how to have a perfect active pole drop!?!?

[altius]

I had hoped to stay out of this but some coaches out there may be trying to learn something from all of this - the way things are going they will certainly be lead down the wrong path.

"My original point, which is relevant to the drills I recommended, is that for some parts of the vault, learning by feel is the most effective way to learn some motor abilities. Pole drop is definitely one of them."

I SAY AGAIN - YOU ARE WRONG! Firstly because there is no pole DROP and secondly because Intuition or feel comes from repeated practice! It was a sufficiently important concept in skill acquisition that I actually defined it as "The distilled essence of past experience". So practice of what builds that experience? The correct movement patterns in the first place! When you HAVE mastered the correct movement patterns you can continue to increase speed - up to your full run up -AWAY from the vault runway - AND THEN you may begin to develop a feel for what is happening and make the minute adjustments necessary on any given vault -because every vault is indeed a one off - a happening and tiny adjustments are always needed. Consider only the effect of head or tail winds for example -or the adrenaline in the system.

So lets cut to the chase - show me some of your athletes in slomo - and indicate all of their parameters please.

[grandevaulter]

When you HAVE mastered the correct movement patterns you can continue to increase speed (Altius)

I believe the slogan "Practice makes perfect" was corrected to " Only perfect practice makes perfect". ( Vince Lombardi)

[CoachEric]

I SAY AGAIN - YOU ARE WRONG! Firstly because there is no pole DROP

We're going to have to agree to disagree on this one, for the reasons that I feel like I have explained pretty clearly. You aren't going to change my mind, just like I'm not going to change yours, and that's ok. In your own words, we can disagree without being disagreable. I know from your material, which is very good, that you and I have a very similar understanding of general concepts of the vault such as the continuous chain and the free takeoff. We disagree only on some of the discreet physics of how those concepts are achieved. The practical implications are minute.

That said, I think that you think that I think that the bottom arm does nothing to support the pole duing the run. But that's not what I think. I just believe the support with the bottom arm should be minimized. I believe that the pole tip should accelerate towards the plant. If the pole drops with a constant velocity instead of an increasing velocity, I believe it affects the vaulter's sprint mechanics.

Intuition or feel comes from repeated practice!

Sure it does. But why can't an athlete add the 5th sense into his toolkit and learn a skill by feeling it? The one arm pole drop drill provides instant feedback. If the vaulter hesitates and fails to plant in time with the motion of the pole tip, they will find that jumping off the ground feels very awkward. I recommended the drill to this athlete (and others trying to learn the skill) because I can't physically be there to help them shape the motion. With my own athletes, I provide thorough instruction, demonstration, and physical manipulation during drills to teach the motions. All I can do here is recommend a drill that provides its own feedback.

In fact, the vaulter learns a lot of things from the feedback he gets when he feels something right or wrong. When a pole turns over faster because of a better plant, they feel it, and will better understand the integration of the movement as a result. I don't really understand how we could disagree on this.

So lets cut to the chase - show me some of your athletes in slomo - and indicate all of their parameters please.

I'm not sure what you mean by "indicate all of their parameters," and I don't have slomo video. But here is one of my athletes, a high school girl, doing jagodins at the end of practice. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SbgYFk1t ... ata_player
The takeoff is weak due to fatigue and the plant motion is a little late and timid, but this is a decent example of her dropping the pole into the plant. The pole tip crosses the plane of her face as she starts to plant. I would say it's just a hair to high, which is one of the reasons she decelerates at the takeoff. When she's on, she holds at 12'7" on a 13' 165. She weighs under 130. She's on a pole 35 lbs over her bodyweight because she understands pole drop. PR is 11'8" and she's ready to go much higher.

Here's another from a short run. Plant timing is a little off.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faSCfG4R ... ata_player

The figures show that he DOES NOT DECELERATE!

I remember seeing something about 10 years ago that showed that all vaulters were slower at the moment just before they took off than they were at 5 meters out, presumably because of the plant motion, and that Bubka decelerated less than the rest. I assume it was Dr. McGinnis's data. Unfortunately I can't find it, so I'll concede and stand corrected.

[altius]

Try reading Page 227 of BTB2 which has a table produced by Nikonov - in the 80s - which clearly shows that Bubka continued to accelerate into take off. It also suggested that those athletes who could do this had superior planting technique. In fact you might find the entire chapter useful -well interesting.

Unfortunately when the book was written I could not include detailed references - too time consuming. But I could probably find the original reference from "Modern Athlete and Coach' if pressed. We used to get everything direct from Russia because Jess Jarver - the editor and a former pole vaulter from Estonia - lived in Adelaide, and his brother, who was a doctor in the USSR, sent him any material that was useful..

[KirkB]

CoachEric, this may be the post that you were hunting for. Look at Agapit's quote within my first post on this "Runup and Acceleration" thread: http://www.polevaultpower.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=15410&hilit=kirk+accelerate+takeoff.

I have underlined the part of Agapit's reply to me that gives his stance on deceleration on takeoff. So who should we believe - Agapit or Altius?

