bel142 wrote:You can vault however you want... As my first couple of posts said, nothing wrong with it.
But you are mis-informed when it comes to catching a lip on the box. This year at the D1 NCAA east regional championships one of the competitors missed the competition because during warm ups he was pushing the pole caught the lip of the box and went down, hard... I can consider it general consensus that 'A and T' Greensboro is not a crappy high school, nor are the vaulters in that competition. The competition was flipped and a nice little head wind ensued.
Correct me if I am wrong, but I heard that something was wrong with that box (like it was put in wrong). I am from NC and have jumped at A&T several times, have not pushed there, but have seen high school kids do it without problems. But i bet I can tell you why it messed him up so bad... Since he probably was just using pushing as a warm up drill like I used to, he probably pushed with just one arm until he jumped, then threw the other arm up there. That is how I started pole pushing, but it only works from a few steps because the pole tip is hard to control and if the tip can easily bounce over the box (with our without a lip). To keep that from happening you have to grab with the left hand on your second to last step.