interesting vaulting drill

[altius]

"On a jagodin, you purposely block your bottom arm out. Dont know who you have been watching but the best I ever saw was Markov and he never blocked with the bottom arm. Kirk B I am disappointed that you are even remotely supporting this exercise - many of the the young vaulters on this forum have enough problems learning to do the fundamental drills correctly without advice to do - and how to do - irrelevant drills. As with the rock back drill, experienced vaulters may do it superbly -even though they dont need to do it at all - this exercise will not help youngsters improve their take off and swing - it will do the opposite.

I dont base my opinion on my experience as a vaulter because I never was one -I base it on fifty years of teaching and coaching the vault -and watching some of the great coaches of the world actually coach. I have never seen one of them encourage -or allow - their athletes to do this exercise.

[KirkB]

Kirk B I am disappointed that you are even remotely supporting this exercise - many of the young vaulters on this forum have enough problems learning to do the fundamental drills correctly without advice to do - and how to do - irrelevant drills.

Altius, the way I look at it, I have 7 years of fiberglass vaulting experience that you don't have, but you have about 47 years more coaching experience than me. I only coached for 3 years ... immmediately after university ... and 4 of my protoges eventually became Canadian PV champs ... one of these four even won the Bronze Medal in the 1988 Seoul Olympics Decathlon ... but my resume pales in comparison to yours.

So ...

I retract my statement where I said that every vaulter should try the back-flip drill just for the fun of it.

The problem is that there's beginners and intermediates surfing on here that MIGHT decide to try this drill, and pick up bad habits from it, and we certainly don't want that!

If any of you are going to play around with this drill, I suggest you only do it on one condition: You MUST do 100 Whip Drills on the highbar for every 1 back-flip drill!

That way, you're going to pick up all the good habits learned from the highbar, and none from the back-flip drill. (I really want y'all to discover the joys of the highbar! It's waaaaaay more important to your PV technique than this silly drill!)

A LITTLE off-topic ... but I also occassionally enjoyed "pool vaulting" ... where I would try to extend up on a pole from the bottom of the pool and shoot thru a hula-hoop that was placed on the surface of the water (taped to the pole). I can tell you for sure that this was BY NO MEANS a PERFECT simulation of the extension phase of a vault ... but it sure was fun!!! ... especially on a hot day after a hard workout!!! And I doubt that I picked up any bad habits from my pool vaulting ... because I did it so infrequently.

So ... don't do the back-flip drill! Instead, do pool vaulting!!!

Now come on Altius ... don't be a spoil sport ... tell us that it's OK to goof around once in awhile!

Kirk

[altius]

If you want to goof around - go to the swimming pool. You wont get hurt and you wont develop bad habits in the vault! but thanks for your generosity of spirit!.

[CONNEXE]

Concerning the bottom arm for this type of drill:

It probably would not be a good habit to take off with the bottom arm on the inside of the pole.
Rens Blom in the video keeps his left arm at the outside of the pole. At the very moment his left elbow would get in the way he lets go the pole and finishes with a salto.
I think the salto is just to show off.

S. Bubka shows a drill
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmsgDEY6 ... re=related
where he manages to move his left elbow on the other side of the pole and finishes in a perfectly reversed position.
Does anybody think this shifting movement of the left arm (which probably implies a short push) has a beneficial effect (helps to to develop good habits) ?