kips or muscle ups

[dheldr01]

Which would you say is the most beneficial training manuever for the pole vault and why?

[KirkB]

Which would you say is the most beneficial training manuever for the pole vault and why?

Lots of good Qs, DH ... keep them coming!

Kips teach you how to use your coordination, timing, and leverage. Muscle-ups just improve your strength.

PV is an event where coordination, timing, and leverage are EXTREMELY important. Not that you don't also need strength, but you don't need rings specialist strength ... you just need highbar specialist strength.

If you think about it, you'll realize that you actually DON'T WANT to contract your muscles and PULL UP by using your biceps on a pole. You want to SWING LONG like on a highbar.

Ever notice the biceps on a rings guy and compare them to the biceps on a highbar guy? Vaulters should develop their muscles, timing, and coordination like highbar guys!

This is similar logic to rope climbing ... right side up or upside down. Which do you think would be most beneficial to vaulters ... and why?

Kirk

[bel142]

Morning,

I think kirk is right, development of timing is key rather than just doing either of those drills over and over. The kip I found useful for more timing and back extension practice, and I found muscle ups to be useful in a ballistic training method. Having body weight resistance with the timing of bi-pull and tri-extension is a key part of training that allows for people to do hand stands on poles. But if you can't swing long and wait for that body position and hip placement while upside down, then executing proper action of that on the pole, you lose your ability to continue the success of the vault.

For new vaulters I think the Kip is more important, just learning how to swing long and wait for the timing, the recoil of body position before moving the hips, is crucial. Later on for general strength and ballistic action and beign able to do a musucle up is (to me) to be more important.

Then later on in a vaulters training when they can do both, just general maintainability of both is ideal. Neither will teach you how to pole vault specifically... so once you know how to execute them just maintaining the ability to do them, and understand their use is more beneficial...

Bel

[altius]

Six step stiff pole vaulting will enable you to develop almost every aspect of the vault - all you have to add is 6/8/10/12 more steps and you have got it. First focussing on all the elements of the plant, finishing the take off and STAYING BEHIND THE POLE to maximise you grip differential (being discussed elsewhere) and then in the same session jumping to clear a bar that is progressively increasing in height. If high school coaches did only this activity - forgot the weight training/long distance running and even the gymnastics, their athletes would improve faster than through any other method while elite vaulters would learn to refocus on what is really critical in the event - all they have to add is the extra steps of the run up and build the rhythmic structure. Simple really.

[bel142]

Ah yes, but right there you see, you hit the nail on the head, training... the down fall of most Interscholastic athletics in the US (Canadian and Australian athletics culture may be different).

There isn't enough time to train those aspects (3Ls and under) of the vault to a really specific way and then compete for your high school. As well as the mentality of the High school athlete... They may be involved with a Fall, Winter, and Spring, Sport/clubs yadda... Furthermore high school rules usually suggest that you can only start training a month or so before the season starts. (I've been out of high school for a bit so if anyone can give me numbers and times I would appreciate it)

What you describe really is more like the collegiate system where you can start training in August to compete maybe once in December. In high school, without training with a club or having access to quality coaching, what you suggest Alitus is extremely difficult... Not to say I don't agree with you... But that's sort of the punch line about high school training...
cheers,
bel

[altius]

What I was saying was that if high school coaches did only this one activity their athletes would improve faster than through any other method - and in the month or so they have! We had 15 year old boys jump 10' from 6 steps within an hour of trying the pole vault - from what I have read here over the years. that alone is good enough to make some teams! One went on to jump 4.82 at age 15 within the first year - but of course training twice a week through that period- But with no long distance running/weights or gymnastics!

[IAmTheWalrus]

I think you make a good point, and lord knows I need to work on 3 step stiff pole drills, but while these drills may be more important than gymnastics, I believe Petrov, Bubka, and yourself still consider gymnastics to be a significantly important portion of the vault. In the foreword for the new book by Vincenzo Canili Bubka more or less says that after you perfect the takeoff gymnastics is the best way to increase your jump. I think it is important to remember the audience present on pole vault power. Yes MANY are high schoolers who will improve most quickly by perfecting the run and takeoff, but there are also many college and elite vaulters on this site, who may have more time to train for the pole vault, and definitely should incorporate gymnastics. I understand entirely where you come from. If an athlete has two days a week to train, or 1-2 hours a day to try to improve their vaulting, the best thing to do is work on technique, and the best way to improve it is with the aforementioned drill. However, as the person who usually chimes in on topics like "how much can you lift" or " how do I get faster" to remind us that we should be working on technique I have a question for you. Sergei Bubka lifted, ran speed workouts, and did gymnastics during his career, and it is his technique that we all hope to emulate, and you even have a section in BTB2 detailing his workouts for one week and talking about training for the vault, so in your opinion when and how should athletes incorporate lifting, running, plyos, gymnastics, etc. into their workouts? I know that the technique is the most important, but at some point in your athletic career the other elements, while still less important, are important as well.


