The back yard set up is up and operating!

[souleman]

I christened the back yard pit today with an 8' clearance and an 8'6"clearance. Boy do I have a bug-a-boo about 9'! Tried it three times and didn't even get close. Here's the set up. I have a landing system that is 11' X 16.5" X 30" (no buns yet). The box, I built a mold for and had a fibreglass company here in town shoot for me. My standards are a couple of Ultamate stage lighting trees with some PVC attachments that have pegs every 6" for 2 feet. Crossbar is a standard 14'10" pacer that I bought from Flight Deck athletics. Approach for this old guy was 6 lefts counting step off left at 50' 1/2" and the runway (for now) is grass. I might have a line on some of those rubber mats that you see at parts counters or restaurant kitchens that hook together. I might be able to get 60 to 75 feet of those for around $300. By the time I'm done I'll probably have a total of $650 tied up in the whole thing. That would include the runway. I gotta tellyou though, it'sreally neat walkin' out to my back yard and being able to jump. (My neighbors think I'm nuts) Oh what the hey...............they'll get over it! Later...............Mike

[scubastevesgirly]

haha...i never thought about what neighbors of ppl w/ pole vault pits in the backyard think...oh well. I think it sounds like wicked fun!!

[Rhino]

That's great! I had a pit for a while, but a friend an hour away has a fantastic back yard setup and coaching to go along with it. His neighbors are quite used to large gatherings of pole vaulters. For me, it wasn't worth tearing up the grass to put in my own runway when I could pop up to his once a week and use the local high school's during season.

The great thing about having your own is being able to work out low-key, without having to expect results that are worth a long drive. If you have a muscle start to feel tender, you can quit and try again the next day.

Enjoy, and I imagine 9' and better will be there by and by.

[LHSpolevault]

Hey Mike... how much of a difference is it using the grass as a runway other than the rubber or mondo surface? Thanks man.


keep it up mike you'll clear 9 real soon.



-r0ssD

[Bruce Caldwell]

[color=blue][b]IT was 1968 Raytown Missouri and we had all in the neighborhood gotten tired of swinging on the clothes line pole to see how far out we could kip.
SO we turned to the back yard, a shallow yard with a creek in the back.
But if you used the side of the house to start the run you had a PV area.
Only a 50 foot run but hey it was down hill from the side of the house to the hole in the ground that had to be fill every day, Mom’s orders!

The foam filled bags I had were courtesy of a feed company $3.00 each and the foam was what I could get in scraps from the pit room every day in my gym bag.

The standards were made of wood driven into the ground no adjustables, measured each inch all the way to from 5'1" to 9'6",
The bamboo crossbars had seen days as a pole vault pole and now gives way when one lands on it.
It was one of those back yard PV area you would dream about that could be seen from my bedroom window were all the super 8 mm video was taken from.
Back yard record was 10'1" using a browning sky pole 14'135lbs well we estimated the 10'1" as the bar could only go to 9'6" SMILE

Were the training came from was when we used the 8'3" bamboo vaulting pole that would bend and give back energy.

With only a 30 foot run one could clear 8'11" with an 8' grip in a 5" hole in the ground. What a swing one had to get to get upside down.
I heard I tall the time my parents always said; “You will never make a living pole Vaulting why don’t you go out for Football, Baseball anything to keep from having that mattress and stuff in my back yardâ€Â

[scubastevesgirly]

That's a very touching story....I'm such a sap

[LHSpolevault]

so... would digging a "plant box" in the ground suffice?

[ladyvolspvcoach]

Mike, congrats dude! That's awesome! I'm sure you progress will steadily improve......Here's to the conqering old farts of pole vaulting...Looks like that includes you too Bruce....thanks for the strole down memory lane....although most of my vaulting career was done when you cronology began. I started my coaching career in 71 after the army...Again, congrats, Mike h*ll of a job!!

[souleman]

LHSpolevault, Seeing that I can't run fast enough to get out of my own way, the grass runway makes me even slower. That being said, I go back to the reasoning that I started all this back in October.........."it's gotta be good for me". If I can run fast enough in the back yard to improve my heights, then when I get on a legit runway, I should be faster. Who knows....maybe fast enough to run a 2 minute 100! "Look out track world........Mike the speedster is coming"! What the grass really does is make me get my knees up on the run. With 3/8's spike out in the yard, I'm flat on my face if I don't get the knees up. Bruce, I so enjoyed your musings about the old days. The similarities that all of us "oldsters" went through back then are so close. To think, that stuff was happening all across the country. Cool thing is, we all figured out a way to,"make it happen". Unsafe pits, bamboo and conduit poles that you were never quite sure if they had one more jump in them, no helmets, standards made of 2X4's and nails,WE MADE IT HAPPEN 'cause we wanted to jump with a stick. When we really got creative was when it came to the plant boxes. Most all of us started with the hole in the dirt. Usually, if the neighborhood "season" lasted more than a couple of weeks, one or two of our Dads would misterious "misplace" some of his lumber set aside for a project by him and we would fashion a plant box and sink it in the ground at the pit. And because we didn't know any better, the wood we grabbed was probably his best or most expensive piece of lumber. Thank you so much for sharing it with us so elequently. Later...........Mike
P.S. Dave Extra large in white .......or black?

[ladyvolspvcoach]

White would be great!

[master]

Hey Mike,
Congratulations on getting your setup functional!! Like was said in a previous post, when it is just outside the back door, you can do it when it is right for your body and avoid it when it is not. That's great.

Next you're going to have to set up a "real time vault cam" and stream the video to the web. Now wouldn't that be cool?

- master

[souleman]

Master, the wife and I were going to stop by Sears today and pick up a digital video camera before we went to a vault party over in St. Cloud, MN. which is about 70 miles away. We just didn't get going soon enough to get that done. Trust me, I'm going to have plenty of video soon. I need it (and a new body wouldn't hurt either) to see what I'm doing so I can do it better. I'm sure there will be plenty of times that I'll get some video on the web for you guys to look at to help me out. By the way Mr. Master..........do you want white or black? Medium or large. I'm 5'7 about 170 and the medium fits me a little baggy. I haven't washed it yet so I can't tell you if it will shrink. Let me know..................Later...Mike