bel142 wrote:Purple...
By pole usage I was trying to convey the difficult-ness of changing your pole carry, from pole push to drop.
Indeed if you did plant the pole the take off angle would be higher and the pole would role over a tick more and this might help for you not to flag out. But that transition would take you backwards for about a week.
Don't really see how planting the pole can increase pole angle, since I push straight up instead of in. You can tell from my videos I do not reach for the box. I think some of these main problems people see from pole pushing are only a problem when someone learned how to pole vault by pushing, and stayed pushing. Since I carried the pole for three years up to now I think that I easily incorporated a lot of my vault from pole carrying to pole pushing.
Out of my vault specifically I have noticed a change in...
A) Taller, higher, and more free of a take off and have in some cases had pretty good "pre-jumps"
- Up until March I was taking off around 9 foot with my 14 foot poles and on some vaults now are close to 12'.
B) Decreased amount of run-through and late plants
- I used to spend about every other practice running through on every vault no matter what, either I would just feel
'wrong' , or if I did manage to take off my plant was all out of wack and I would get rejected.
With pole pushing I may run through once a practice, and that is just when I am exhausted and my body just knows I'm not running fast enough.
Some people have a million reasons why they think pole pushing is bad, but they are all just guesses or from the pole pushers they have seen (most of witch are high school girls jumping around 8 foot). But the truth is, not enough people do it for anyone to really know the positive and negative effects. Superpipe had a lot of reason that he wrote as fact but I think don't apply to everyone. Yes you have to lean forward a little to start your run, but once I get back to enough strides, by the time I am really turning over in the last few steps I'm up just as tall and straight as if I were carrying the pole.... Accelerate to the mid, then sustain the speed and get the feet down over the next 3 lefts! Then there is the whole positioning of shoulders and stuff at take off, I don't think pushing has anything to do with that, I feel my vault is Identical once my last left foot hits the ground, weather I am pushing or carrying.
All I am saying is don't knock it till you try it! You can try and interpret anything by making assumptions or going off what you have seen from a select few people, but don't try to use those assumptions to disprove something without really testing it... Like someone saying "Friction, its science", How bout "weight" its science, or "momentum" its science. The friction from pushing is almost negligible, and it has "almost" been proven you can run faster pushing than carrying. (only real test have been from Tye Harvey because he is only elite pole pusher, but his runway speed was something like .3 or .4 m/s faster when he pushed compared to when he carried). But if you want science on what model makes you run faster, just simply run 40m with pole up, then push for 40m and see what speed changes, i bet its a lot faster when pushing.
ps. And people always mention a simple bump in the runway or lip of the box messing you up... not true, my indoor place we overlap the runway pieces then duct tape them down so about every 20 feet there is a nice little ramp for my pole tip to shoot up in the air, then the box in the ground sticks up a little but we put duct tape on it to make it smoother, but tips till bounces there but falls back down right after and slides into box fine. Only reason id see it really hurting is if you were at a really crappy high school where there was a gap between the runway and box (was one like that in my high school conference... but that it dangerous for a pole carrier too if he drops it a little too early)