Bubka Heresy One

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Bubka Heresy One

Unread postby Tim McMichael » Fri Apr 21, 2006 12:11 pm

Several years ago, I asked Petrov about copying Bubka . His answer took me by surprise. He told me that the brilliance of the American vaulters was in innovation and that no copy could ever be as good as the original. I think he was right. We can, and should, copy basic principles and try to improve on them if possible, but copying the exact positions of a particular athlete is not a good idea.

Now I am going to commit heresy.

Bubka often went over the bar like someone tossed a bale of hay in the air. (An Oklahoma expression) He pulled through his extension and turn with his left hand alone and sometimes let go of the pole so early that it actually jumped out of the box. He cleared world records going over the bar on his right side with his left arm extended and his right arm tucked back awkwardly. He was always fighting over rotation. If you look closely at the bar level shot of his monster world championship jump in Athens you can see that he almost hits it with his left knee. His center of gravity makes it by about a foot; his knee by about four inches. Bubka was great, the greatest ever, don’t get me wrong, but his sheer power, I think, blinds us to the fact that there were imperfections. He may be a great model to follow, but I am tired of hearing that he was perfect. There is no such thing.

I realize I might be burned at the stake for saying things like this

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Unread postby fx » Fri Apr 21, 2006 12:43 pm

I realize I might be burned at the stake for saying things like this


hahahaha yes.
Any more imperfections of Bubka you can think of?

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Unread postby altius » Fri Apr 21, 2006 3:22 pm

Tim - Love you work as they say -you are obviously going to contribute an immense amount to this forum. However i would make the following points

1. The issue is not so much what Bubka did on every jump - or any specific jump - but what he was TRYING to do. Anyone who was in Jamaica for his presentation there would have come away with the view that he knew precisely what he was trying to achieve technically.

2. Petrov has been to Adelaide and I have watched him working with my vaulters - I have been to Formia several times and always the evidence suggested that he has a very clear technical model in his mind and was always working towards it.

3. He has immense respect for US vaulters and as you know based many of his ideas on what the best of those did in the 70s- and of course he credits Warmerdam with many of the ideas that underpinned his methods.

4. At the Europeans in Munich in O2, in response to a direct question from me as we watched the vault, Bubka said that there were many vaulters - especially in the US who had more athleticism than he - it was their technique that was holding them back - he could not understand why they did not copy his technical model.

5. While Gibilisco is not a Bubka it is pretty easy to see the same underlying technical model when he jumps. Ditto Markov in many elements of his jumps -although he was not coached by Vitali. I also saw those same principles applied when agapit lived with us for over a year. Any athlete that Alex Parnov coaches in Perth - including his 15 year old daughter represents that model.

6/ Every jump a vaulter makes is going to be different if only by thousands of a second in the timing or millimetres in the movement path. So when you watch a jump - that is all you see one jump. You are right about that Athens jump. however consider the situation. He was the five time defending champion - he had only had 2 or 3 comps that season - he was behind in the competition - tarasov had cleared 5.96 (and had made it very clear ot everyone in the stadium -including Sergey that he had won) - Sergey had passed 96 and Maxim was pretty telling him it was over!!. He had to make this jump! If you take a look at his preparation for it when he was on the runway the concentration and determination were written all over his face. I suspect that on that jump, more than any other he took in his life I suspect -he dug deep down into his whole being -physical and mental - so what you saw was a toal expresion of a performance where getting the job done was the primary consideration hence a pretty untidy jump at the top after a ginormous take off and whip. But compare the top of that jump with the one on the front cover of BTB where he was clearly in absolute control.

7 I am not ssaying what you learnt from him was not true but Vitali's English is pretty average to say the least. When i first met him in 1985 it was only possible to communicate through an interpreter -fortunately one of athletes spoke fluent Russian. Even then it was difficult to believe what he was telling me. In Munich in 02 any conversation was still a grab bag of Russian, Unkranian, italian and English so you have to be very careful with the ideas you leave with.

8.. I respect your views - the length of this missive confirms that. However I hope you do not lead a charge back to the notion that every jumper should jump his or her own way and that there is no single technical model to aim for. That myth is still holding US vaulters back.Having spent immense time and energy arguing -succesfully in many cases - for the need for all vaulters to accept the Petrov/Bubka model I would hate to see the wheels fall off!