Agapit's original post has disappeared for some reason (probably when RG converted this forum to phpBB), and we MAY have also lost supportive posts referencing McGinnis articles, but I did capture Agapit's quote here:

... RUNUP_SPEED + JUMPING_SPEED = TAKEOFF_SPEED

I think the rest holds true. And yes, JUMPING_SPEED is most often a negative value - but on a short-run vault, maybe not.

The shorter the run, the more likelihood that you'll be accelerating off the takeoff foot (because of lack of speed from the runup). No?

Kirk Bryde

I am sorry to tell you, but unless you are jumpping without run up the jump is always a negative value for the total speed. ...

So Altius and Agapit can battle it out over whether Bubka decelerates or not!

Kirk Bryde

[KirkB]

I found the thread where these quotes from myself and Agapit came from. They're from page 20 of the "We are doomed. Repent and ask forgiveness." threads.

Trivia: This 22-page thread from 2007-2008 is one of the longest and most popular threads on PVP - thanks to esteemed PV guru Agapit.

If you're not feeling up to reading the first 18 pages, I've summarized them at the top of page 19.

This was one of my earliest posts on PVP - before I wrote the Bryde Bend thread. In fact, the discussion in this thread - especially between Agapit and Tim McMichael (esteemed author of the Oklahoma Manifesto thread) - is what compelled me to write the Bryde Bend thread.

Kirk Bryde

[PVDaddy]

Wow guys! I have the least amount of pole vaulting coaching experience ( Zero) as any of you, yet I am the ONLY one that has even begun to attempt to explain the relation of the hands (and their movements) to the feet on each and every step of the most critical portion of the pole drop, the last 6 steps!?

No disrespect at all intended, but, this has me seriously wondering how many of you "Elite" coaches even understand it correctly? All I know is that when I go to even College level pole vaulting events, so many of them Hold the pole differently, Run with the pole differently, Drop the pole differently, Coordinate with the hands and the feet differently, and they Plant differently? I'm sorry, but, I must seriously ask the question, are most of these coaches lazy or do they simply not realize the value of correctly and perfectly executed technique??? Especially at the most critical phase of the vault, the last 6 steps!!! As Altius has reminded us, The Pole Vault Prophet has claimed that the vault is born here for crying out loud!

I know one thing for a fact! After studying the complexities involved, there is no way in HE@# I would hand a kid a stick and say "let it fall through your hands freely and owe, make sure your hands are high when you land tall on your plant foot! Keep practicing you'l figure it out! It's all about trial and error!" What a joke! Even practicing the last three steps, as they are commonly explained, does not even come close to explaining or teaching the intricacies involved to do it correctly. Not if you want to be great! I am in no way trying to say it's rocket science! Its not. But, you sure as heck better understand it, and understand it as perfectly as you can!

I have completely simplified its understanding with my analogy of "The simulation of the swinging arms in the vault". How BOTH hands or their simulation, with the use of the pole, elbows and shoulders should completely simulate the swinging forward motion of the arms that a sprinter demonstrates with the opposite leg! I have described this in pretty good detail on a thread I started titled "How to run fast with the pole like Bubka does. All I got was negative feed back. I have only received one positive comment from the peanut gallery just recently acknowledging the truth of this statement! Am I wrong with this theory and observation? Don't even try to tell me everyone already new this or understood it, cuz I have checked and have not found one post here on PVP that even suggested it or if you can find one they have not even come close to describing it in as great of detail as I have. I have also looked extensively on the internet and cannot find this comparison described. I am so convinced of this that I am willing to provide a step by step (All 6 steps) pictorial of how Bubka demonstrates this in action. I believe it will help to clarify and SIMPLIFY how to have a perfect active yet controlled pole drop. In the mean while, I think it would be very beneficial for the readers, if some of you advanced coaches would be willing to fully describe (in detail) the 6 steps planting motions of the hands as they relate to the feet and the lowering of the pole in detail! Like I said no disrespect intended to anyone, but I'm sure it will be received that way by some, unfortunately.

[KirkB]

... After studying the complexities involved, there is no way in HE@# I would hand a kid a stick and say "let it fall through your hands freely and owe, make sure your hands are high when you land tall on your plant foot! Keep practicing you'l figure it out! It's all about trial and error!" What a joke!

This is clearly a case of being misquoted, as I personally made no such claim. If you're quoting someone else, then fine. But if you're quoting me, may I suggest that you reread any post where I spoke of a "weightless pole drop" or "trial and error", and quote me EXACTLY, and then I will be happy to defend what I said. But I'm not going to even attempt to defend any misquotes of what you say I said.

... if some of you advanced coaches would be willing to fully describe (in detail) the 6 steps planting motions of the hands as they relate to the feet and the lowering of the pole in detail!

I have no interest in participating in this. You and CoachEric and Altius can have your pissing contest, but I'm not interested. For one thing I don't consider myself an elite coach (but I was an elite vaulter - 9th highest in 1971).

