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Go even further back. Look at your run. Look at :37-:38 on your video. You're leaning back on your run. That is going to suck your hips under once you take off. Work on that as well. That may help everything else as well

I am prepared to offer a possible solution to your problem BUT not until and unless you make it clear that you are going to SERIOUSLY consider what I recommend.

altius wrote:I am prepared to offer a possible solution to your problem BUT not until and unless you make it clear that you are going to SERIOUSLY consider what I recommend.

I was always willing to take your advice but neither you or AVC Coach gave me any advice in the first place- you just told me that you hated the term "rowing". I was never "rowing" in the first place and I just wanted help on how to get inverted and I'm pretty much willing to try anything.

If you read my post carefully enough you will find that I never mentioned the topic of rowing - I simply observed that if you were not prepared to take notice of one of the best coaches in the US then there was little point in me offering advice. I am still not sure you are willing to accept any advice - just looking for a place to put forward your own views. If you can convince me otherwise I will indeed give you the advice you need -but be warned - it does not include rowing!

I want you to be aware that I am not set on one way of pole vaulting. My coach tells me that I need to row my arm, I personally have no idea how to do that. I also understand that the way you want to tell me doesn't include rowing, and I am excited to hear it because I don't even really believe in rowing myself. I am about half way through reading BTB2 and I also understand that Bubka doesn't use the idea of rowing in his technique either. I also never shot down the advice of anybody, you just interpreted the tone of my post differently than I intended.

I don't know what's wrong and what's right with my form. I have a basic understanding about the perfect technique used by Bubka, but I am not sure how to get myself there. Please, give me advice to make me go higher. I am willing to try whatever you tell me as long as it has the potential to make me a better pole vaulter.

PRinthePV,

You asked in an early post on this thread "is rowing even necessary?". You also said that you thought you weren't rowing, but you are. You apparently just don't realize it. Like Guy Kotchel used to tell us in college, "The big eye doesn't lie". The video says it all. I chimed in early on when I saw that you were headed in the wrong direction with some bad advice about rowing and what to do with your hands. I wasn't trying to beat you up about it, just to get you thinking in another direction.

I also have a theory that maybe its not about breaking in my arm as much as just raising my hips throughout my whole jump.

If your hands aren't in the right spot, you can't raise your hips throughout the whole jump. Stiff pole vaulting will help correct the problem. Make a game out of it if you want to. See how high you can jump without bending the pole. You'll know you're getting better when you can jump your grip, or higher. You're probably not going to fix the problem overnight. Be patient and be open minded.

what is happening is that you are rowing whether you are trying to or not.... its like your trying to push your top hand to your legs rather than swinging your legs up to meet your top hand. Think about it, how can you get out of the L position and drop your shoulders if your top arm is being pushed in front of you? You cant get all the way back, So think about swinging your body to meet your top hand rather than forcing your hand to legs if that makes any sense.... check out the jump in this clip at 0:08 and look at how his legs come to him not the other way around and his legs even go past vertical, Altius calls this "covering the pole". that makes it much easier to punch the hips up

I hope that helped....

I've tried some things out and my inversion is getting a lot better. I have a video from a practice yesterday.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDtYH8D160E

What am I now doing right? What am I still doing wrong?
This thread has helped, please tell me if you think I'm going in the right direction.

hmmm it looked a little bit better but i would not recommend letting go of the pole without completely finishing the vault, you could pick up some bad habits like that

Wow! That's a huge improvement! You're figuring it out!

starkey480 wrote:hmmm it looked a little bit better but i would not recommend letting go of the pole without completely finishing the vault, you could pick up some bad habits like that

Sorry that was me trying to finish the vault. I just haven't figured out how to turn and push off the pole while I'm still going up. So I'm still getting used to things but I think it's definitely an improvement.

AVC Coach wrote:Wow! That's a huge improvement! You're figuring it out!

Thank you! It turns out it was a lot easier than I was making it.

The second practice jump looks good -definitely on the way. Stop thinking about what your hands/arms are doing and concentrate on CONNECTING - LOCKING TOGETHER the legs and trunk when you swing up. The hip joints are like a hinge - in your initial video you closed off the hinge with the head and feet high and the backside left down. So as the legs begin to swing towards the horizontal use muscle power in the trunk to 'connect' them to the hips - then as they continue to swing they will transfer the energy of that swing into the hips which will be pulled up with them instead of being left behind. Once the hips begin to move above the shoulders - you can begin to move the shoulders towards the pad into a position from which you can actively drive/punch the hips upwards. Take a look at figures in C 27 -especially 27.17a-c. However the dvd shows this aspect of the vault really well . This hard to describe - which is probably why it rarely gets mentioned. You can begin to learn this connection on a high bar - but be careful as you may find yourself doing a back summy if you swing hard and lock.