Follow the bouncing ball...

[ifavault]

As a high school coach, I try to come up with ways for my vaulters to understand certain concepts so they comprehend the importance of what I'm trying to get them to do.

In a recent instance, I was discussing the approach run and how I was interested in getting more bounce in their steps as opposed to pure flat speed down the runway which I felt was limiting one of my kid's ability to "pop" off the ground at take-off.

For my analogy, I used the concept of a super-ball. If you throw a bouncy rubber ball down the runway at a low angle, the ball may travel quckly, but the bounce is low to the ground. If you initiate the toss with more loft, the ball will bounce higher at a greater vertical angle off the ground because the decent of the ball into that bounce is higher as well.

This concept could be compared to the approach run in which I find it more advantageous to have the higher knees and powerful, dynamic bounding steps that quicken at the end but still retain their vertical component so that the take-off step is received from a more vertical descent of the previous airborne stage of the penultimate.

Of course there is some give and take between speed and step height, but what do some of you think about this analogy? Any comments or other helpful descriptors? Just curious.

Thanks.

ifavault
www.inflightathletics.com

[newPVer]

Thats pretty good, and going further on that, you can say as the ball starts out big and powerful, it gets shorter and faster, just like your steps should get as approaching the box.

pretty good...

[ladyvolspvcoach]

the analogy is pretty good! But what do you use (other than visual inspection) to determine if the knee height is producing the correct Stride length/frequency???? Often we say pearls to our athletes but the results still don't come until we can actually measure their performance..and it's not meters per second...

[g00eY]

Cool analogy. I'm definitely gonna see if I can apply this to my own vaulting. I have a tendency to have steps similar to what you described with the low-angled bouncy ball.

[powerplant42]

Yeah, it's pretty good. Maybe you might want to add that the ball is rolling down a hill, so that it can get quicker. Also make sure that your vaulters aren't bouncing their pole as well though...