After I posted that, PP, I was thinking that we're not too far apart on this, and we just explained it differently. I'll cover some of this in my "Short Run Vaulting" post (coming soon - to a thread near you!), but just to clarify here a bit ...
Short run vaults are for learning proper technique. I'll repeat that ... SHORT RUN VAULTS ARE FOR LEARNING PROPER TECHNIQUE!
That's why I advise you, 6P, to be fresh when you're focussing on technique.
It's a waste of time to just go thru the motions, if you're tired, injured, or otherwise not starting the practice with the best you got (technique-wise). You should always start out fresh, get in a couple vaults that represent your "best" technique, then start adding to that technique bit by bit, focussing on one aspect of your vault at a time, each vaulter getting better than the last one, then you can't help but improve your technique that day. That's how you make headway in a VAULTING TECHNIQUE practice.
The challenge is to leave the practice with better technique than what you started the practice with.
Now, where the competitive aspect comes in is that during the FIRST part of my practice, I vaulted without a bar. That was for 2 reasons. First, it took too long to keep setting the bar back up if I missed (something that a bungee would take care of today), but secondly - and more importantly - the focus SHOULD NOT BE ON CLEARING BARS, but on IMPROVING YOUR TECHNIQUE.
For the SECOND part of my practice, my coach "rewarded" me and my good, newly learned technique by putting the bar up and letting me try to clear it. This was what I considered the "payoff" part of the practice. I loved to clear bars (don't we all?), so this was the fun, competitive part for me. Sometimes my coach would put the bar up to some ridiculous height, and challenge me to knock it off with my feet. And sometimes he'd put it up to a height that was challenging, but not impossible to clear.
If my technique broke down for any reason, down went the bar, and we re-focused on whatever vault-part broke down. Once that was fixed, back up went the bar.
I refer only to the FIRST part and SECOND part of the practice instead of first half and second half, because there was no set number of vaults in each mode. Really, it was based on my "freshness", and if I had learned anything new or not, and my desire to "test myself" with a bar up.
We often put the bar up when I was just about out of gas, and my coach thought that I'd just take "a couple jumps with the bar up". In practice, what often happened was that I'd get inspired by the bar being up, the adrenalin juices would start flowing, I'd "get my second wind", and I would take sometimes as many as 10 more jumps. I admit that I was the type of vaulter that would plead with my coach at the end of almost every practice "Just one more, coach!". And he'd let me try one more, but then if I missed that bar, I'd say "Just one more" ... and so on, until I was completely out of gas!
It might seem like a paradox that I would vault til I was dog-tired, but it wasn't. I attempted every practice jump like it was my last jump of the day, and I usually had my best jumps of the day on about the 3rd from last jump. So my 2nd last jump was often a miss because I was tired, and my last jump was when I was so dog-tired that my coach and I both decided that I was too tired to improve my technique any more that day.
In this respect, I doubt if I'm much different than what you (6P and PP) each experience in your own practices.
6P, perhaps the one distinct difference was that we vaulted indoors, so no matter how long the practice was, we had lights. Ha! Ha!
Kirk
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-6P