Big Bottom Arm

[Bruce Caldwell]

Next time you watch Bubka watch very closely. His left arm is not locked out. If you ever see a back view, you will notice that the left arm bends quite a bit, and comes right over his head. The reason for this is that he leads his chest all the way through the vault and gets his weight on his top hand. Putting excessive pressure on the bottom hand usually causes the hips to drag forward significantly. What then happens is the hips go so far out in front of the hands that the pole bends really low and the vaulter completely misses the boat! Heres the alternative........When you come through the takeoff and allow your chest to lead, your center of mass stays right between your hands allowing you to be balanced. A more natural and fluent swing results due to the fact that you are able to keep the pole bent in front of you for a hair longer than the other style. Also, the pole will bend higher! When the pole bends higher, it puts your hands and body in a much better position to swing and time with the pole! That is why a lower sail piece is more advantageous--once again, lower sailpiece=more glass on the bottom, and a naturally higher bending pole because the bottom of the pole is stiffer! In my view, taking advantage of a pole that bends higher with the proper techniques applied will lead to easier and more succesful pole vaulting. My thoughts, take it with a grain of salt

GF

MAN that was beautifully said, Good luck this next year

Bruce

[Robert schmitt]

There are a lot of people on hear that are much better coaches than my self, therefore take this for what it is my opinion.

yeah, but how to i fix it? is there a certain point where you let your arm collapse a little bit so u can swing and rockback?

Yes, that point is going to be slightly different for each vaulters swing.

like do you extend your bottom arm at takeoff, and then immediatley let it give a little, or do you hold it locked like that for a while, and how long?

There is the problem I found. once a vualter learns to plant with a striaght arm before learning how to swing it is ten times harder to figure out the timing of what needs to be done w/the bottom arm. You can look at vaultguru's avatar of bubka all day long watching his bottom arm, but have difficulty replicating that in your jump. I find it is more effective to back up a few steps and have the vaulter practice swining on a staight pole. You already mentioned that you can vault 2' above your hand grip on a straight pole. I think you want to work from there to a bending pole, rather than working from a bending pole with you bottom arm jammed out triing to figure out when to colapse it.

So here is what I would do, from a 3-4 left run find a pole that is short enough that you can safly vault on it (probably in the 12'6" to 13'6" range) start shorter. Do pop ups (straight pole vaulting) once you can grip with in 12" of the max grip hieght on say the 12'6" pole start giving a little resistance with the bottom arm by pressing up above your head with the bottom arm (actually both arms, but you should already be pressing up with the top hand) This is going to be hard to do if the grip between you hands is greater than 15"-18". You can ad more resistance until it starts to effect your swing, The more you press with that bottom arm the more likely you will need to start moving up poles. Over time you will learn naturally the timing that work for you and your swing. I my short 5 years of coaching I've only had one kid that was able to break himself of that habit with out going back to the basics and relearning the swing like I just mentioned.

[Robert schmitt]

man four people posted while I was typing that up.

[KYLE ELLIS]

For those who cant swing with a locked arm or big arm or firm arm whatever it is, Rick Attig has a video where you start on your butt with a short pole (4-5ft) you have your hands up like you would before you tuck. As you rock back to your shoulders THIS IS WHEN YOU BREAK IN YOUR LEFT ARM you break your left arm in and close off with your top arm. Also another thing to figure out the timing is underwater vaulting. Try to turnup with a locked arm, you cant, you will have to break your arm in and hopefully it will show the right timing. The thing is you can only swing your hips up so long and far with a big arm, when your hips reach the point where they would stop with a big arm this is when you have to break that arm in and allow your hips to continue their swing. Your hips have to get close to being above your head or level. If not you will get stuck there.

[mcminkz05]

well, i started out vaulting without locking out my left arm , and did that for a while, but my soph. year (last year), my coach was convonced i "needed" to start bending the pole allot, so he taught me to lock out my arm like mid-way through the season, so its not liek thats how i origionally LEARNED to do it, i just switched to that. This summer i kinda had a break-through on strgiht-poles and started jumping waaay over my handgrip, and started to transfer that to my full run, but didnt quite get it b4 i stopped vaulting for 3 months after summer. so i was able to change that without relearning the swing, i just need to make sure i know what im oing, so im not messing up my swing even more.

