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i am greatly interested in your posts and would love to read them, especially the scuplting of the petrov model!

[color=blue][b]Stiff pole training is great for developing a good swing that can be used effectively in fiberglass vaulting. Steve Smith at the time he was the World indoor best at 18'4" use to use a Swedish steel pole to develop better swing techniques.

DJ has made some really great points and important info in his post and I too have seen Earl Bell bend the pole hardly at all and clear 19’
Currently I see Maston Wallace hardly bending his poles to jump a 39â€Â

How about Istvan Bagula. He gripped 17' and barely bent his pole at all.

17 feet might be a stretch. But I bet that guy had a 40+ inch vertical jump. Bounded down the runway like a bunny!! he did.

Ah, the "Bag Man". What ever happened to him?

gtc wrote: Bounded down the runway like a bunny!! he did.

It looked like a slow jog but obviously he was moving to jump 19'5".

"How about Istvan Bagula. He gripped 17' and barely bent his pole at all."

Dont lets get carried away folks. Figure 24.5 in BTB shows Istvan and he was certainly bending the pole then - think it was at a world student games -91 Sheffield??? Believe he is back home now. Steve Rippon mentioned having a drink with him a few weeks ago.

DJ is right. Stiff polers used a double leg swing to keep the centre of mass lower in the swing phase, because as with a lowered weight on the metronome, the vaulter/pole system will move it forward faster. However what Warmerdam did was a bit more sophisticated than that. Because he could only put energy into the pole in two phases - at take off and thru the swing of his body in the second phase, he tried to maximise the latter input. After taking off - OUT note - with the free knee actively driven up and forwards, good vaulters of that era pushed the hips forward after take off - you can just see it on the film shown of Dutch - and slightly delayed the forward movement of the legs. This subtle element set up a pre stretch of the body and enabled him to put slightly more energy into the pole by making the swing phase more active.

While Petrov model vaulters also use the pre stretch to speed up the whip swing phase - which is even more effective because the shortening pole enables the athlete to increase the amplitude of the swing. However they do not - or at least should not - employ a double leg swing -because with a flexible pole one of the key elements is to get on top of the bending pole ( to "cover the pole") as fast as possible. Bubka's aim - which of course he never achieved - was to be in a vertical position on the pole BEFORE it began to recoil!

Apart from a persistent foot injury - the major reason why Dimitri Markov did not jump 6.10 + was his - perhaps inadvertant - dropping of the right leg in the swing. This slowed his rotation into inversion and prevented him from attaining the position that Bubka invariably achieved in the inversion phase. Sadly we will now never know how high Dima could have jumped had he eliminated that fault from his technique.

The only folk who should jump like stiff pole vaulters in the modern era are those who have NO speed on the runway and cannot take off! Their only hope is to maximise the swing phase. There is one Russian girl who jumps like this but i cannot get her name at present -someone out there will know who I mean and perhaps post film of her. It will probably discourage anyone from trying to copy what she does.

Just watch out with the slow and non-jumping big pole benders out there. Try to catch the pole immediately off the ground can result in a disasterous condition. Make sure they get high enough into the takeoff to still get into the pit...

Rick Baggett
WSTC LLC

I'm pretty sure he was gripping the end of a 17' pole when he beat us all like drums in the 1990 US indoor season. The "barely bent his pole at all" comment was purely hyperbolic. Of course he bent his pole, just not as much as his grip seemed to indicate.

Not taking a position, but just to bring this up for discussion:

Earlier it was mentioned that Warmerdam dropped his knee to bring his CG closer to the pivot (metronome effect), which benefitted his jump. Earl also did it. Others now are doing it to various degrees.

The question is if it was good for them, what has changed to make a dropping drive knee (after great takeoff) less favorable now, or is it still a viable technique? Could it even be a favored technique if the vaulter is strong enough to make it work?

At first glance a couple ideas: a dropped knee does bring CG closer to pivot, but both legs down there is certainly harder to invert (try it on a high bar), and dropping the knee might slow the swing velocity a little (it might) or a lot. As Tim Mc has pointed out a dropped knee might allow better usage of the abs to invert...what else about it?

As I finish this post, I realize this drive knee talk has probably been covered on another thread, so perhaps this can just be a couple observations of Warmerdams knee vs Bubkas knee.

I got a little ahead of myself with that last post, having not read page two of the thread, and Altius' post on the double leg swing. Thanks Altius for the good discussion on double leg swing vs single leg swing. I agree the double leg swing seems to slow the ability to reach an invert, which is likely its reason for falling out of favor.

Still, for further discussion, is it then just crazy core strength that would make it work and still allow the vaulter reach full invert? In the future might the benefit of the lower CG and possible resultant higher grips bring this back into favor?

On the "no bend" topic. BagMan was amazing. I heard he wore HJ spikes to vault...no kidding.

Tim McMichael wrote:I'm pretty sure he was gripping the end of a 17' pole when he beat us all like drums in the 1990 US indoor season. The "barely bent his pole at all" comment was purely hyperbolic. Of course he bent his pole, just not as much as his grip seemed to indicate.

It was always so hard to tell with him because it seemed like he would start the competition running from approx 12 strides and then as the bar would go up he would move his run back and get on bigger poles. I know he kept Bill P. from winning a couple ncaa championships. ( well actually BP kept himself from doing that )