The location of the take off point in fiberglass pole vaulti

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Re: The location of the take off point in fiberglass pole vaulti

Unread postby altius » Thu Sep 13, 2012 8:58 pm

Thanks ADTF old son - well the quote is there and I am quite proud of it because it can be interpreted two ways - probably in the original BTB but I don't have a copy of that version. However also like another one I came up with - in order to get our OZ administration to understand the reality of track and field - "Track and field in a coach driven sport" . Bob Fraley took it up and made a bumper sticker out of it! I never got any royalties for that!!!

PM me your address and I will get Baggett to send you a copy of BTB2 gratis - I understand that, as a vault coach, you will not be living high on the hog!
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Re: The location of the take off point in fiberglass pole vaulti

Unread postby ADTF Academy » Fri Sep 21, 2012 3:04 pm

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid= ... =1&theater


For some that link may not work. David Butler has been posting a lot of old photos and images from Pole Vault. Became a friend of his group and just witness history and simplicity at its finest.

That photos sums up so many things about all the arguments people have on this site. Here it is my theory/mindset in a nutshell. Take it or leave it. disrespect it or ponder it. At the end of the day I have medals to try to win.


Pole vault is stiff pole vaulting and nothing more......... Learn to stiff pole vault as high as you can and you will probably learn to jump high. Just because the pole bends doesn't mean you should get away from the very fundamentals that allowed men on straight poles to jump over 15'. Thats rotating a big grip and getting a great push with no flexion in the pole. Every jump had to be a free takeoff and pre jump because the pole didn't bend. If you cheat mechanics on a straight pole you go backwards. On the other hand you can muscle a bent pole but why? No one needed a bottom arm because the pole didn't bend. Yet they reached inversion and rotated the pole into the pit and cleared bars well over their hand holds. If you can't explain, witness or appreciate the art of stiff pole vaulting for max height than your just a coach/athlete that likes to bend sticks and call it pole vaulting. How high can your athlete hold from 3 lefts with no swing and get into the pit safely? World Class IMO is a Guy around 14' and woman around 12' grip. (not counting 8" in the box measure tip to hand)

Modern pole vaulting is simply stiff pole vaulting with ever changing lengths of the stiff poles and nothing more. Call it what ever model you want at the end of the day any coach I respect will come back with the responds the fundamental principles of the vault is to just look at warnerdam and try to figure out how to match the positions he was trying to hit with a pole that bends. The difference is the stiff pole is imaginary. It's the pole cord from the top hand to the box. For me it comes down to can the athlete learn how to rotate the series of stiff poles into the pit effectively or is something they are doing causing them to get away from the imaginary pole cord.. Grasp that concept, follow that imaginary pole cord and witness how out of alignment many of your vaulters are. The answers to their problems lie not in the photos, but in the transparent lines drawn. Overlay that reduced grip to a stiff pole jump of similar grip and see how different their jump looks. Than ask yourself why can't my vaulter do it right. If you focus on things that will allow you to bend the pole you have already missed the boat IMO. I did not learn this from anyone, I wasn't taught this by anyone. To me its common sense. Over the years my position has been confirmed by many stating it in their own way. Dissect the crap people throw at you and find the truth yourself.

Well the 2012/2013 season is starting so I guess I'll see you next off season. My guess is it will be to the same discussion by a new person who thinks they found the holy grail.

Good Luck to everyone in their 2012/2013 season. For us it's Moscow or Broke!!!!

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Re: The location of the take off point in fiberglass pole vaulti

Unread postby altius » Fri Sep 21, 2012 4:40 pm

You really should accept my offer of a copy of BTB2 because that issue is dealt with in detail in Chapter Five. While it is possible - I think it highly unlikely that David Butler has not read that chapter -given what you have presented in your post. But perhaps it is simply a case of great minds thinking alike.
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Re: The location of the take off point in fiberglass pole vaulti

Unread postby ADTF Academy » Fri Sep 21, 2012 5:36 pm

what I posted had nothing to do with David Butler except to link the photo he posted.

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Re: The location of the take off point in fiberglass pole vaulti

Unread postby altius » Sat Sep 22, 2012 12:24 am

Sorry Danny - I accept that I leapt in where angels should fear to tread but it is interesting to see ideas put up as being in some way revolutionary when they were in fact dealt with in BTB 1 nearly ten years ago. In Chapter 5 of that work titled "Style, Technical models and Biomechanics", on page 19 the statement is made "From a bio mechanical perspective the CHORD of the flexing pole is THE REAL POLE while on page 26 we find "So the key is to stop thinking of a single - flexible pole! Instead think of it as an infinite series of stiff poles".

Then in chapter 21 "The relationship between stiff pole vaulting and flexible pole vaulting" we find the concept repeated with the sentence "This 'variable length straight pole' is of course the CHORD of the flexing REAL pole -as shown in figure 21.3. From a biomechanical perspective this invisible chord (Cpole) shown as a series of dotted lines, becomes the real pole." Of course the concept is dealt with again in BTB 2.

