PoleVaultPower.com

Hey everyone,
Okay, so imagine you have just jumped up and your right hand is above your head and your left hand is out in front of you. Now, do you want to keep it straight out and use it to pull yourself up on the pole while your right hand stays still, or do you want to use push your right arm and left arm out and up and into a semi circle towards your hip?

Thanks,
A.J.
P.S. Your tips helped me clear 8'6" and just miss on 9'6"! That's pretty good for me!

"Push squeeze", no rowing. Your arms shouldn't be doing very much after you take off (at least until you start to extend well). You can figure out why rowing is a bad thing if you go try it on the high bar!

What do you mean by "push squeeze"? Should i just keep trying to keep my arms extended and kicking up with my legs and then finally rowing back?

PUSH the pole toward the plane of the bar, SQUEEZE with the top hand, but DO NOT PULL/ROW! You should SWING your trail-leg in a LONG (but QUICK) pendular motion. Until you can do that well, don't worry so much about what comes afterward, just SHOOT the HIPS up over the bar as well as you can, and then simply turn over.

You'll start to need to use your arms more when you can shoot your hips up past your hands. Only THEN does there need to be any real pulling with the arms. As the hips pass the hands, pull, turn, push off the pole, and fly away over the bar. Shoot me a PM, I can help you out a lot more that way.