9 Have a look at the article Sean Brown posted on Neovault -it clarifies my views of that technical model. :yes: :D Cheers Al
Its what you learn after you know it all that counts. John Wooden

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Unread postby Tim McMichael » Sun Apr 23, 2006 9:37 pm

Let me begin by saying that the reason I began posting in the first place was that, after reading for a little while, I realized that some of the finest minds in the sport are part of this community. I count you, Altius, among those whose ideas have intrigued me and helped me to question and refine my own theory and practice. I respect you and the decades of time and effort you have invested in clarifying and propagating the Petrov/Bubka model. From your post, I gather that you have spent a great deal of time in close conversation with both of those men of genius and, as such, must be among the foremost authorities on the subject. Now, in response to my bit of irreverence, you have asked me some serous questions and raised some legitimate concerns, and I have thought long and hard how to answer them.

First, I want to ease any concerns you may have about the influence I might have on the sport in general or your work in particular. If there is any direction the sport is charging off in, it is certainly towards the Petrov/Bubka model and not away from it. If it were to charge off in any other direction, I am the last person anyone would pick to lead it there. The wheels to that particular wagon are in no danger of falling off.

That said, by experience, training, and inclination, I am more apt to question than accept conventional wisdom. My exposition of Bubka’s sometimes bizarre positions over the bar was mostly intended as irreverent fun, but you were right to infer that I have more substantive questions regarding the orthodox model that has been built on his jump. Of course I know that Bubka had a coherent and comprehensive technical model that he tried to follow on every vault and that what he was trying to do is infinitely more important than what he actually did. The strange things that often happened over the bar were little more than oddities little affecting the power and majesty of what came before them. I grant all of this and more.

The Continuous Chain model is better by far than anything that came before it. Any innovation that does not incorporate its general principles will be crippled and incomplete in consequence. The contributions of Petrov and Botcharnikov and yourself and many others have both advanced the sport and changed it forever. This, however, is all that I will concede. I hope it is enough.

In my mind, any orthodoxy has both virtues and vices. On the one hand, no one ever made orthodoxy out of a bad idea. Authoritative theories are the domain of really good ideas, ones that are illuminating and useful. The Continuous Chain theory is both of these. On the other hand, orthodoxy has an inherent tendency to stifle creativity and suppress new ideas. Consider these facts that I am sure you know:

Until Bubka showed up at the 83 World Championships no one had ever seen the Petrov/Bubka model. We had never even imagined it, and when we saw it, we were stunned to the point of disbelief. There was even a period when we decided not to worry about it much because, whatever he was doing, it was bound to kill him before too long. The conventional wisdom of that time dictated that, at some point, his almost suicidal commitment to extension through the middle of his jump would have him falling into the box from 20’ up. The truth was that the very thing we saw as a fatal flaw was actually a new application of same the principles that governed all of the great jumps throughout the history of the sport, all the way back to Warmerdam.

Who is to say that someone might not come up with an equally stunning innovation that will, without violating the principles of the Continuous Chain, still improve upon it - perhaps in some, as yet, unimagined way? If our answer is a flat “no,â€Â

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Unread postby Mecham » Sun Apr 23, 2006 11:59 pm

Something that I have been trying to do the whole time here.


Welcome to the board
Just you wait...

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Unread postby altius » Mon Apr 24, 2006 1:17 am

Tim -as brilliant a response as I expected.

Have just popped out of bed - have the flu -so this will be quick.

The reason i believe that the petrov Bubka model is THE definitive model of vaulting is based on the biomechanics of what Bubka did. note I am neither a biomechanist nor a physicist but I believe the key to the technical model is that it enabled him to maximise the energy he put into the pole -thoughout the whole vault - and then to maximise the energy he took out of it! In fact there seem to periods when the two conflicting elements must overlap - but I suppose in a continuous chain everything is happening in hundredths of a second, so the change from energy in to energy out is virtually unnoticeable.

Some times -a la Athens -he put so much energy into the pole in the take off and whip phases he couldnt control it at the top -hence the untidy jump - which still took his COM to 6.50m.

What is interesting is that if you look at even my four phase model in energy terms, it becomes very obvious why vaulters of the calibre of Brits, Galfionne, Markov and Jeff Harwig did not/do not maximise their potential.

Something else for folk to get their teeth into.

Your right - an idea is always dangerous if it is the only one youve got. :idea: :yes:
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Unread postby gtc » Mon Apr 24, 2006 12:46 pm

GOOD STUFF!

