Dropping the lead knee - time for a retrospective?

[VTechVaulter]

i tend to accidentally drop my lead leg if im under and getting hammered at take off, but when im on and driving up into the take off, that knee drives hard.

[KirkB]

i tend to accidentally drop my lead leg if im under and getting hammered at take off, but when im on and driving up into the take off, that knee drives hard.

How far under are you when this happens? Are you able to salvage these vaults and clear the bar? How often? When it drops, do you still have sufficient time to invert? What's the highest you've cleared after dropping your knee? Do you fight to keep it up, or do you just let it drop when you feel it dropping?

Sorry for so many questions.

[VaultNinja]

I agree with powerplant on the steering issue. Thats a great way to describe. But I disagree with Kirk on the idea that not keeping it up is a lack of strength in highschoolers commonly. Mostly because I think that in learning the event your body is constantly making adjustments to keep itself safe, whether it is on conscious level or unconscious level. I think younger vaulters and possibly gymnasts would be much more likely to show this characteristic than experienced ones on average. Also it actually takes a great deal of strength to swing from that position, and if there doing it and getting inverted, than they don't lack the abdominal strength to hold the knee up through takeoff.
Also to answer Kirk, I don't coach this technique. But if I ever had an athlete that was doing it, and doing it well. I don't think I'd put much effort into changing it unless I was certain it would benefit them a great deal.
-P

[Barto]

Think of dropping the knee as the same as hitchkicking in the long jump. In a perfect world, no long jumper would ever hitch. The hang is more efficient; however, many of the best long jumpers hitch because it allows them to stabilize themselves in the air after takeoff. Dropping the lead knee allows vaulters to stabilize in much the same way. There is no "inherent" advantage to doing it, but it works well for some athletes.

[VTechVaulter]

It's okay, I know you didn't mean to spoil it.

I am back with my thoughts: The lead leg should not be dropped. Period. Think about how it affects swing speed. Think about how swing speed affects speed coming off the pole. Would you rather be moving slowly on a big bend or a lot quicker on a slightly smaller one? The only reason that stiff polers used a double leg swing is because they did not need speed to carry them upward off of the pole, they only needed to go a foot or so over their grip. This ties in very nicely with the inversion paradox that I've been talking about...

not that i believe the lead knee should be dropped BUT there were some stiff pole vaulters that pushed off well over 3 ft and more. check out jan johnsons sky III and sky IV videos. crazy push off by some of those guys.

however i still believe that an efficient drive knee is a better technique, depite that some people make it work well (or very very very well as the case may be)

[VTechVaulter]

i tend to accidentally drop my lead leg if im under and getting hammered at take off, but when im on and driving up into the take off, that knee drives hard.

How far under are you when this happens? Are you able to salvage these vaults and clear the bar? How often? When it drops, do you still have sufficient time to invert? What's the highest you've cleared after dropping your knee? Do you fight to keep it up, or do you just let it drop when you feel it dropping?

Sorry for so many questions.

generally only happens when im about 8-10 inches under and leaning back. yeah i can salvage and make bars. its weird its like a golf slice, some days it just shows up, and disappears next workout. i do find that i can still invert, and ive probably jumped 5.30 or so like that. the weird thing is i dont feel like my knee is down, i look at vidoe and i think CR@P. haha. and i try to get it up, but it just doesn't work when im getting yanked.

[powerplant42]

not that i believe the lead knee should be dropped BUT there were some stiff pole vaulters that pushed off well over 3 ft and more. check out jan johnsons sky III and sky IV videos. crazy push off by some of those guys.

Think about why stiff polers dropped the lead knee. This is an additional factor in my 'inversion paradox' that I have failed to mention until now. This is because the thought has not totally formed in my mind yet... What I've got I'll throw out there now: There is less time to swing on a stiff pole, so double-leg swinging would at first seem counter-intuitive (because it is slower). However, the bar is lower due to the lack of swing energy redirection time and there is little energy being returned by the pole. This means that a double leg swing is quick enough for the lesser demand of 'inversion'. I'm not making a ton of sense, I realize, but do you sort of see what I'm getting at? The double-leg swing was more powerful and quick enough to get to the angle of push-off. That's a little more concise. Only the best would be pushing off 3'+, and not much over that. This is because they're redirecting a more powerful swing, just at a slightly lower angle. 6 inches is a lot of difference in push-off. Nobody could push off 3' on a stiff pole with a one-leg swing. (You will never see a good stiff poler 'cover' the pole! THANK YOU for helping me to enlighten myself agapit...)

