What comes first - athleticism or technical ability?

[powerplant42]

Yes, prepping on the macro level for the big competitions... But still, lifting the day before a meet is not smart at all. (Not saying that I haven't done it by choice myself! )

[michaelcantu88]

this is a crazy question and due to personal opinions it will never be fully solved haha but i jus wanna throw out my experince on my short career. lets start with this was my first year (senior,jus grad) to ever pole vault. my football coaches always said if u where the strongest and fastest u would play.... biggest lie ever out of our reciever i benched the most and ran the fastest made the best catches and didnt ever get any pt. so our polevault coach that retired talked to me one day and got me to go out to practice. i did some vaulting and our first meet i cleared 10 feet!!!! ya i was a beast!! i didnt know how to invert so i watched those youtube vids and ta da i went 12 6 the next week!! after about a month i moved to 13 feet and won our district at 13 6! the coaches around kept asking where i came from and where so shocked to hear i was a first year vaulter thats only been doing it for 2 months! i go on to get 4th in region and bearly miss state. this summer i kept vaulting won our usatf state region and vaulted 14 3 on a 13 6 pole 30 pounds above my weight! i didnt do to well at nationals cause i wasnt warm and it rained hardcore but i believe in the 5 moths that i have vaulted i did pretty damn well and learned alot even tho i got alot more to learn. i got picked up by a d 2 college that i kept calling and finaly said wow you have potential and im sure ill be hell lot better next year! ok now to the question athleticism or technical ability? ok in my opinion i believe u gotta have both but in my case i was jus a athlete and thats how i improved so much. ppl can say wow 14 3 isnt that high! and i dont care cause tell me u can improve 4 feet in 5 months after never doing something and then get back with me cause to me thats a huge accomplishment! or tell me u learned how to vault above you hands a foot your first few months! shows what hard work dedication and passion can do!! alrigh back on subject. some ppl it comes nautral to and some ppl work hard for it. i guess i had both i think it was me being a monkey when i was lil climbing everything i saw haha but i believe first comes the athleticism then the technique! my botton arm sucks and run is horrible but because i was a good athlete i was able to compinsate and still be a good vaulter. im sure my college career will jus expload cause they will help me fix all that get me stronger and faster and stuff. but ya in my experience athleticism is the true key. so ya i got more to say jus tired of typing lol so thats my rant on this question! polevaulter for life!!

[KirkB]

MC, that's a great story, and I agree that in your case, athleticism came before technique.

14-3 is VERY good for a first-year vaulter ... after 5 months of training!

You will have a great PV career ahead of you. I hope you have a good college coach, becuz I'm going to assume that you still have a LONG way to go re technique.

No matter whether your D2 college coach is a good one or not, do yourself a favor and buy the BTB2 book ... and DVD. Study it all summer (what's left of it) and fall, and come next winter and spring, you're going to have a good (or at least much better) grasp of "proper" Petrov technique.

I'm going to predict that you'll be over 18-0 as a college athlete ... and maybe 19+ some day ... if you keep going gangbusters like you did this year! Good luck!

Kirk

[powerplant42]

I got to talk with altius plenty in person this summer having hosted him for a clinic... We were hanging around my high bar and talking a bit about strength... He said that all a female vaulter needed to do in terms of upper body strength was one pull up... That's what a lot of the girls in his DVD did.

I just thought I'd throw that out there...

[vault3rb0y]

For the level that they were jumping at, yes. I think its all about different elements coming together....


Remember the football video games (im sure they are more advanced now) where you have certain degrees of skill for "strength, speed, power, guts, weight, hieght, etc".... and you were given a certain baseline amount to choose to assign 0-10 for like.... 8 different skill areas relevant to football. And you could always max out like 2 of the 8 skill sets but the player would be really fast, really tall, but get his "es H eye tee" rocked when he went out for a pass? Welll.... i kinda see the vault like that, accept with like 100 skill areas, not just 8. And you can "max out" maybe 10 of these early on, but it wont matter if you suck at the other 90. Eventually, you could be really, really good with 80 of these skills, but those 20 or less will hold you down. Thats when you need to focus on improving those other 20, get them at least close to as good as your other 80 skills, and you will get better. Soo back to that one pull-up- that may be all the strength you need to vault 12' which is high for a high school girl. But once you get to that point, your other skills have gotten good enough and your "pull-up" skill (or upper body strength skill) needs to catch up. Does that make sense? Thats just how i see it. A coaches whole job focuses around finding what skills would be easiest to improve and which ones would be most beneficial to improve, and improve those skills. I would say about 20 of those 100 skills would be athleticism and 80 would be technical ability, with some overlap.

[powerplant42]

I like the analogy!

Again, we can come back to the physiology though... If possible, technique is the only thing to worry about during the 'early years' (12-18ish). Some strength will come from sand pit drills, and plenty will come from speed work and the HIGH BAR. If there is an extenuating circumstance (such as not being able to do a single pull-up), then the focus should switch temporarily to strength in order to get the athlete to a level appropriate for the execution of the drills used.

Let's all revisit the Bartonietz quote...