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Unread postby Soar Like an Eagle » Mon Apr 24, 2006 8:46 pm

altius wrote:Tim -as brilliant a response as I expected.

Have just popped out of bed - have the flu -so this will be quick.

The reason i believe that the petrov Bubka model is THE definitive model of vaulting is based on the biomechanics of what Bubka did. note I am neither a biomechanist nor a physicist but I believe the key to the technical model is that it enabled him to maximise the energy he put into the pole -thoughout the whole vault - and then to maximise the energy he took out of it! In fact there seem to periods when the two conflicting elements must overlap - but I suppose in a continuous chain everything is happening in hundredths of a second, so the change from energy in to energy out is virtually unnoticeable.

Some times -a la Athens -he put so much energy into the pole in the take off and whip phases he couldnt control it at the top -hence the untidy jump - which still took his COM to 6.50m.

What is interesting is that if you look at even my four phase model in energy terms, it becomes very obvious why vaulters of the calibre of Brits, Galfionne, Markov and Jeff Harwig did not/do not maximise their potential.

Something else for folk to get their teeth into.

Your right - an idea is always dangerous if it is the only one youve got. :idea: :yes:


Very good information, if I recall, Kjell Isaksson (5’8" 150lb) had excellent technique. In 1972 he jumped 18’4â€Â

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Unread postby Tim McMichael » Tue Apr 25, 2006 1:30 pm

I also am not a physicist, but I love to apply whatever common sense I have to the physical properties of the vault. I’m not a biomechanist either, but having done about a million jumps I know a little something about how the body moves through the vault.

I don’t think there can be any delay, even by hundredths of a second, between the energy in and energy out aspects of a Continuous Chain model. Newton’s law of equal and opposite reactions applies here. If every force exists in pairs that are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction, then the application of that force can have no time element to it. When the vaulter puts energy into the pole, the pole must react at the same instant in time and with the same force. As I understand it, energy does not move through a system like electricity down a wire. As soon as a force is applied, the reaction must take place. It can only be slowed by being dissipated through the fluid, or non-solid aspects of the objects to which it is applied. (once again, not a physicist, so just blathering off the top of my head)

In practical terms this means that the longer and more powerfully this force is applied by the vaulter, the longer and more forcefully it will increase energy through the vault. It also means that there is no sense in waiting on the pole for anything to happen before beginning and continuing to apply this force. This is why a faster swing and extension, if accomplished by putting more energy into the pole, will not stall the jump out, but conversely will move the pole more and allow an increase in grip height and cause an increase in push off.

All of this is a given, I don’t believe there can be any more disagreement or discussion concerning this fact. What intrigues me, however, is that I don’t think we have yet fully understood or completely accomplished all of the means of taking advantage of it. There are other elements of the vault that have not yet been fully discussed in their relationship to this fact.

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Unread postby ADTF Academy » Tue Apr 25, 2006 2:52 pm

As I sit back and read these posts and others as simulating as they may seem it brings me back to the same problem that I feel this sport is facing. INTERPRETATION and EGOS.


A while back we had the problem of which is better a free takeoff, prejump or continuous takeoff.

The conclusion in my mind was they are all better than taking off under. The final mindset was finish your final stride so that you can put maximal energy into the pole during the takeoff. Yet many I feel left unfullfilled.


Now the new topic continous chain model or petrov model and better yet the 6.40 model. Well to me it seems to be more of which terms should we use for the same basic principles. Now unless I am on a different planet the point behind the Petrov model was to continuously apply energy into the pole during the entire vault with minimal passive stages as possible. The theories behind the continuous chain model are the same and once again the principles behind the 6.40 model are the same. Though I will agree there might be minor difference depending on the intrepretation of the individual coaching such models.

It is sad that so many of our great minds are too busy fighting over which termonology we should use instead of what principles need to be used.

Tim in the final portion of his post wrote and I quote, "All of this is a given, I don’t believe there can be any more disagreement or discussion concerning this fact. What intrigues me, however, is that I don’t think we have yet fully understood or completely accomplished all of the means of taking advantage of it. There are other elements of the vault that have not yet been fully discussed in their relationship to this fact."

