altius wrote:They will also see that a take off which is under - again approximately 80% of vaulters - must have a negative effect on the swing and therefore the efficiency of the jump.
Just 80%??? Damn Alan, I think you're being generous!
Moderator: achtungpv
altius wrote:They will also see that a take off which is under - again approximately 80% of vaulters - must have a negative effect on the swing and therefore the efficiency of the jump.
I know that the revisionist historians out there will immediately claim that this has all been 'common knowledge' for at least the last fifty years. If this is so I will simply ask, 'why those experts have not been spreading the word all this time and so preventing the vast majority of young vaulters from going down technical dead ends?' IE Taking off under, taking off flat, not finishing the take off in their haste to invert, swinging into a tight tuck under the pole, etc!
The importance of the swing to modern vaulting was dealt with in some detail in Chapter 21 of BTB - it will be revisited in greater detail in the new version of that book. However in essence the swing is the key to flexible pole vaulting - as it was in the stiff pole era. In fact it would appear that Petrov gained many of his critical insights from study of stiff pole vaulters, especially Warmerdam. Among several important insights, the latter said, "So the vault becomes a giant swing carried on and on" and "Novice and expert alike will profit in coordinating their efforts into one action of a giant swing". The swing is critical because stiff pole vaulters clearly could not store energy in the pole and had to use a continuous chain model of energy input/technique to keep the pole moving forward.
Given that elite stiff pole vaulters could manage a differential of 30 inches -and Doherty quotes 39 inches for the best he knew of - clearly the swing was a major factor in the overall success of the jump.
Unfortunately when the flexible pole arrived vaulters became obsessed with bending it - not driving it up and forward as the stiff polers had to do.
So as I suggested in BTB, coaches would do well to think of the flexible pole as simply an infinite series of straight poles – (I think this was said by petrov) first shortening and then extending through the vault - and build the key elements of straight pole technique into their methods. This means a take off which is out not under, a long whipping swing, and a shortening of the body - but not a tuck -as they continue the swing into inversion.
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