This is how to swing to the top!

[kcvault]

oh well that makes more since then. Also looking at again it looks like the pole rolls much faster which would exsplain why you could not completly finish the pull and turn the pole was already rolled. Still weather your concious of it or not you down swing with your trail leg.

[KirkB]

Kyle, after watching your vid, I'm confused about what you're experimenting with. Your swing? Why?

Your takeoff is not free at all. Without even analyzing this frame by frame, it's quite obvious that your pole bend starts just after your lead knee passes your trail leg knee ... whilst your takeoff foot is flat on the runway. This will ALWAYS significantly hamper ANYONE'S swing ... altho I have seen some elite vaulters swing quite well even WITHOUT a free takeoff. But remember ... they're Supermen ... and you're not. You're a mere mortal. (Tough )

In turn, your lack of a free takeoff will hamper your elastic stretch. And this in turn hampers your swing.

What has Butler advised you about your lack of a free takeoff? Why is your takeoff not your focus ... and then your elastic stretch ... and THEN your swing?

Kirk

[kcvault]

I think I am starting to understand what KE is saying though we look at it differently. He thinks of pushing his hips up and letting the swing happen as a result of that (I think). I think of driving into the box with my top hand which would make my hips begin to rise, though I don't do this very well, but when I do I feel the hips rising, I just have to think of keeping my trail leg long or I will tuck. Correct me if i'm wrong but I think the misunderstanding I have is I was thinking KE was saying to try to swing the hips, which I know would instantly make your feet drop, but i believe KE was saying push your hips up at take off which I believe naturally happens if you drive into the box with your top hand. To me swinging with your hips I imagine as a thrusting motion that would instantly make your feet drop, which is a position you see with a lot of beginners, as a result of not knowing how to swing and being under. Not sure if my explanation makes since but I think we are both trying to do the same thing, but with different focuses.

---Kasey

[KYLE ELLIS]

I feel like my best swing lately came from re-extending with the arms and trying to swing my entire body rather than purposely breaking at the hips (which is still a challenge). I DON' THINK ABOUT MY HIPS AT ALL DURING AN ACTUAL VAULT. Since YOU HAVE TO BREAK at the hips, I question why would you focus on it by swinging your trail leg? My concern is the leg swinging ahead of the body causing a passive phase due to the trail leg beating the hips to the vertical plane. I will repeat you do have to break the hips and due to momentum and centripetal forces the trail leg will always beat the hips, but if you minimized this time it would decrease the passive phase (and you would see them flat back as kirk says for 1 frame).

The thing I think is that you guys envision the same swing up as I do once th trail leg is pointing at the box; and the body makes a 45 degree angle towards the box... And what I am saying is that you don't even realize when to swing until your trail leg has naturally already swung under your head... So you have about two feet in which to swing your trail leg before you move the hips up with the momentum of the leg. Seems more effeciant to keep pressure with extended arms to enhance the natural swing.

[kcvault]

[quote]My concern is the leg swinging ahead of the body causing a passive phase due to the trail leg beating the hips to the vertical plane.[/quot]

If you focused on kicking up after the down swing the same way you kick up in a free hip circle to get on a hand stand your hips would catch up to your trail leg as you extended. Also I believe what I was saying about driving your top arm into the box makes it feel like you are swinging with a straight body. If you need to focus on swinging with a straight body to accomplish the same thing then that is a good focus for you. But I hold by the fact that the down swing is a very important element in this, and like me I think most vaulters try to take off with there trail leg back and swing as soon as the elastic stretch happens making the downswing much further then only 2 feet of swinging.

---Kasey

[VaultPurple]

Kyle,

If you are thinking that swinging the leg instead of whole body is a passive state and beneficial, would it not be better just to have a two legged swing like Colwick? Because he clearly is swinging with his entire body.

[KirkB]

I feel like my best swing lately came from re-extending with the arms and trying to swing my entire body rather than purposely breaking at the hips ... Since YOU HAVE TO BREAK at the hips, I question why would you focus on it by swinging your trail leg? My concern is the leg swinging ahead of the body causing a passive phase due to the trail leg beating the hips to the vertical plane. ... you do have to break the hips and due to momentum and centripetal forces the trail leg will always beat the hips, but if you minimized this time it would decrease the passive phase ...

