PoleVaultPower.com

Hey all,

I'm currently a junior in college (D3), in my 6th week of being back to jumping after recovering from a couple of awful injuries that kept me out of an indoor season. This is a vault from a meet this weekend, the second meet where I've jumped from a full run. The bar is 12'7, my PR is 4.0m (from the end of last spring).

http://www.coachseye.com/7NDN

Metrics:
Height/weight: 5'11, 165
Pole: 14' 160
Standards: 70cm
Run/TO: 78'/10'6"

I was a bit inside on this one (step's usually pretty consistently around 11'), and had 3 pretty good looks at 4m afterwards with the same grip/step.

Any feedback (critiques/advice on where to go from here) would be greatly appreciated!

Your next technical improvement will come from learning to press towards vertical, realigning the body into a powerful swing. Think about "attacking the swing with the hips" while you press up toward vertical with the bottom arm. Refer to Vertical Line 3 in this article http://artofthevault.com/articles/the-three-verticals-of-the-pole-vault/. Watch Bubka and Brad Walker for good models of this. Your plant is a bit late, and timid, but not terrible.

Overall your vault isn't bad technically though. The biggest thing holding you back is your speed. It seems you haven't figured out how to run fast with a pole yet, so going forward, make sure you're on a comprehensive program includes acceleration development, plyos, olympics, and the general strength work needed to develop speed. Practice applying that speed to your run with pole runs on the track.