One day when he came home, I hid my "pole" behind a tree, set the bar to about 5 feet, and called my dad to come out and watch me "jump". My PR at the time was several inches lower than that. I bet him that I could clear it, and he fell for it - thinking that I was going to try to HJ over it. Well, he was pleasantly suprised and impressed at my ingenuity when I brought out my "pole" from behind the tree and proceeded to clear the bar with it!

And THAT was the start of my PV career!

The next year, I moved to a eight-room elementary school for Grade 7. That's where reality started to set in. They had a lot of big guns in that school! Heck, they had a separate classroom for each grade! They didn't have PV there, but I competed in the high-jump on Sports Day, and I expected to win, because I'd been practicing for several weeks before the big event, and I'd been beating everyone else that came out for practice. But then another "farm boy", who was much taller than myself, and much more physically mature, lined up for the event. He went higher than me without even practicing! Yeh, he took me down a notch that day, when I went home with the red ribbon instead of the blue.

The year was 1962, and in March of that year, John Uelses set a WR - the first man over 16 feet. It was front page news and I heard about it the day after it happened. I was keenly aware of worldly PV events, yet I was still "just a kid" - in my own little world on my makeshift HJ standards in our farm-yard.

Though I now knew about the wonders of vaulting with a fiberglass pole, a kid my age and size couldn't just order one. They weren't yet readily available.

That summer, I continued to experiment with various types of poles - pipes, tree branches, a bean pole, whatever I could find. I upped my PR that summer to 6-0. I was still just playing around. I had no meets to train for.

My next dose of reality set in when I first tried pole vaulting at school in Grade 8. We were actually taught the event as part of our PE curriculum, and I practiced at noon hour and after school, just for the fun of it. By this time, I was gripping the pole properly, and taking a "proper" run at it, into a "proper" box. With my extra practice on my own setup at home, I was foolish enough to think that I had an edge on the other Grade 8 guys. I'd been training for quite a few days that Spring, and the best I did that year was 7-6.

One sunny day after school when the gym was closed, a couple of my basketball buddies came over and tried it themselves. They had taken the same PE training as me, but not nearly as much practicing. Yet, they easily topped my PR. That was a little bit discouraging for me. My buddies showed no interest in TRAINING - they were more interested in just "goofing off" after school. I practiced alone. Back then, you couldn't really call it "training". It was just practicing the vault over and over again, without any drills or coaching.

But I was doing quite a few things that were the equivalent to gymnastics training. We had a number of ropes tied up in trees and in the rafters of our barn, and we swung on them (and climbed up them) quite a bit - just for the sheer joy (and danger!) of swinging out over the feed lot, or out over a gulley. We also did flips and other tricks off the ropes, landing in the hay loft.

In our yard and on the rug in our rec room, we also did handstands, cartwheels, hand-walking, back-flips, cheer-leading type tricks, and various other "floor-excercise" type tricks. Another favorite habit of mine was to simply jump up and see how high I could reach on the beams of our kitchen. I drove my mother crazy doing this kind of stuff in the house, so she often sent us to the barn on a rainy day, and we would spend hours and hours playing in the hay loft. (I have 2 sisters and 3 brothers.) You must understand that this wasn't structured play. I didn't do gymnastic drills to become a better pole vaulter or high jumper. I did them simply for the fun of it, playing with my siblings!

That's the difference between a "farm boy" and a "city slicker". Farm boys like me got strong and wiry by working and playing on the farm and in the bush. City slickers didn't get this opportunity. Instead, they joined formal gym classes and played formal sports. Tim McMichael was a farm boy. Jan Johnson was also a farm boy. He's told me stories about pole vaulting over bales of hay, etc. Casey Carrigan also grew up on a farm - or at least a home with lots of acreage, where he and his brothers built their own PV pit. There's something to be said for this type of unstructured play, and also for having your own pit without needing to travel to a school.

Between work and play on the farm, I was very tired at the end of most days - the equivalent of a formal workout.

