Dropping the lead knee - time for a retrospective?

[KirkB]

Well I'm no big shot vaulter to study or criticize, but I did manage to jump 5.60m ... dropping my lead knee dramatically. ... I basically taught myself how to vault and bend a pole on feel. When I watch film of myself and that lead leg drops, you can clearly see that I reload or apply extra pressure to the pole pushing it further into the pit. This in turn gives me more time to swing upside down and a better position after taking off with a step way closer than what most "models" suggest, and my hips sucked underneath my shoulders.

... I think the knee drop is a very efficient way to get upside down if you are taking off under with a stiff bottom arm. ... most people suggest I need to keep my knee up. ... Just like a golfer......I've lost my swing.
-Paul L

Paul, thank you so much for joining this thread! The reason I mentioned your name is that I saw you win the Alki Beach Vault at 5.45. Nice job! I was the grey-haired guy that ducked under Becca's tent during the downpour. I shook your hand to congratulate you on your win. You may not remember me, but I certainly remember you, and your vaulting style. I was actually quite amazed how quickly you inverted after dropping your knee. Well done!

Can you comment on Hooker, Lukyanenko, or Yurchenko? Do they shed any light on your drop-the-lead-knee technique? Their coaches are clearly encouraging them to drop it. Put yourself in their place, with their coaches. I think Hooker is coached by Parnov now, yet Parnov presumably follows the Petrov model. Clearly, dropping the lead knee seems to be a permissable style within the Petrov model. No?

Also, what style do you coach?

Kirk

[golfdane]

I think Paul made a crucial statement here: "I basically taught myself how to vault and bend a pole on feel."

A body that "knows" what happens during a vault, when the body does certain things, is probably a key to stable vaulting. It intuitively knows how to overcome small deviations from the perfect execution. Surely, perfect execution everytime, is desirable, but not attainable by most.

Dropping the knee unconsciously, could be a reaction aimed at getting more bend. Perhaps being to ambitious in the pole selection is at fault?

My own mentor, Buciarski, encourages my son towards dropping his lead knee.

[altius]

"Their coaches are clearly encouraging them to drop it." I do not believe that to be the case with Hooker. If you want a clearer picture of Parnov's approach to technique take a look at both of his daughters - neither of them drop the lead leg.

This is issue has been clarified before by volteur - I suggest you reread his post.

[KirkB]

I asked Steve about this change and he said they hed been working on trying to correct it, but i sensed not seriously as he was a little evasive about it. Mainly he was excited about how long Bubka spends on the side of the pole during inversion and how to do that. I believe it is because Bubka is there earlier combined with the fact he stays there longer, as he is actively pulling at that stage whereas most vaulters are reaching that point too late and so have to accelerate to catch up with the pole. Bubka is early enough to gain the advantage of a longer pull. You could also say he gets ahead of the pole earlier and faster because of this.

Thanks, altius - I got it now.

Instead of "Their coaches are clearly encouraging them to drop it." I should has said "It seems to me that their coaches might be encouraging them to drop it." Or better yet: "Are their coaches encouraging them to drop it?" I'm guilty of drawing conclusions prematurely, without sufficient evidence to back up the conclusion. My bad. Really, all I want to understand is "What is the motivation or history behind why the drop-the-lead-knee technique is used?"

Fortunately, I think this thread is making some headway on getting this question answered.

So now, considering that Parnov coaches his daughters to keep the lead knee up, and considering that Hooker only moved to Perth after the 2006 Commonwealth games to train with Parnov, the situation looks to me to be different than I first thought. I'm thinking now that he must have dropped the lead knee prior to 2006, and that maybe this "style" wasn't serious enough to immediately correct by Parnov?

I guess where I'm going with this is that I accept Paul's explanation that he just developed that technique on his own, without purposely targetting it as more optimal than lead-knee-up. Likewise with Hooker (or so it seems by the evidence in this thread) - Hooker and Parnov are not purposely TRYING to drop the lead knee, but it's not considered such a major flaw that it demands immediate correction.

That leaves Lukyanenko and Yurchenko. Could they have developed their technique through a similar journey, or are they intentionally dropping their knee for some particular reason - as yet unknown to us?

I don't know about Yurchenko - his style is different than Lukyanenko's. But Lukyanenko seems to SWING both legs up quite nicely, AND IN TIME FOR THE RECOIL OF THE POLE. If I hadn't seen him do this, I wouldn't believe it to be possible. But videos don't lie, thus my question ... "Has he hit on something big here?".

Suppose we say no, he's just an anomoly, and his technique is sub-optimal. Now suppose he jumps 6.20. Is he still just an anomoly then, or will the vault world take his technique seriously then? Personally, I don't think that a WR is necessary to take a new technique seriously. 6.01 is high enough for me to ALREADY conclude that this is a viable alternate technique to the Petrov model. And I say that just on the evidence - without any personal experience in successfully dropping the lead knee. Again, I can't see how he can physically do this - but he does!

Thanks for your input, altius!

Kirk

[powerplant42]

I suppose you mean "6.20"...

[KirkB]

Right, 6.20 - not 5.20. It's fixed now. Thanks.

[Spencer Chang, MD]

I have to clarify that I am not a proponent of dropping the lead knee. It will however get you into the pit when the take-off and plant are less than optimal. It was discussed in that article to explain techniques of moving the pole to vertical, pendulum #1. Markov was unable to catch the ride as well as Bubka because of dropping the lead knee. However, from where he was taking off, this may have been a nessesity.