The thing I think is that you guys envision the same swing up as I do once the trail leg is pointing at the box ... you don't even realize when to swing until your trail leg has naturally already swung under your head ... So you have about two feet in which to swing your trail leg ... Seems more effeciant to keep pressure with extended arms to enhance the natural swing.

Kyle, I also think that your way and my way aren't that far apart. In my experience, I learned to swing with my trail leg first, and the rest of my body followed. But I remember a discussion with Agapit long ago where he said "hands first, trail leg follows" (just as you say), and in that discussion, I admitted to him that in reality, you really have to swing the entire body IN UNISON ... from hand to foot ... from reverse-C to forwards-C.

This is the exact problem that we saw PP run into in his recent vids ... he took me literally in HINGING (swinging with the trail leg first) ... but to the extreme ... where he didn't swing AT ALL with the rest of his body. That was wrong. Regardless of what part of your body you use to INITIATE the DOWNSWING and WHIP, the more important fact is that to minimize passiveness, you MUST swing with your entire body!

So I don't see much wrong at all with your idea of initiating your swing first with your hands ... since that seems to be what works for you ... given your thought process and intuition on this. I'm not insistent on "trail leg first". Rather, I'm insistent on STRETCH, then INITIATE your DOWNSWING as SOON (don't wait until you've already swung forwards to just 2 feet from the chord), and as QUICKLY (just as the first step out of the starting blocks is the most important to a sprinter) as you can.

Come to think of it, if you try to do this FIRST with just one part of your body, there will be a natural delay with your other extremity. So maybe the best way to think of it is to initiate the DOWNSWING with your ENTIRE BODY! My latest thoughts about this (just now) are that a coach should advise his vaulter to initiate the downswing with whatever body extremity seems to be most latent ... with the intent of eventually (thru repetition) ending up with a downswing that's initiated simultaneously from hand to foot.

Re the underlined phrase in your quote, you MUST start your swing EARLIER! You MUST initiate the swing as soon as you've stretched into the reverse-C. To do this, you need to train your body to do this AUTOMATICALLY ... thru repetition ... on the highbar and/or rings. I think you're right ... that if you try to react once you've finished your takeoff (your stretch), then you're doomed. There's a lot of things happening in the bottom half of the vault, so you can't expect to do each of them ... one by one ... just by your brain telling your body what to do. That's too slow of a process!

... the down swing is a very important element in this, and like me I think most vaulters try to take off with their trail leg back and swing as soon as the elastic stretch happens making the downswing much further then only 2 feet of swinging.

... what I was saying about driving your top arm into the box makes it feel like you are swinging with a straight body. If you need to focus on swinging with a straight body to accomplish the same thing then that is a good focus for you.

KC, I think Kyle has already agreed that the "forwards-C" is a desirable position to pass thru, and after that he sees the same technique that we do. I maintain that the best way to get to this "forwards-C" is to get to the "reverse-C", and then WHIP (i.e. tap) to it. I cannot imagine how you would WHIP with a perfectly straight body.

Kirk

[KYLE ELLIS]

Kyle,

If you are thinking that swinging the leg instead of whole body is a passive state and beneficial, would it not be better just to have a two legged swing like Colwick? Because he clearly is swinging with his entire body.

Yes he does swing with his entire body because he is coached Butler, who is close to Petrov... He doesn't teach Jason to takeoff like that, he just feels like trying to undo it probably would be difficult and maybe not as beneficial as one might believe; I don't want to put words into his mouth though.
I disagree with dropping the leg completely like Jason because you sacrifice horizontal velocity and the pole overbends... Jason is an incredible athlete and does alot of things right, just has a really strange (to me) takeoff. I wondered what it would look like if he tried to long jump??? Would he still takeoff like that??

And to Kirk and KC i think we are all getting on the same page, and since you guys are giving some I will also... I think that we have come to the conclusion that the trail leg needs to be swung long and extended, and eventually the body too must be swung long with the leg (even though breaking at the hips will happen once the trail leg swings ahead of the trunk)... Maybe we should be careful on how we word it because when I was told too whip my leg thats what I did but my hips stayed down much like PP's, and I am sure that telling people to swing their entire body (taking it literally) may cause some bad habits and problems... Maybe instead of describing how the swing should be we should show a video of someone swinging their trail leg and then swinging the entire body to catch up with it????

