PoleVaultPower.com

Age: 15
Grade: 9th
How long you have been jumping: 4 months
What pole you are on (length and weight rating): 11' 120lb altius
How high you are gripping: 10' 9"
What bar(s) you are attempting in the video: 10'

this is an older video

but the probs are still the same

http://s94.photobucket.com/albums/l92/l ... IM0868.flv

A common problem especially among young vaulters
your bottom arm is completely collapsed... what it should be straight at your plant.. helping the pole bend
my suggestion would be to do slide-box drills... it's amazing how much it has helped me
once you get that inital plant right... you can start workin on keepin your trail leg back and swinging it... but that will come later and will be easier with a good plant
good luck

im gonna respectfully disagree... while it is true that his bottem hand is completely collapsing, and that at some point slide box drills would be very beneficial, i think the bigger issue here is the take off in terms of the body position and lower body actions.

First thing, CHEST FORWARD PLEASE.. On your last few steps you are leaning back. keep your chest and hips in a vertical line all the way through the box. which leads right into important point number 2.

JUMP OFF THE GROUND. your just kind of running and getting picked up by the pole. which means you cant swing and therefore it is exteremely difficult to polevault.

the best drill you can learn first is a simple drill that you can do on the grass, no need for a bit. Its just a jump over the tip drill. Start with a nice small pole. Put the tip between your feet, and reach up as high as you can. Put your bottem hand about 8 inches lower. Thats gonna be your "standing grip height

Start with the pole above your head. Take 2 lefts and jump high as you can off the ground. at the same time, reach high with your hands and have the pole tip pass by your left side as close to your body as possible. If you can do that without the tip hitting, raise your grip a fist. You are now holding standing grip plus a fist. If you can jump over that, raise it some more. Make it a game. See how high you can jump over your grip with your tip hitting. I believe my personal best is about standing grip plus 2 feet and 2 fists. Dean Starkey once did standing grip plus three feet. As you get more proficient at the drill, you can do 3 lefts, and start with the pole down. learn to do that, and your take off with be much better and ready to do new stuff

Good Luck!!

EPVaulter1 wrote:A common problem especially among young vaulters
your bottom arm is completely collapsed... what it should be straight at your plant.. helping the pole bend
my suggestion would be to do slide-box drills... it's amazing how much it has helped me
once you get that inital plant right... you can start workin on keepin your trail leg back and swinging it... but that will come later and will be easier with a good plant
good luck

In my opinion, if you tell beginning vaulters to focus a lot on the plant, then they end up blocking out. And this creates a LOT of problems. It's good to have a good plant, but your bottom arm doesn't necessarily have to be straight.

I think because he's gripping so low, his bottom arm will naturally be bent like that so I think that's fine.

I think that he could keep a better drive knee, and a straighter trail leg, also I think he might be pulling a little with the top hand.


A bunch of short grip drills should help correct this problem. But I'm not exactly sure.

Once again I'm not a coach, so I could always be wrong.

I do agree with what both others are saying... good points
that's really the reason that we have this forum is to get all these points of view & different opinions and for others to catch what others may have missed
but for me the video skipped like crazy (on my other computer) and i couldnt ever get a good picture & it wasn't until now (on my newer computer) that i really got to see the full vault
so yea take i did miss a lot and the others are more correct than i was

thanks i'm bout to go practice and i'll try to take some more vids i think that i've fixed my collapsing prob.