PoleVaultPower.com

Track just started at my High School and next week field events will be allowed to practice. Since there is not a single coach at my school who could tell you how to hold a pole, myself and two other senior vaulters will be in charge of the program for the most part. This will be my 2nd year vaulting and the other two this will be their 4th. Combined, the three of us are fairly knowledgeable about pole vaulting, but I just wanted to hear other peoples input about how we should handle new people. We will likely have about 10-15 kids who have never vaulted before at the beginning. We were thinking teaching them how to hold it and then how to plant followed by many reps of plant drills and slide box drills on the field before we put them in front of a pit. Once we got them vaulting onto a pit then add new elements to their vault as they are ready but this takes a lot of coaching. we don't know how much of that we can do since we each have things we need to work on as well.
Anyone have any words of wisdom for us before we try this?
Thanks

I would take out the slide box drills and replace it with lots and lots and lots of sand vaulting and grass vaulting. They need to be able to do a basic vault into the sand with a straight top arm, good drive knee, long trail leg, and keeping the hips behind the pole. If they can't do it into the sand, it's only going to get worse when they move to the pit.

Get your school to buy a copy of the book "Beginner to Bubka" and the DVD from Becca.