dougb wrote:At the 2010 Pole Vault Summit, Peter McGinnis and Nick Hysong gave a joint presentation. During the question and answer period Nick Hysong was asked “When do you release pressure on the left arm?”
His answer was: “You never release pressure on the left arm, You keep pushing up and over your head”
If you look at all of the vaulters shown on stabhoch.com, They universally have both arms straight when the trail leg is lined up with their top arm. This does not happen because the left arm is relaxed! A vaulter has to work the left arm ( push ) to get to this position. This is not the same thing as blocking out! The action happens after the takeoff leg leaves the ground and accentuates the drive of the top arm in bending the pole. (rolling the pole?)
I'm going to assume that your comment is in reaction to LoJo saying that his best advice for young vaulters is to "
keep the pole moving".
He is talking about pole speed, of course, which is the idea of keeping the pole rotating to vertical ... or in other words keep everything ... the pole and your body ... moving in a forwards direction.
He's right. If you lose pole speed, then you lose a lot of things. You lose the ability to place the standards at 80, and you begin to second-guess your technique and how you'll clear the bar when the pole ISN'T moving as it should. So I would add to LoJo's advice that you should not only keep the pole moving, but you should also set your standards at 80 so that you MUST keep the pole moving. That will eliminate one variable in your vault (where to place the standards) and allow you to focus on everything else ... like TECHNIQUE. Technique to "
keep the pole moving" and clear a bar that's at 80.
Doug, you say ...
The action happens after the takeoff leg leaves the ground and accentuates the drive of the top arm in bending the pole. (rolling the pole?)
First, I think "
rolling the pole" is as I and LoJo described ... I think it's unrelated to "
driving the top arm in bending the pole". I know we disagree on this, but I bow to how Bubka did it ... not anyone else on stabhoch.com. And with all due respect, not to how Hysong and McGinnis recommend. Without us both getting too adversarial about this, I would say that it's simply a question of how close to the Petrov Model you want to strive to be. I honestly don't think that Bubka or Petrov would agree with Hysong and McGinnis on this point.
My basic disagreement is that a vaulter should NOT be trying to bend the pole ... either before takeoff or after ... by bottom arm pressure. You MAY actually bend the pole a LITTLE bit more that way, but the net effect is that you're going to delay your swing ... and let the pole get ahead of you. That will lead to a tuck. Yech.
I would rather focus on what you need to do to "
roll the pole" ... namely whip your trail leg down and then up (circularly), and keep everything (your entire body) moving in a forwards/upwards direction. NO PAUSES! NO TUCK! I will even go so far as to say that pressure as you describe with the bottom hand ... which you claim is not the same as blocking out ... I will agree that it's not as BAD as blocking out ... but it's still bad ... you're still introducing a passive time delay into your vault ... which you pay dearly for when the pole gets ahead of you.
At that point of the vault, you don't need more bend ... instead, you need to KEEP THE POLE MOVING!
Kirk