[achtungpv]

...my coach was convonced i "needed" to start bending the pole allot, so he taught me to lock out my arm like mid-way through the season, ...

This drives me crazy. Compared to the amount of power you are transferring from your run, do you think one arm (your weaker arm) can make the difference between bending and not bending the pole? Locking out your left arm does NOT bend the pole. The only thing that bends the pole is the energy transferred from your run at takeoff.

Another way to think about it is like this...say for some reason you want to land in the runway (i dunno, you're from Alabama or something). How do you accomplish that? Lock out your bottom arm! It keeps the pole from rolling over and you from swinging through...

[C-townvault]

Over the summer, I heard that Stacy Dragila was working on fixing her bottom arm. She wants to use more of a "Big bottom arm" but what she probably wants is a bottom arm that is appling pressure at the bottom of her vault. Also this is the philosophy i was taught at JJ's camp.

[mcminkz05]

...my coach was convonced i "needed" to start bending the pole allot, so he taught me to lock out my arm like mid-way through the season, ...

This drives me crazy. Compared to the amount of power you are transferring from your run, do you think one arm (your weaker arm) can make the difference between bending and not bending the pole? Locking out your left arm does NOT bend the pole. The only thing that bends the pole is the energy transferred from your run at takeoff.

Another way to think about it is like this...say for some reason you want to land in the runway (i dunno, you're from Alabama or something). How do you accomplish that? Lock out your bottom arm! It keeps the pole from rolling over and you from swinging through...

well, before that, my left arm would collaps all the way, causeing NO bend in the pole, so locking my arm out, DID cause me to gte a big bend. I agree that i shouldnt have been taught that way, but i dunno what my coach was thinking.... He tries to teach all out younger vaulters that now too. thats my school coach, my real coach doesnt talk about your bottom arm at all really, that what kinda of got me confused, compared to what my other coach told me.

[rainbowgirl28]

Over the summer, I heard that Stacy Dragila was working on fixing her bottom arm. She wants to use more of a "Big bottom arm" but what she probably wants is a bottom arm that is appling pressure at the bottom of her vault. Also this is the philosophy i was taught at JJ's camp.

I think with Stacy it has been more of an issue of not taking off 5 feet under

[Bruce Caldwell]

...my coach was convonced i "needed" to start bending the pole allot, so he taught me to lock out my arm like mid-way through the season, ...

This drives me crazy. Compared to the amount of power you are transferring from your run, do you think one arm (your weaker arm) can make the difference between bending and not bending the pole? Locking out your left arm does NOT bend the pole. The only thing that bends the pole is the energy transferred from your run at takeoff.

Another way to think about it is like this...say for some reason you want to land in the runway (i dunno, you're from Alabama or something). How do you accomplish that? Lock out your bottom arm! It keeps the pole from rolling over and you from swinging through...

WOW another good post worth reading GOOD points !!!You are correct as if you collapse the bottom arm and not get good pole bending it is becasue you are not fully extending the energy from the top grip. Focusing on the break the arm technigue is rarely effective unless you are on a pole that is lighter so you can manage such a thing.
You have to extend the top grip as high as you can get it to transfer the energy into the pole and the vault as well as down the axis of the vaulter swing pendulum. Locking the arm will bend the pole but we are not bending poles here We are transfering energy into the pole and the vault for the greatest potential energy return on top!!!!

[achtungpv]

I think better terminology is to keep both arms long, that doesn't give the impression that the arms should be rigid.

[qtpie57]

when i first started vaulting, i used a huge bottom arm but it would lock and i couldn't rock back. then i switched to straight poling and PRed by a foot and a half in 3 months, and now im back to using a bottom arm and i figured out how to rock back while still using a big bottom arm.