OUvaulterUSAF wrote:I'd like to see your explanation to these questions you posted:
1. When should swing begin and why?
2. How could one increase the speed of the swing and generate more energy at the same time?
3. Does swing need to be shortened at the hips (famous L position) and why?
Your first question is one of the two central questions of the vault existence. When you realize the truth it will transform you and you will be born again. When I had this enlightenment (drinking coffee with my coach and at the time high priest Yagodin half the night) in 1984 it transformed my vault in one night.
The swing begins immediately after your top arm meets the resistance from the pole and your take-off foot leaves the ground. It is the same for everyone without exception. So, what you really asking is what you do at that moment.
The issue at hand is that if you swing begins too early, than you do not penetrate enough to complete the bar clearance or worse land in the box.
The idle worshipers suggested in the past that you have to keep your take-off foot back after the take-off and hold your position through applying force through the bottom arm to the pole. It does one thing. It keeps your center of gravity lover by delaying the natural swing which than allows for further penetration of the vaulter-pole system.
The true believers have discovered a different ways of dealing with this issue.
Free take-off delays the moment when the top arm meets the resistance from the pole. When completely successful the take-off foot is already off the ground and fully stretched after completing the powerful leg take-off cycle before any pole resistance realized.
This are the first two methods through which true believers naturally increase vaulter-pole system penetration by delaying pole resistance and fully completing leg take-off cycle.
Let me answer the third question before the second.
Again idle worshipers would make you believe that you gain advantage by shortening the swing (L-position). They play on your ignorance. They know that you have to complete your swing in a limited time and shortening of the swing decreases the swing time by increasing the speed of angular rotation (degrees per second). So, you get upside-down to catch recoil of the pole.
There are two problems with this. First, a faster (shortened) swing is leading to a faster rise of the center of gravity, which as we know from basic mechanics of the vault decreases the vaulter-pole system penetration. Second, they make you train the L-position which creates questions of when to shorten the swing and by how much.
The true believers do not train to shorten the swing. They attempt to avoid the L-position by completing the vault with as straight body as possible. This gives them two advantages. First, they achieve a lower average center of gravity height that increases penetration of the vaulter-pole system. Second, no need to train the timing and depth of the L-position.
Here is the devil’s trick on your mind my son. Everyone has an L-position during the vault. You cannot complete the vault without some degree of it. The difference between the true believers and idle worshipers is that true believers do not know they have an L-position unless they look at the video. The degree of true believer L-position is determined by the strength of the upper body.
If an athlete is very strong and the angular rotation speed of the straight body swing sufficient to complete the vault without shortening the swing you will not see L-position pronounced or will see less of it. One thing for sure you would never need to train L-position. It will auto regulate.
The best thing about straight body vault is that it demands increase of the physical input and creates a very strong feedback cycle in the mind of a true believer between result and a physical input. This in time creates open-ended growth demand for upper body development.
L-position worshipers usually would loose the correlation between result and the physical input, instead they begin to rely on perfecting the timing of L-position. This will break the correct feedback cycle and kill the physical development demand.
Now hopefully you can see a partial answer to your second question.
First, you could generate more energy by keeping your body longer during the inversion. Second, you can accelerate your rotation by pulling action of the bottom arm. The reason it is a pulling action because the rowing action will lead you to the L-position. Second, it is a pulling action because the pulling action produces more energy than rowing action.
Now read this three times and go multiply and prosper.