I decided that maybe with enough extra practice - at school and at home, I could vault higher than my more athletic "competition". After all, on Sports Day, they didn't ask you how much you had practiced. They just cared about what height you could clear. Whoever cleared the highest on Sports Day got the blue ribbon!

So I ordered a bamboo pole thru a rug company, and it was imported from Japan. It wasn't a PV pole, it was just a pole that was used for rolling up rugs. I had read stories about Cornelius Warmerdam in books from the library, and bamboo just sounded like a good alternative at the time. I knew about the aluminum and steel poles that Bob Richards used too, but for some strange reason, I chose bamboo. It didn't just fall into my lap - I chose it, and I took the time and effort to order it thru the rug company.

I also continued to HJ thru my Jr. High years, changing from scissors to the western roll, but I had already come to realize that I was never going to win any blue ribbons in HJ on Sports Day. There were just too many young, gifted athletes that could jump higher - seemingly without much training.

Besides playing and working on the farm, I participated in many different sports in my elementary and Jr. High years, including soccer, softball, and basketball. Starting in Grade 8, I spent much more time shooting hoops in our driveway than I did pole vaulting or high jumping. But there were certain periods of each year where the focus was more on one sport than the other. I didn't have a single-minded focus on any one sport.

Basketball was a definite benefit to my HJ and PV. The way I played and practiced, I did a lot of rebounding and jumping high in the air on layups and jump shots. If I had one exceptional skill, I would have to say that it was my ability to leap into the air. But I think even that was due to my HJ experience in elementary school, which I think was probably highly unusual. The body adapts to the force applied to it, and I think that's how I gained my above average leaping ability.

Grade 8 was the year that I really got the PV bug, and started studying the event as thoroughly as I could. I remember going to the public library, and reading about Bob Richards winning the 1952 and 1956 Olympics. On my way home from the library, on a whim, I said to myself "I'm going to pole vault in the Olympics some day!". I remember this so vividly! I remember getting so excited about that possibility! It wasn't just "wishful thinking" at all. It was much more than that! It was me being so ignorant of what it took to "make it to the Olympics" that I foolhardedly BELIEVED that I would actually do it some day! Talk about visualization!

"The Sky's the LImit" Bob Richards used to say, and I used that saying as a catalyst to stimulate my dream! My excitement overtook my body! I had huge smile on my face, as I realized that I WOULD BE GOING TO THE OLYMPICS! NO DOUBT ABOUT IT! At the time, there should have been many, many doubts of whether or not I could actually reach that dream, but on that day - foolish as I was - there was no doubt at all! I kept that little secret to myself!

Today, it's quite surreal to me that I could say something so ridiculous to myself ... and then actually achieve it!

Thinking back to what actually happened next is really even more silly. You would think that I'd set in motion a training plan to reach my dream. You'd think that I'd buy a fiberglass pole, and start learning how to use it. Well, that's not what happened.

The year was 1963, and John Pennel had set the WR 3 times, and Brian Sternberg 7 times. As a "sports nut", I subscribed to Sports Illustrated, and read the sports page of the Vancovuer Sun every day. I knew about these amazing athletes and their fiberglass poles. You'd think I'd plead with my dad to buy me one of these poles!

It didn't happen that way. I didn't put any plan into action to get one. I could have. If I had the where-with-all to order a bamboo pole from Japan, surely I could figure out how to get my hands on a fiberglass pole! Instead, for the next year or two, I set aside thoughts about competing in the Olympics, as more and more reality set in, and as I realized what a mere mortal I was, and what it really took to become an Olympic athlete. I still wasn't "driven" to achieve my dream. I continued to vault in Grade 9, switching to steel. And speaking of switching, I also switched from right-handed to left-handed vaulting that year, but still had no long-term plans re a PV career.

This all changed again the following year - in Grade 10 - once I got my hands on my first fiberglass pole. You know - the one that I mentioned here: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=162 !!!

