high school coach

[Robert schmitt]

I've had way too much time on my hands as I've been rehabing my shoulder. Today I was thinking back to my high school pole vault coach and shaking my head. I spend the majority of my colligent career unlearning what I learned or maybe more approprietly not taught in high school. Now, in high school we had a coach that was stricktly a pole vault coach. He had even vaulted in college evidently. Anyway I tought you might get a laugh or more likely scared by my some of the Coaching I had- here are some excerpts-

I never knew you should run from a measured run, all of my teamamtes just all started at about the same spot.-We did learn "steering as a result"

I only vaulted my junior and three to four weeks of my senior year of high school but my freshman year of college everyone was laughing because I couldn't remember what foot to jump off of because my high school coach said it didn't matter!! (every year I would try to figure out which foot it felt better to jump off of)

Here is the most technical advise I got
"pretend you are a ball of mud on the end of a stick getting flung"

"keep running right thru your take off"- amazingly I never broke a pole

"get your feet to your hands"

I had no Idea that you should Jump at take off, have a trail leg, or do anything with your bottom arm except a self defense from getting smacked by the pole as I would try to run thru my take off.

My senior year they bought me a new pole I went from a 14' 160 to a 15' 165. ME "Coach were should I hold?" COACH " Just grab the end of it and run down here" Needless to say I hadn't moved my step back because I did not have one, took off way under( I didn't know there was anything as taking of under at the time), and got spit back down the runway.

Oh, here was a good one -I had know idea the standard could or would move.

I had know idea there was a soft side to a pole or how to find one. I just learned there was a way the pole seemed to "work better"

Looking back I cann't believe (and very thankfull) that I didn't end up as a statistic for catastophic injury. I also have no idea how I jumped 13'9" with this advise.