[VTechVaulter]

right. i understand that. and like i said, i dont agree with the drop knee vault. i was simply saying some stiff vaulters were able to push off incredible amounts. that was my only intent in that particular post.

[powerplant42]

Just clarifying more!

We need Lukyanenko on this board...

[KirkB]

From the last "rash" of posts on this thread, I'm learning lots of things that I had never considered - because I never personally experienced or tried to drop my lead knee. (If I was so far under that my lead knee was yanked down, I just bailed.)

I think the insight that you're all providing might help each of us in our coaching endevours, with the main point (for me, at least) being that you shouldn't just coach someone based solely on your own experience as a vaulter.

You need to consider all these other things that no single person could experience or realize on their own.

Tolerance, admiration, and appreciation (whatever you want to call it) of techniques other than the "pure Petrov" model are also important, as evidenced by this thread.

The power of brainstorming!!!

Kirk

[altius]

It might help clarify this issue if you took a look at pages 47.48.49 in BTB2. i would add that Markov's dropping of the leg was not intentional - it was the result of a poor planting action, and that Feofanova could have jumped 5.00m five years ago but for the problem with her lead leg. My rationale is detailed in Btb2, C28.

Note that Igor Potapovich was a true double leg swinger - the jury is out on whether what he gained in the swing was lost in not covering the pole early enough..

[KirkB]

Gotcha on Feofanova (Fig. 28.13e) having too slow of a swing whilst letting her trail leg catch up to her lead leg. As you say, it would be better if she swung faster whilst keeping the lead knee up - to get to an earlier inversion. She looks OK on Figs. a b c d, but after e, the lack of inversion on f is quite predictable. I like the way Isi does it, although she just seems to be coasting thru all the motions of a good vault. Good technique, just not enough ooomph on takeoff, swing, extension, etc. (I digress.)

I can relate directly thru personal experience to pp 47-49 - can't disagree with much at all. But I'll try ...

Pg 47 "... a flexing pole automatically lowers the centre of mass of the whole system, rendering the double leg swing unnecessary."

To me, that statement sounds illogical. Up to the comma, the statement is true. But why does that make the double leg swing unnecessary? Perhaps a less superlative wording might be more true. How about "... rendering the double leg swing less important."? You see the difference? With your wording, you imply that the CoM is so low that there's absolutely no additional advantage to lowering it even more. But "low" is a relative term. Why not lower your centre of mass even lower than what it already is on a flexing pole?

Having said that, I'm not an advocate of dropping the lead knee. But I'm trying to keep an open mind on this thread. Your arguments against dropping the knee are good ones, it's just that there's shades of grey here. Petrov made a choice (a good one I think) not to drop the lead knee in his model, but it doesn't negate the possibility that there's another model (or style, as you might call it) where dropping the lead knee might be intentional by the vaulter. Nordwig did it by intent, and it looks to me like Lukyanenko is doing it by intent too. So maybe there's something there.

My argument re the above says nothing about my personal technique compared to the technique you've prescribed in BTB2. You've describe my vault almost perfectly. That's how I did it. I don't claim to have been nearly as "perfect" as Bubka, nor do I claim to have had a superior athletic body - I'm just saying that my technique exactly matched what you're saying. (37 years ago, mind you - in 1971.) I also had a very poor handstand (long story), so no claims to fame there.

I think the BTB2 paragraphs you mentioned above are spot on to the topic of this thread, so I am perhaps guilty here of getting off on a tangent. So if you don't mind, I'd like to take the comparison of my Bryde Bend to the Petrov model back to my main thread on the topic. I will eventually disclose the few slight differences that I feel I had compared to the "pure Petrov" model. Altius, I would appreciate your opinion on this.

In the meantime, I think we've covered some really good insights on this thread into the pros and cons of dropping the lead knee, and I thank you for your input.

Kirk