Suddenly, I transformed from an also-ran steel vaulter to a kid with a secret weapon - a fiberglass pole! And suddenly, the challenge wasn't "Who was the best - fastest and strongest - steel vaulter in the school?". The challenge became "Who was daredevil enough and willing enough to put in all the hours and days and weeks of training to learn how to master this new-fangled pole?"

I didn't waste any time waiting for anyone to challenge me. I jumped at the chance to "become the best I could be" on a fiberglass pole, which suited me to a T because I didn't need to be that strong or that fast to jump high. That's when I set my sites back on "vaulting in the Olympics". I still dreamed of getting a college basketball scholarship, but that too was a pipe dream. I was a second-string BB player who could shoot and rebound, but my defense sucked. I was so slow that whoever I was guarding could easily breeze past me.

Really, I didn't have any PV challengers in the Fraser Valley (a district of about a half-hour's drive east and west of my home town of Abbotsford). I was the only one that used a fiberglass pole, so in Sr. High I was going 2-4 feet higher than everyone else. It was just me against the bar. My only competition was in meets in Vancouver - against the so-called city slickers!

Part of my new PV career plan was to vault for an American university. That would get me to the Olympics, I decided. So my Grade 8 dream, which didn't seem too hopeful in Grades 9-10, became a revived possibility in the summer of Grade 10, when I got my orange beauty and fell in love with it at first site! Now you know why!

There are parts of this story that still seem somewhat surreal to me. But I swear that this entire post is 100% truthful. If I was going to make any of it up, it would have had a better flow, with me dreaming of the Olympics, and then promptly proceeding to fulfil my dreams. It just didn't happen that way. To the best of my recollection, it happened the way I just described it.

Well, that's it! Any questions?

As Bob Richards inspired me, I hope that I can inspire one of you to some day "be the best you can be"!

Kirk

[KirkB]

We've had some discussions recently about the "high pole carry", so I dug up this newspaper pic from my scrapbook and scanned it ...

Bryde'sHighPoleCarry1972 (cropped).JPG (123.96 KiB) Viewed 13802 times

The quality isn't that great ... but this pic shows how far to the side I carried the pole, and how loosely I gripped it with my left (bottom) hand ... with the weight on my thumb, and the forefinger wrapped around the pole. You can see my other three fingers dangling in the air.

I modeled my pole carry after Kjell Isaksson, who I saw vault this way at the Porland Indoor in 1971. A week later, after copying his "high pole carry" technique, I raised my practice PR by a full foot ... from 15-6 to 16-6!

This is a 16-0 (4.90) Catapole 550+, and I'm gripping it at 15-4. Unfortunately due to the pic quality, you can't see how loosely I'm holding the pole with my left (top) hand, but it's an open grip ... and I'm gripping only with my thumb and forefinger.

My understanding from other posters describing the Petrov Model is that the "proper" way to hold the pole at the beginning of your run is not as far to the side. Rather, your bottom arm should apparently be fairly central on your body ... right in front of your sternum.

Obviously, I didn't have the benefit of learning the Petrov Model back in 1971 ... when Bubka was only 8 years old. Had I known what Petrov taught, would I have modified my grip to hold the pole closer to my sternum? I'm not sure. I'm not even sure if Isaksson carried the pole to the side like me, or more like Bubka. I guess I would have experimented with it, but the pole carry you see in this pic is the pole carry that felt most comfortable to me.

This pic is proof that Bubka wasn't the first vaulter to use the high pole carry. I used it in 1971-72, and to my knowledge, Isaksson was the only vaulter that used it before me. I was quite surprised that the high pole carry never really caught on until the mid-1980s ... when Bubka popularized it.

Kirk

[KirkB]

The pics on the first page of this thread (Posts #4 and #5) are no longer displaying, so here they are:

https://plus.google.com/photos/115885108345672481185/albums/5862500358639558273?authkey=COaVtLGG3rzcQw

Kirk Bryde