I have too much respect for you old son to begin an argument with you -I just wanted to remind folk that there is in fact a lot of useful information, knowledge, even wisdom to be found in books such as BTB 1 and 2. And that much of the debate that takes place here would be much more informed if folk bothered to read these works - as clearly many have. Not only that of course but both Becca and I will both make a buck in the process!

Of course I like to think that I was perhaps the first person to recognise the importance of the link between stiff pole and flexible pole vaulting -or at least to publish the idea and point out the importance of the concept in modern vaulting. Maybe other folk did understand it but in academia -not that I was a particularly outstanding academic -whoever publishes first is credited with it! Not that this is particularly important to most readers of php but everyone needs to stroke their own ego sometimes. :yes:
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Re: The location of the take off point in fiberglass pole vaulti

Unread postby agapit » Sat Sep 22, 2012 11:42 am

ADTF Academy wrote:
Pole vault is stiff pole vaulting and nothing more.........

Modern pole vaulting is simply stiff pole vaulting with ever changing lengths of the stiff poles and nothing more. Call it what ever model you want at the end of the day any coach I respect will come back with the responds the fundamental principles of the vault

My guess is it will be to the same discussion by a new person who thinks they found the holy grail.


But let’s be real. Stiff pole vaulting is different from fiberglass vaulting. What about putting energy into the pole and then most importantly receiving the energy back from the pole at the top, stiff pole vaulters did not have to do that and the timing is totally different right?
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Re: The location of the take off point in fiberglass pole vaulti

Unread postby ADTF Academy » Sat Sep 22, 2012 12:29 pm

altius wrote:Of course I like to think that I was perhaps the first person to recognise the importance of the link between stiff pole and flexible pole vaulting -or at least to publish the idea and point out the importance of the concept in modern vaulting. Maybe other folk did understand it but in academia -not that I was a particularly outstanding academic -whoever publishes first is credited with it! Not that this is particularly important to most readers of php but everyone needs to stroke their own ego sometimes. :yes:


Sadly this isn't academic world it's coaching. I have never once tried to say you didn't have the same ideas... You in fact helped confirm them. Honestly, Reno more than you book when you had the string attached to the small flexible fishing pole like object. The book was just a good read for me. As I have mentioned before near 100% of all things related to track/athletic training are hypothetical/theory based. There is very little actual data to confirm it. No data means its an hypothesis with no real conclusion. So recognize it publicly? I will say yes you were. I have said many times over the years Alan you have been one of the only people to put it all out there and say judge me.... I respect that in you and I to have a lot of stuff written out but will wait to publish till I am as old and wise as you are. Coaching is an art many people paint a house and don't give credit to the first person who finally put a house on a canvas.... If it was 100% science than every person should be able to do the same thing and get the same result.

Its like saying the first person that coined the term "Cross FIt" is the person who came up with how to condition/train an athlete.... Those principles have been used for generations just didn't have a catchy name to it. Was doing similar things for years before the word Cross Fit ever came out.

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Re: The location of the take off point in fiberglass pole vaulti

Unread postby ADTF Academy » Sat Sep 22, 2012 1:03 pm

agapit wrote:But let’s be real. Stiff pole vaulting is different from fiberglass vaulting. What about putting energy into the pole and then most importantly receiving the energy back from the pole at the top, stiff pole vaulters did not have to do that and the timing is totally different right?


Is anything in life 100% the same? Overall positions are similar, overall movements are not 100% equals.

Are you saying you don't put energy into a straight pole? Are you saying just cause the pole didn't bend the energy disappears? The straight pole still has an elastic components its like saying a copper wire does nothing? It stores and conducts electricity. A stiff pole stores energy it just doesn't bend because its components are of such design that the energy provided to it won't bend or break it. Prove that isn't a correct statement? If there was no energy why would bamboo poles break? If enough energy was applied to it over and over again over time or in that moment the bamboo couldn't handle the energy and POP. The stiff pole does return energy and IMO in a similar way a bent pole does as Remaining Potential energy thru the line of thrust in an elastic nature. A straight and bent pole do this portion in a same manner. My theory is that more initial energy is remaining in a pole that is stiff or bends less than one that bends a great deal more. Remember any object that bends it does in fact take energy to unbend it. Yes there is a secondary acceleration from the pole unbending but how many actually are in position to even catch this? Very Very Few!!!!! This secondary acceleration IMO became the 100% focus of Tuck and Shoot theory coaches. Bend the piss out of the pole shorten the radius of swing in hopes of catching that pole uncoiling at a very high velocity. Smart in theory, but coaches and athletes begin to realize its not as easy as they thought to actually catch and use it. Plus poles were snapping like crazy than came Carbon and other materials/pole designs that allowed this theory to occur easier, but with secondary sacrifices I can't explain scientifically just my beliefs.

