kcvault wrote:at any time the athlete is not able to do the task right at full speed, you take a step backwards and decrease the speed and difficulty so that they do not develop bad habits.
This is what I disagree with.
Now, if an athlete is doing the drill HORRENDOUSLY (coach's discretion...), then you would first move the run in (decrease step count). If that doesn't work, then you should move the grip down FAR... This would effectively turn them back into a beginner. Then the different safety oriented rules apply.
However, if an athlete is just struggling to, for instance, keep their drive-knee up during the drill because of the grip, then the grip should still not be moved down.
I have explained this before:
If the grip is at ASOP and the athlete is performing poorly (but better than 'horrendously') DUE TO THE GRIP BEING HIGH, the grip should remain in place. The athlete has already learned how to do the drill to an acceptable degree of perfection at lower grips (as a beginner), so an ASOP grip is the way to go for this athlete. The athlete may not be performing the drill correctly, but if they are being coached well (being told what mistakes to correct) then he will improve at ASOP more than he will with a lower grip. This because of the reasons I'd mentioned before:
1. You know immediately if you've improved your technique (or at least aggressiveness) because the pole moves markedly quicker. (This might also produce a positive psychological boost!)
2. You are training the vertical impulse at take-off that is likely to get lost when doing the drill with a low grip.
3. You know how efficient your take-off is.
4. There is more likely to be more effort put into fixing mistakes due to the psychology of competition... That is, if you're a competetive person (or even if you aren't) you'll be focused on MOVING that pole REALLY FAST! That way you can grip up and keep competing with yourself, or even against others (tried that one with a couple of athletes the other day, and it worked out great!).
Of course, there is the drawback of not repeating as perfect positioning as one would be capable of with a lower grip... However, the thing to remember is that the difficulty of going through the proper positions/motions with a grip at ASOP is much closer to the real vault (as Andy_C has pointed out).
Now, if you were to have this athlete grip way down, a few notable consequences occur:
1. The correct positions/motions occur. (Good.)
2. There is no longer a natural feeling of needing to jump UP because the pole moves over so quickly. (Bad.)
3. The stresses of a real vault are not as accurately simulated (both psychological and physical). This (and maybe #2 as well) may as well make point #1 null and void! (Bad.)
To further address the point that the correct positions/motions are not being hit at ASOP with the athlete:
The point of a drill is NOT to perform the drill well. The point of a drill is to strengthen transferrable elements of technique to the REAL VAULT. The jagodin can be used to emphasize many different aspects of the full vault (practically anything before the swing). If the athlete is not performing the drill well, then they will get better at it with COACHING (much of it is auto-corrective in fact, so the athlete is quite able to coach his self relatively well) and EFFORT on his part. The athlete must make conscious efforts in the drill (if he is doing it poorly) to fix flaws, and eventually the flaws go away due to the subconscious imprinting of the proper motion/position. You also probably got stronger and more confident than you would have if you were gripping lower. You will not fix any flaws that don't show up with a low grip, because you can't see them. So how does that get you better!? Sure, you might be able to further imprint a close to correct series of positions/motions, but it isn't difficult to do them... So there isn't THAT much more imprinting going on, is there... certainly not as much as if you gripped up. If you aren't doing things well when you grip up, does that mean you ever really had the motions imprinted in the first place!? There's something interesting to think about.
And again, if all you ever do is low grip jagodins, when you grip up you will not be able to maintain your technique because you have not yet adapted to the feeling of a higher grip/lower pole angle. Start sooner rather than later.
And it all comes back to the upspringing take-off, which is more or less the entire technical point of the drill... Not as much runway speed, so you can't cheat with the take-off. If you don't buy any of the other stuff, buy this: when you grip below ASOP, you are not naturally training an upspringing take-off. Say hello to a flat one in your real vaults!
THAT is NOT something GOOD that's being imprinted when you are gripping low. So in response to "if a high grip is causing poor technique, grip down because you don't want to imprint bad habits," I say: "if you're gripping low, you're imprinting bad habits."***This is not to say that any of this "GRIP UP!!!" stuff is something to use in a real vaulting scenario!!! It is SAFE to come close to stalling out in a sand pit, but having the same amount of 'deadness' during a real vault is unsafe because there are extraneous factors at play which may cause a crash-landing, AND your are trying to clear a bar set back away from the box!!!***
I'd also like to reiterate the fact that this is how Petrov, Parnov, etc. use this drill with young'uns.
THAT is what's ridiculous. I can't believe we're arguing over such a simple concept.
