Formia, Italy

[giolanaro]

Just to let you all know, I am in Formia for a training camp with Vitaly Petrov until the 29th of this month. I am here with my teammate Robi Pratt, his coach Jeremy Bailey, my coach Brian Yokoyama, and The great Altius. Dimitry Markov, Kevin Rans and of couse Isi is also here. This place is a great place to train, everything you need for pole vault is here. We are learning many great things and I am very excited for the up coming days.

[FriarPV]

Gio,
I am looking forward to your return. I am sure that my son and all of the vaulters at Mt. SAC will benifit greatly from what you and Coach Yokoyama gleen from your time spent with Petrov.
Have a safe trip home!

[skyhigh0024]

Mexico is coming up! Watch out world Should be a great season coming up with Gio and Pratt training with Petrov. Lookin forward to hearing some great things when you guys come back.

[baggettpv]

I am so happy to start to hear the bugaboo about people listening to Vitaly Petrov. Please keep an open mind and when you phrase a question make sure it is a question, not a statement about your beliefs. Think about how you can take this information and apply it to your situation. It is belief changing, I know, I went thru it with Andjei in 85. Let old thoughts go away, let new ideas transform you to be a better coach or athlete. It's not the drills it's the beliefs in what's necessary.

Rick Baggett
WSTC LLC

[giolanaro]

Robi and I are learning many things that are new to us. One thing I can say is that being here is a very humbling experience. It can aslo be very nerve wrecking. I can’t explain in an email everything that we are doing, but I can say that his way of teaching is unbelievable. We didn’t know what to expect, but now that we are here it has changed the way we look at THE POLE VAULT.

[baggettpv]

Now thats what I am talking about. A change in the belief system....yeah!

Rick Baggett
WSTC LLC

[skyshark177]

Hey, anyone have any pictures of the place posted any where?

[BruceFlorman]

http://www.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en&q=&z=17&ll=41.263445,13.629023&spn=0.004669,0.006802&t=k&om=1
Or did you have something else in mind?
Actually, I'm not 100% sure that's the right place. But it seems plausible.

[skyshark177]

I actaully did that too.
I was looking for some close ups by the athletes while they are there training.

[giolanaro]

If you got to events.mtsac.edu and you go to the international camps link there should be some pictures up. I believe Brian posted some pics there.

[opalkak]

just incase people are interested in seeing some pics, these are a bunch from Chris Chappell and my trip in the summer of '05.

http://kevinopalka.myphotoalbum.com/

[giolanaro]

For those of you who are interested I will let you guys know alittle about what we have been working on. For the first week he was teaching us how to walk properly but we couldn't do that, so we threw our poles down and started to crawl.......Just kidding, but I can honestly say it feels as if we are learning how to jump all over again. Some of the things he focuses on is the proper alignment of the body. We have spent alot of time doing basic gymnastic drils that help us learn the proper alignment of the body. The next thing is strengthening the body in this position by doing more drills that help us strengthen this position. Liftinng is pretty much non existant, you can throw squats, bench, cleans, snatch all out the window. We have not lifted one weight, and we most likely will not lift one weight the whole time we are here. Vitaly structures his training so well that lifting is not necessary. You may think this is imposible, how can you get stronger without lifting? but yes you can. Yelena, and Markov are doing the exact same things, no lifting, just specifict body posture strengthening.