Bruises!

[Fo_Sheezy]

[b]Am I alone when I complain about the MANY bruises on my left wrist from collapsing my elbow inside the pole like you are supposed to? I wear a thick wrist brace to absorb some of the impact, but its not helping. After a week of not vaulting, my bruises went away, but after 2 days of jumping this week, I now have a “blobâ€Â

[BrandoAZ]

You arnt bending the pole? I used to have that when I strait poled. No suggestion in getting rid of them but to start the bending process. It actually means your doing it (well that part) right if your strait poleing... Id be worried if you had a bruse and you were bending...

[Fo_Sheezy]

I've started to bend the pole, not a lot but I am getting some flex out of it, its a new pole. However, our coahc still gets bruises bending the pole about 75 degrees...

[BrandoAZ]

Interesting.. guess I dont bang it that hard anymore. I think its just how you vault. You cant ignore getting them if you dont bend but I can see how you might hget them if you do bend... Sorry.. sux to be you lol

[vaultguru6]

well....like i said on the other post, its not a bad thing, actually a good thing. means your staying close to the pole and wraping really well on top.

[PvaultinGirl]

when we do drills (wich is we do every day) everyone gets bruises on the lef arm (or right if your a lefty) from collapsing the arm in. if you have your technique down correctly and you aren't bending the pole maybe you should be moving up or to a pole better suited for you. that way you can get some bend and stop killing your arm. but when straight poling during drills; bruises are inevitable

[advath]

An ex-athlete called me and told me a friend is trying to teach her to "row away". That is to say that when in the inverted position with the pole still bent, the vaulter should row the pole to the side away from the body and down to keep pressure down on the pole and turn. That friend says there should never be a bruise on the wrist because if you do that right the pole should never come near your wrist.

Look at Pvaultingirl's picture above. That's what happens if you press your bottom arm to the side and "row out". Her shoulders are pressed away from the line of pull of the top hand and pole recoil.
Look at Bubka's pictures to the left and see his bottom arm and wrist close to the pole, and his shoulders under the line of pull from the top hand and pole recoil.

Think as your body being an arrow and the pole being the bow. Have you ever seen an arrow built as an "L"? An "L" position balancing or acting on a moving object is subject to many possible deviations. The "L" position is subject to easier collapsing, and the "L" position is more subject to misdirection of flight.

This technique is nothing new. Thierry Vigneron and the French pole vaulters used to use this technique. They also had a huge bottom arm pressing the pole away in the take off.

What do you think?

"The pole vault growth during the decade (1975-1985) was very high but discontinuous, the average growth was 32 mm/year but we can recognize two steps. The first one, in 1980, was related with the appearance of the French school and the second one, in 1983-84, with the great duel between Vigneron and Bubka. After 1984 the era of Bubka begun and the growth becomes constant and continuous at a rate of 7 mm/year. Another interesting data is that the differential between the world record and the top ten average performance during years 1975-1984 was in the range 7-14 cm, while after 1984 when Bubka begun to be the leader of the world lists, it passed to 14-26 cm. This to confirm how much Bubka was ahead in comparison with the other vaulters!
Note: I do not make distinction in these lists between indoor and outdoor results. This is because I consider the 6.15 indoor obtained by Bubka the best performance of these last 25 years."

To see the chart relating to the above click http://digilander.libero.it/rzocca/men/PV.htm

To see photos of Bubka's pull phase see http://www.advantageathletics.com/polev ... oints.html

[PvaultinGirl]

HEY! since when did it become okay for me to be a bad example!? eesh. i'm working on it!!!

[polevaultninja]

yea, i dont know about bruises on the arm, but once i sliped out of my top hand, and had a purple stripe from my right pec, to my left knee ( and yes that includes between the legs ) i guess you can call it insentive to never let go of your pole!

[Ajint_Smith]

As far as I know, the bruise is perfectly normal. I get good bend out of my pole and i still get it when breaking my arm in. The bruise just develops from the large amount of energy being released. the bruise tells you that you're getting to be in teh right position to be shot up.

[RockBack8888]

It happens to me too...with or without bending ur pole it'll happen if u do it right sooo...make sure to ice it and keep a wristband on when vaulting. But it doesn't only happen with stiff pole vaulting cuz I just started getting it a while ago when I started having correct form...