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I was recently doing drills against a wall with my coach. Three lefts then a jump up and I was to hold the bottom form of the jump and ride the pole back to the ground (pretty standard stuff). Well, after two others used the same pole, and after I had used it a number of times, the pole broke and unbent into my knee leaving a nasty bruise. The weird thing is that the pole broke in between my hands. I've never heard of that before and I was wondering if anyone could give me a reason. We had used the pole many times and even in a meet three or four days previous. Any ideas??

When you bend a pole against the wall it is bending the pole in a way it not supposed to be bent. When you bend it against a wall it bend in the hand grip area where the pole isn't designed to flex thus put pressure in the wrong place and breaking or damaging the pole I recommend not doing drills against the wall that bends the pole do pop ups or something in to the pit much safer and easier on poles.

how is bending against a wall any different then bending against the pit though?? Granted you don't follow through with the vault, but it should put the same bend into it. I've never heard of anyone breaking a pole between the hands either, so that is unusual. How old is the pole??

Its a very different and high bend its actually you bend the pole using the hand grip, if you look at a picture of a pole bent there is very little to no arch in the hand grip area, the stress from the top hand pulling down and bottom pushing out makesa pole bend right between your hands and thats ho it breaks. Seen it happen many times, kids think poles have to be warmed up by bending then in th box or against something and the on thing itdoes is give them a chances t damage or break a pole.

Actually I have seen this happen before. A kid last summer at one of the all comers meets pulled his pole out of the bag, and was just standing there pushing it against the curb and it cracked between his hands! We figured it had gotten spiked or something. He was not jumping into it or anything

Ok so who guessed i would be kickin my 2 cents in on this one??

No it should not have broken IF you were doing the drill i am thinking of AND you were doing it correctly. The problem with that drill is too many people use it as a LEVER drill instead of a PLANT drill. The area in a pole with the least amount of material (glass) is from between the hands to the top!! So if your levering (forcing bend really high) your in trouble. The other explanation could be standard bruises. When vaulters do run throughs the pole hits the standard kinda high near the hand hold area. Over time this creates bruises that eventually cause a breakage. If the remainder of the pole (the long piece) measures around 10' to 12' in length it could have been that.

there we go....pvjunkie is on to the same train of thought that I was. A form of plant drill that I've seen time and time again. Its the same tensions on the pole as a normal plant, just at slower pace. Done correctly shouldn't break the pole. I do agree that "warming up" the pole is not a good idea and that can cause damage due to the forces placed on the handholds.

ive always been told never to bend the pole by pushing it against a building or something. my coach last year used to stand over at the pit w/ my pole and see how much he could get it to bend by just pushing it really hard into it. bad idea! we went to a clinic together and when one of the guys was doing this he got yelled at because apparently it damages the poles. i have never seen a pole break from this but at least you were not in the air!

Actually I was in the air....it is an actual jump up (spotted of course). The break was about 6-8 inches down from the top of the pole....right in between my hands. I always use a slightly smaller than my already small handgrip when I do these drills, so that would prevent some stress in the higher part of the pole. My coach (I'm at the Richard Stockton College of NJ) has done these drills since he was in high school and has never damaged or broken anything before. I just dont know though....the way it broke kind of confuses me and any enlightenment would be great. Thanks

PS~ The pole was bending the exact same way as in a normal jump. The same plant take off position jump up and form. Nothing different.

ouch!

Bending a pole against the wall isn't very effective I think doing partner spot plant drills when you take off and a teammate lifts you a little and eases you down is a lot better crushing a pole on the wall is a drill often used but used usually by that one guy at camps that wants to show how much he can bend his pole. I've never seen a pole break between the hands in that drill but I've seen a couple poles snap because of the infamous push with bottom pull with top see if I can make an arc out of my pole.

yeah....I know somthing was gunning for me that day iI guess.....