Kyle, we might just have to agree to disagree on this one (no problem here), but I still don't get it ...
KYLE ELLIS wrote: If you were to grab onto a rope and extend your body upwards would you not pull down the rope with your hands??
No, I would not pull down with my hands until my body was fully extended. To do so would be fraught with leakage, and it would therefore be sub-optimal.
KYLE ELLIS wrote: If you do a dead lift do you not both pull with the hands and push through the floor with your feet?? You dont just EXTEND THE BODY, you should also be applying pressure down the pole with hands. The hands should help the acceleration of the extension up the pole.
No. If you truly mean a dead lift, then there's no reason to pull with your hands at all. All you need to do with your HANDS is hang on ... so you don't let go of the bar! The lift is over as soon as your back is straight.
If you mean a clean, then same answer as on the rope. You need to refrain from pulling with the arms (hands) until your body is almost straight, and until the bar weights are already traveling upwards fairly quickly. Otherwise, you're going to just hunch your shoulders, and then what?
Since your back is stronger than your arms, you should be almost finished using your back before you begin to use your arms.
KYLE ELLIS wrote: Why just use the feet kirk, simply crossing the right foot over the left is a passive movement which will start the rotion at the feet, turning the hips and so on, but the vaulter can remain trapped on their back.
Your use of the words "passive" and "trapped" connote that something's wrong or inefficient by initiating the rotation with the lead knee foot, but that's simply not my experience. If you haven't learned to do this (which it sounds like you haven't), then I can understand that you might feel "trapped" (as you call it), but if you do it properly, then you're certainly not "trapped". And I fail to see where the ACTION of crossing one foot over the other can be called "passive". This is an extremely INTENTIONAL, QUICK, VIGOROUS, ACTIVE motion. Not at all passive. Where do you get the impression from that this is "passive"?
To the contrary, it leaves the hands free to "finish the extension" without fretting over them doing "double-duty" to twist the body in preparation for a pike or fly-away bar clearance. I actually think the exact opposite from you on this. If the foot isn't used to start the rotation, then THAT (the foot doing nothing) would be passive, would it not?
KYLE ELLIS wrote: If the vaulter applies pressure primarily through the left hand it will start the rotation at the shoulders, hips, then feet. Watch Bubka, does he cross his feet??? No. Does his rotation around the pole start at the shoulders or the feet? Shoulders.
I don't think Bubka's technique in this regard is a good model to follow. His turn/bar-clearance is often very awkward.
I'm not intentionally criticizing Bubka's technique re this. Rather, I would say that it's nothing that he puts much focus on to fix nor does he need to. His swing/extension is so powerful that he simply lets go of the pole and FLIES upwards and over the bar (often not very gracefully). IMHO, he sometimes lets go of the pole too early ... before he actually even gets a chance to fully extend and turn "properly".
To me, Bubka just verifies what I've always believed ... that to spend much time at all working on this part of your vault is a waste of time ... it will just "happen" naturally as a result of doing everything else correctly earlier in the vault. What would you rather do ... (1) have a tremendous run/plant/swing/extension and a relatively poor turn (a la Bubka) ... or (2) have a sub-optimal lower half of the vault and turn "perfectly" ... by either your proposed method (using the hands) or my proposed method (leading with one foot over the other)? I''ll take the 6.15 any day ... and not even worry about my turn!
Kirk
Not my vaulters, but fun to watch.