A link to the foreword by Bubka:

http://www.ucsspirit.com/uploads/file/s ... orward.jpg

[vault3rb0y]

If you can learn everything from a 6-step stiff vault, that is wonderful. But how quickly can you develop the techniques necessary to execute the 6-step stiff vault correctly? The question is whether or not certain gymnastics drills done in supplementation to 6-step vaults will help a vaulter learn how to execute the 6-step vault quicker than by simply doing a 6-step vault over and over.

I would argue that an athletic boy/girl with good body coordination and body awareness can pick up a 6-step vault in a day and learn to pole vault well in a month without the need for supplementing tons of gymnastics drills or sprint drills. But what if the athlete lacks the core strength to swing their legs up into inversion? Getting on a highbar for 5 minutes could save you 30 minutes of trying to do it on a 6-step pop up. I agree that a 6-step pop-up should be the foundation of building all the elements of the pole vault, but everything else we do training-wise can save us time during these pop-ups if we recognize what needs improvement and which drills specifically can help us in improving this.

From that point, we leave the realm of technical training and approach the physical. I don't believe it takes hours of vaulting per day to develop the technical aspects of the vault, but rather it would be better to distribute quality repetitions throughout weeks and months, for instance 50min of vault drills 4 times a week would be better than 100min of drills twice a week. Anyway, that leaves a lot of extra time for even the average athlete to train. Once you have gotten all you can out of a day of vaulting, why NOT work on more of the physical aspects? The more time you have, the more time you should be utilizing physical training, granted that you are getting the most out of your technical training.

[altius]

Read the post old son ---- "What I was saying was that if high school coaches did only this one activity their athletes would improve faster than through any other method" - However 3po I am amazed that you are prepared to lecture me on the importance of other elements of training! I thought you has moved on from the arrogance of youth!

But a question - How long has your PR remained at 5.14m and why has it not improved? Is the problem technical, physical or psychological?

[altius]

Apologies 3po. I should have preced my query about your PR by saying :Given that you are on of the most committed and perceptive young vaulters I know of ----- "

[vault3rb0y]

I was not prepared to lecture you on the importance of other elements of the vault, but instead hear your take on how they are unimportant as long as you are working on 3-step pop-ups? I believed that my take on training philosophy matched yours pretty closely (especially since i pretty much formed the bulk of my training philosophy from our meeting last summer in Baltimore), and if I have it wrong I wanted to hear it from you. I am not a high school athlete so your comments did not directly apply to me, however my question becomes how much emphasis should a college vaulter with much more time to commit to training spend on aspects outside of a 3-step pop up? It's clear to me now that you don't REALLY believe that high school athletes should JUST do 3-step pop ups, otherwise why would we have done gymnastics drills/pole runs/etc during the clinic? So it was more to make a point on your part.

As for my own personal PR, you can assume it is a combination of all three. I choose not make any excuses for my vaulting or search for the magic missing piece from my training, and if I do it certainly won't be public. My struggles are my own and to be dealt with by me and my coaches. Everyone else can assume whatever they want.

[EIUvltr]

Six step stiff pole vaulting will enable you to develop almost every aspect of the vault - all you have to add is 6/8/10/12 more steps and you have got it. First focussing on all the elements of the plant, finishing the take off and STAYING BEHIND THE POLE to maximise you grip differential (being discussed elsewhere) and then in the same session jumping to clear a bar that is progressively increasing in height. If high school coaches did only this activity - forgot the weight training/long distance running and even the gymnastics, their athletes would improve faster than through any other method while elite vaulters would learn to refocus on what is really critical in the event - all they have to add is the extra steps of the run up and build the rhythmic structure. Simple really.

Agreed, however I feel sad that there is such an emphasis on immediate results nowadays. I feel that a lot of seniors would jump higher if they had spent a bit more time on the fundamentals their earlier years along with sprint and jumping mechanics and proper resistance training. Coaches (and athletes) want to have their cake and eat it too. They want their athletes to get stronger, faster, more conditioned and improve technically all at once, and the lack of emphasis on any one thing ultimately results in stagnation in all areas or sometimes overtraining. Ironically a lot of these coaches believe they are using Block periodisation to train their athletes because "We do sets of 10 in January, then sets of 6 in February, then sets of 3 in March...!" Which is NOT block periodization.