I agree it is a given in my mind if a vaulter or coach is teaching or attempt to perform anything that causes a passive moment in the vault they will never reach their maximal potential. The issue I think is important to notice is how does a spectator realize the difference between attempting to perform a passive moment and one just happening. Part of my fear of vaulting in meets is the fact that I know what I am trying to do but it is not quite working yet and if I vault in a large meet others will see my many imprefections and say well he is not following such model. How do you know what people are thinking unless you ask.

Back to the post in hand!

Tim's first comment was in regards to the way bubka came off the pole using the bottom arm as the trigger instead of the top arm to pull through.

He later commented about energy in and energy out.

A while back I wrote a series of post on pole bends and utilizing the strain energy stored in the pole as potential energy on the top. I too am a promoter of using the bottom arm as the trigger for turning and pulling on the top of the vault.

With the conceptual knowledge of energy in and energy out it becomes clear to me that if we as coaches and vaulter are attempting to use every newton of energy available to us on the top of the pole then the most important ideology should be how do we utilize and receive the most energy possible.

As an example; Bouncing on a trapoline if you are perfectly straight up and down and you bounce after a series of bounces you reach maximal height. On the other hand if you when you go to land on the trapoline and your body is leaning in any direction but vertical when you hit the trapoline you shoot off to the side and energy is lost.

To tie this back to the bottom arm leading the turn and pull. What is more important the force you can apply down the pole or staying in line with the pole to receive all the potential energy left. I contend receiving this energy. There is no one anyone can create more energy pulling with the top arm then they can receive from the bent pole. On the other hand stiff pole vaulters it would be a different story.

I feel bubka was extremely efficent at receiving this energy, but he couldn't handle it. Hence why he went all over the place after he let go of the pole. Do I know this for sure, nope I have never watch or overheard Bubka when he was vaulting and practicing. Simply put though the stiffness of poles he was using allowed for a great deal of potential energy to be available on top. His ability to stay in line with the pole allowed him to receive this energy, I just feel that he couldn't always control it. The person who masters the ability to control this energy will jump higher than most people think possible hence the 6.40 and above beleifs by some.

As another though to this why is it that most good vaulters can almost jump as high from a shorter approach than they do from their longer approaches.

I contend it is because from the longer approaches you can put more kinetic energy into the pole because of the increased speed you can acheive. the issue becomes in that when this additional energy is available on top and applied to the vaulter he or she can't handle it or never gets in line with it thus energy is lost and peak height or maximal potential is reduced.

I love these disscussions I just hope someday we can all come together.
Last edited by ADTF Academy on Wed Apr 26, 2006 1:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Unread postby SlickVT » Tue Apr 25, 2006 4:20 pm

With all do respect, I hope we never come together and agree on the perfect vault.
Then there would be nowhere else to go. Ideas are always good.
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Unread postby Soar Like an Eagle » Tue Apr 25, 2006 8:52 pm

Tim McMichael wrote:I also am not a physicist, but I love to apply whatever common sense I have to the physical properties of the vault. I’m not a biomechanist either, but having done about a million jumps I know a little something about how the body moves through the vault.

I don’t think there can be any delay, even by hundredths of a second, between the energy in and energy out aspects of a Continuous Chain model. Newton’s law of equal and opposite reactions applies here. If every force exists in pairs that are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction, then the application of that force can have no time element to it. When the vaulter puts energy into the pole, the pole must react at the same instant in time and with the same force. As I understand it, energy does not move through a system like electricity down a wire. As soon as a force is applied, the reaction must take place. It can only be slowed by being dissipated through the fluid, or non-solid aspects of the objects to which it is applied. (once again, not a physicist, so just blathering off the top of my head)

In practical terms this means that the longer and more powerfully this force is applied by the vaulter, the longer and more forcefully it will increase energy through the vault. It also means that there is no sense in waiting on the pole for anything to happen before beginning and continuing to apply this force. This is why a faster swing and extension, if accomplished by putting more energy into the pole, will not stall the jump out, but conversely will move the pole more and allow an increase in grip height and cause an increase in push off.

All of this is a given, I don’t believe there can be any more disagreement or discussion concerning this fact. What intrigues me, however, is that I don’t think we have yet fully understood or completely accomplished all of the means of taking advantage of it. There are other elements of the vault that have not yet been fully discussed in their relationship to this fact.


Tim,

You present great information. Besides being a great pole vaulter, I think you are an expert in explaining your views regarding the pole vault. To me, you and Joe Dial had very similar technique which was very efficient. Both you (18’6â€Â


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