For another thing, I don't want to encourage you in any way to repeat in YET ANOTHER SERIES OF POSTS what you've already posted umpteen different ways. No disrespect intended, but I'm sure you'll take it that way!

For another thing, I've already stated that I couldn't tell you (with any precision) what my hands were doing 6 steps out or 3 steps out. They did what they had to do, but I didn't reverse-engineer any vids to see myself doing it. Instead, I went by the FEEL of where the pole was in relation to my body and my hands. And as I've said many times it was really quite simple - not much explanation needed at all. BUT (and maybe this is the point that you missed entirely), I did this after YEARS and YEARS of intensive training - just as Altius prescribes in BTB2.

After years and years of repetition, intuition become more and more important. After all, you can't be running 8-9 m/sec and simultaneously drop your pole by rote learning.

But even in the first day of a vaulter's career, there is SOME validity to just getting on the stick and experieincing how it FEELS. Theory is understood much better when there's a frame of reference for it. Until a rookie gets SOME experience under his belt, theory is futile.

It is notable that I've been consistent in my teaching of the importance of how a vault FEELS since I first joined PVP. Check out page 19 of the "We are doomed. Repent and ask forgiveness." thread and search for keyword "feel".

Kirk Bryde

[CoachEric]

PVDaddy, you have a habit of describing what you are looking at, frame by frame, on a slow motion video. Kudos for your hard work in developing your understanding and to try to articulate ideas that seem otherwise unmentioned. Your limitation is that you seem to be teaching yourself solely through 3rd person perspective of the best vaulter in history. Out at vault practice, vaulters aren't learning by looking at a video in slow motion, they're learning by doing. Coaches need to be able to watch them in real time and provide useful feedback.

It's great to have a keen eye and be able to identify the positions a vaulter executes, but it's another thing to be able to communicate to a developing vaulter which point they should focus their attention on, what something should feel like, which cues work and which don't, what drills to focus on, etc. You can't seriously be suggesting that you would rather sit a vaulter down and tell them:

3) Coming on to the 6th step (right foot) Bubka holds the pole at exactly 45 degrees. The bottom hand is held at about chest height.
4) Coming on to the 5th step (Left foot) the bottom hand is lowered about a fist width.
5) Coming on to the 4th step (right foot) the bottom hand is lowered another fist width
6) Coming on to the 3rd step (left foot) the bottom hand is lowered another fist width and has now reached it lowest point. Just above waist height. At this point the vaulter has broken from the hip, so the top hand is behind the hip, pole turned over,
readied for the plant.
7) Coming on to the second step (right foot) the bottom hand has been extended forward toward the pit to plant the pole. About
2/3 arm length out. The top hand has been raised to temples height.
8) Coming on to plant step the bottom hand is held just above the head with elbow bent facing out. The top hand is fully extended.

This is not useful to someone learning how to carry the pole down the runway!

You say "no disrespect intended," but follow it with "'Keep practicing you'l figure it out! It's all about trial and error!' What a joke!" As I've explained, we do the best we can to help athletes who ask for the help on PVP, and we rely on drills that provide instant feedback based on the way they feel. The drill works. Don't call it a joke until you've tried it.

And I see Kirk has just posted, so who knows whose philosophy you're condemning. Ditto everything he just said.

[KirkB]

Kirk Bryde

[grandevaulter]

I started titled "How to run fast with the pole like Bubka does. All I got was negative feed back.

I don't think asking questions and pointing out flaws should be considered negative.

The three step plant drill points to the obvious in the arm / leg positions and the T in two in the Clymer powerpoint makes reference to this as well.

[PVDaddy]

Coach Eric Said:

You can't seriously be suggesting that you would rather sit a vaulter down and tell them:
3) Coming on to the 6th step (right foot) Bubka holds the pole at exactly 45 degrees. The bottom hand is held at about chest height.
4) Coming on to the 5th step (Left foot) the bottom hand is lowered about a fist width.
5) Coming on to the 4th step (right foot) the bottom hand is lowered another fist width
6) Coming on to the 3rd step (left foot) the bottom hand is lowered another fist width and has now reached it lowest point. Just above waist height. At this point the vaulter has broken from the hip, so the top hand is behind the hip, pole turned over,
readied for the plant.
7) Coming on to the second step (right foot) the bottom hand has been extended forward toward the pit to plant the pole. About
2/3 arm length out. The top hand has been raised to temples height.
8) Coming on to plant step the bottom hand is held just above the head with elbow bent facing out. The top hand is fully extended.
This is not useful to someone learning how to carry the pole down the runway!

That's exactly what we did, but we were not sitting down. We were walking down the run way ,in slow motion, with a pole in our hands, practicing these very motions. We were also doing more than this, we were flaring our bottom hand elbow forward with the opposite leg and allowing the pole to come forward and contact the hip in steps 6,5,4 As we were doing this and through steps 3,2,1, we were thinking about how ALL these motions simulated the swinging arm of a sprinter.