By the way I dont double leg swing but I do all of my swinging drills with both legs hanging, I fell like this is a good way to learn to swing the legs and body together??? What do you guys think?

[KirkB]

... I don't double leg swing but I do all of my swinging drills with both legs hanging, I feel like this is a good way to learn to swing the legs and body together??? What do you guys think?

I think that it's OK to learn basic gymnastic movements with both legs ... just as gymnasts learn them ... but for vault-specific movements (especially the Stretch Whip Drill), I think it's essential that you simulate the vault more closely ... by keeping the lead knee up (if you're a typical vaulter), or by dropping it (if you do that BY INTENT) on the pole.

If you DON'T practice your PV drills in the gym with your lead knee up (if you're a typical vaulter), then you will most likely FAIL to keep the lead knee up in a real vault ... becuz you won't have the strength or the "muscle memory" to keep it up. This would not be a good reason to transition to a "knee-dropper".

I'm willing to bet that Colwick does all his gymnastic drills double-legged!

Kirk

[KirkB]

... I remember a discussion with Agapit long ago where he said "hands first, trail leg follows" (just as you say), and in that discussion, I admitted to him that in reality, you really have to swing the entire body IN UNISON ... from hand to foot ... from reverse-C to forwards-C.

... the best way to get to this "forwards-C" is to get to the "reverse-C", and then WHIP (i.e. tap) to it. I cannot imagine how you would WHIP with a perfectly straight body.

It occurred to me this morning that these two things are closely related to 2 things about Agapit's 640 Model that I questioned last year ... becuz I just couldn't visualize them working the way that Agapit described them:

Agapit said:

1. The vaulter must PULL with both arms immediately after takeoff.

2. The vaulter must SWING with a straight body.

Now I'm wondering if Agapit meant the type of pull that I described here ... a full-body swing from the reverse-C position to the forwards-C position? And if he meant PULL only with the bottom arm, then I still don't see it. (If my memory on this is correct, then I think he WAS talking only about the bottom arm ... so maybe I still don't understand.)

I'm also wondering what he meant by "immediately after takeoff". Did he mean "after FINISHING the takeoff (i.e. after an elastic stretch)?", or did he literally mean as soon as the takeoff toe left the ground?

If he meant "after FINISHING the takeoff", then that matches my belief that there needs to be a very short period of time between when the toe leaves the ground and when the elastic stretch is completed ... BEFORE you begin to swing.

And I'm wondering if he really meant a perfectly "straight-body swing". If a whip (or tap) is allowed in the 640 Model, then we at least agree on that much.

If we're talking about exactly the same body movements re these 3 issues, then I think I agree 100% with the technique described by Agapit in the 640 Model, and I think that the misunderstandings were simply due to semantics. However, the "PULL with bottom arm ONLY" still has me confused.

If anyone's in contact with Agapit these days, can you please ask him about these 3 things?

Kirk

[KYLE ELLIS]

I am also confused by this because he said that the 6.40 model so far has produced 6.15, meaning to me that he thought Bubka used the 6.40 model..... But there is no pulling down at all in bubka's jump until his COG reaches the vertical plane. Someone said that Agapit indeed meant pulling down, so since then I have let go of the idea of the 6.40 model.

[kcvault]

http://www.neovault.com/mem_vv_SBbv97_brown18-8.asp

When I first herd the idea of pulling down with my bottom arm two days ago reading agipits post I though it was the most ridiculous thing I have ever herd of. However I actually am starting to think it makes since. How to you accelerate a swing on a swing set. On the back swing you push and on the forward swing you pull. Although doing a pull up on it would stap your momentum pulling on it as you swing helps to acceletate the swing upwards. Now look at this video of Sean Brown you can click frame by frame. Notice how he poles down on his top arm as a means of accelerating the pole and making his hips rise. Then I started to think about it in my vault I can feel my bottom arm doing the same thing as a means of getting my hips to rise though even though I feel it in video It is no where near as exsteme as what I feel, though it is much more appearent when breaking my elbow in.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFGvuLQS ... re=related

notice how the kid poles with his arms to accelerate the swing set. However I say if you get inverted properly you are going to pull with your bottom arm, everyone just does it naturally. No need to focus on it or it will just make vaulters confused. It's definately not some golden chalice to the 6.40 model like agapit seems to think.