[volteur]

I have to clarify that I am not a proponent of dropping the lead knee. It will however get you into the pit when the take-off and plant are less than optimal. It was discussed in that article to explain techniques of moving the pole to vertical, pendulum #1. Markov was unable to catch the ride as well as Bubka because of dropping the lead knee. However, from where he was taking off, this may have been a nessesity.

lovely - words without chaff - where have you been?

[volteur]

"Their coaches are clearly encouraging them to drop it." I do not believe that to be the case with Hooker. If you want a clearer picture of Parnov's approach to technique take a look at both of his daughters - neither of them drop the lead leg.

This is issue has been clarified before by volteur - I suggest you reread his post.

cheers Altius! Do we agree?

[volteur]

I' am just redoing this paragraph because when i re=read it then it confused me

volteur wrote:
I asked Steve about this change and he said they hed been working on trying to correct it, but i sensed not seriously as he was a little evasive about it. Mainly he was excited about how long Bubka spends on the side of the pole during inversion and how to do that. I believe it is because Bubka is there earlier combined with the fact he stays there longer, as he is actively pulling at that stage whereas most vaulters are reaching that point too late and so have to accelerate to catch up with the pole. Bubka is early enough to gain the advantage of a longer pull. You could also say he gets ahead of the pole earlier and faster because of this.

and edited

I asked Steve about this change and he said the problem had started since he had been in Perth and Alex had been trying to correct it lately. I sensed not too seriously because he preferred to turn the convo to something else instead. To how he is trying to spend more time on the side of the pole during the pull phase of the vault - like Bubka does. He didn't have a game plan about this though (or it was a secret) but i sense Bubka spends more time through this phase of the vault because he arrives onto the bend earlier than most. Add to this the fact that he also continues to work the pull all the way to release. This keeps the bend in the pole longer and delays the release of the potential energy (relative timing). As a result more energy is released in a shorter space of time - thereby propelling the vaulter more powerfully.

I think what normally happens to vaulters is that they are behind the pole and never ahead of it - ahead being free and working within the objective of the free takeoff. Since they fall behind somewhere on the run or into takeoff they feel the need to catch up. This is achieved by tucking over piking or slipping around the side of the pole instead of actively pulling around it. As a result this phase becomes unloaded instead of staying loaded like Bubka. Unloaded in the sense that movement is occurring without additional input of energy. The movement is determined by momentum from previous energy input. So Agapit' might say that Bubka is one of the rare ones that doesn't have a passive phase in his pull. Or kirk might say there is less leakage going on with Bubka then most. I like the word entropy. How much loss of energy due to entropy has occurred - but i think a passive phase is the best concept for doing something practical with - for use as a coaching concept.

[KirkB]

I asked Steve about this change and he said the problem had started since he had been in Perth and Alex had been trying to correct it lately.

Thanks for the clarification, Volteur. Although it still doesn't fully clarify the history of how Hooker's style of dropping the lead knee came about.

I recall asking if it was my imagination that he's dropping the lead knee more this season than in the past, and I recall someone replying that it was indeed my imagination. So I'm still confused.

I suppose I'll have to take some time to analyze Hooker's vaults (a little more closely) of before/after he started to work with Parnov (pre/post 2006 Commonwealth Games). I'm still traveling, so rushed for time. That analysis will have to wait.

Lest you think I'm being picky about a trivial "style difference" or "variant" of the Petrov model, I'm really not. I'm looking for career histories where vaulters purposely set out to drop the lead knee, vs. vaulters that just "fell into" that habit for some unintentional reason. I'm currently thinking that Lukyanenko might be in the former category, and perhaps Hooker is in the latter category. Litchfield is in the latter category, although it could be argued that he simply followed what his body was telling him "felt right".

For high-schoolers, if you intend to keep your lead knee up, but drop it, I believe the most common cause is that you simply don't have the gut strength to hold it up.

One aspect of this technique that I don't quite understand is how a vaulter might drop it to compensate for a bad setup to the swing - something wrong with the plant or takeoff. Or as Volteur puts it "... they fall behind somewhere on the run or into takeoff they feel the need to catch up". What I don't get is that I can't see how a vaulter can do this at the spur of the moment. Perhaps that's not what you're inferring, Volteur? Perhaps you're inferring that over time - over a series of days or weeks - the knee begins to drop more and more. I would like to hear more about how instantaneous a vaulter might be able to adjust the action of the lead knee. During a vault? During a competition? Over a season? More gradually than that?

Remember that I have no experience with dropping the lead knee, and have never advocated it. That's why I'm in unfamiliar territory here.

Kirk

[powerplant42]

I recall asking if it was my imagination that he's dropping the lead knee more this season than in the past, and I recall someone replying that it was indeed my imagination. So I'm still confused.

He was talking about Parnov coaching Hooker to jump like that.

One aspect of this technique that I don't quite understand is how a vaulter might drop it to compensate for a bad setup to the swing - something wrong with the plant or takeoff. Or as Volteur puts it "... they fall behind somewhere on the run or into takeoff they feel the need to catch up". What I don't get is that I can't see how a vaulter can do this at the spur of the moment. Perhaps that's not what you're inferring, Volteur? Perhaps you're inferring that over time - over a series of days or weeks - the knee begins to drop more and more. I would like to hear more about how instantaneous a vaulter might be able to adjust the action of the lead knee. During a vault? During a competition? Over a season? More gradually than that?

Think about 'steering' at the end of the run so that your run is 'on'. It's the same concept, except with the swing. The body can realize that it won't make the pit so it 'feels' itself into dropping the knee. Does that sort of make sense?