Timing itself is not a valuable excuse to why they are not the similar. I didn't mean for my thought to come off as 100% the same obviously there are different forces being applied on the body. If anything a bent pole will stress the body more than a stiff pole do to the external force vectors pulling the body in multiple directions at once. Therefore a bent pole should be and is harder in some aspects. If the athlete can't stabilize those external force vectors they fall out of alignment. The action and positions the athlete is attempting to hit I do believe should be similar, but as you said the timing of when is not the same. However, from a rotational and basic movements to inversion needed I don't think the overall positions seen should be much different in a perfect world of course. No one can watch the video of Issakson just posted on that Facebook group I mentioned and think he was not equal to or better than Bubka technically. He just didn't have the same poles/equipment. If he jumped with that technique 16 years later from a pure jump perspective on better poles he would have hung with Sergey IMO. As I say that I do not know his speed or other stats. If he was only running 8.8 m/s than I lied, but if so that would make his jumps that much more impressive. Does anyone know what he was gripping in Texas on that 18'1 jump in 1972?

I would be interested to see the time from toe off to peak height of warnerdam? I will bet without even knowing the answer it is similar to what we are looking for a vaulter 1.35 to 1.45 seconds. Less time spent on the bottom of a stiff pole jump and more time spent on the top going high. Bent pole more time in comparison to a stiff pole spent on bottom to allow for the initial compression and stretch of the body. I am going to try to get the actually films and count the frames. I'll post the real results soon.

As I mentioned this is the way my brain looks at the movement in the vault as I paint strokes to help make an athlete better/jump higher.

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Re: The location of the take off point in fiberglass pole vaulti

Unread postby dj » Sat Sep 22, 2012 1:33 pm

hey

I would be interested to see the time from toe off to peak height of warnerdam? I will bet without even knowing the answer it is similar to what we are looking for a vaulter 1.35 to 1.45 seconds.


I actually did this in 1974 from an old 16mil film from the library at Arkansas State.. Earl was a Soph..

i drew (traced) his frame by frame with stick figures...and traced Earls compared the positions AND the SWING TIME... i knew from physics and the two pendulum action they had to be very close ALSO i had this "crazy" idea that the time from 6 steps to takeoff and the speed of the swing to get the pole to vertical might have an important correlation.... go figure...

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Re: The location of the take off point in fiberglass pole vaulti

Unread postby agapit » Sat Sep 22, 2012 5:16 pm

ADTF Academy wrote:
agapit wrote:But let’s be real. Stiff pole vaulting is different from fiberglass vaulting. What about putting energy into the pole and then most importantly receiving the energy back from the pole at the top, stiff pole vaulters did not have to do that and the timing is totally different right?


Is anything in life 100% the same? Overall positions are similar, overall movements are not 100% equals.

Are you saying you don't put energy into a straight pole? Are you saying just cause the pole didn't bend the energy disappears? The straight pole still has an elastic components its like saying a copper wire does nothing? It stores and conducts electricity. A stiff pole stores energy it just doesn't bend because its components are of such design that the energy provided to it won't bend or break it. Prove that isn't a correct statement? If there was no energy why would bamboo poles break?


I don’t believe you “put” (store) energy into the straight pole, no. The straight pole resist, like any physical object would (rock or telephone pole for example), resist the forces generated by the impulse of the body (mass x speed) and that resistance changes the speed vector of the body’s COG (center of gravity) from horizontal to vertical, lifting the body up towards the bar. No energy does not disappears, some energy loses are converted through friction into the energy of heat.When the force generated by this impulse exceed the strength of the straight pole, it would break, but straight pole does not give you energy back in a way fiberglass pole or a rubber band does, right? The energy is stored in a fiberglass pole as it would be in rubber band and is not stored at all in the straight pole in the way that you can get it back, other than small “vibrating” bend that recoils so fast that is impossible for the vaulter to be in upside-down position in time to catch that recoil as people do on fiberglass poles.

I am not arguing, I am just trying to more clearly understand how is it the same on the straight pole as compared to the fiberglass?

You are describing secondary acceleration (unbending of the fiberglass pole) that is desirable for an athlete to “catch”, if she could get in the position to catch that recoiling energy. Wouldn’t this make the method on fiberglass pole significantly different from the straight pole because no one was trying to catch a secondary acceleration on the straight pole?

Another point of difference that may need to be explained is takeoff actions. On the fiberglass pole some vaulters are trying to bend the pole (to store more energy) and also to move the takeoff foot (in the air) way behind to generate a whipping kick by the foot, most coaches call it a “swing”. A good example of this whipping kick would be Janice Keppler and drills she is doing to achieve that. Some coaches like Don Hood (Billy Olson, Tim Bright, Brad Pursley at Abilene Christian University) and some other coaches for example advocate a flat direction of the takeoff, so the pole bends more and therefore stores more energy for later use. None of that was possible on the straight pole. No one was trying to bend the straight pole or “whip-kick” with the foot or perform a low angle takeoff. It seems these are few points of significant difference, yes/no?

It’s a good conversation, I believe, because it makes us all aware of the issues and we all could get on the same page, speak the same language, no pun intended. Conversations like that would move our understanding forward, so I think it is very positive!
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Re: The location of the take off point in fiberglass pole vaulti

Unread postby altius » Sat Sep 22, 2012 9:01 pm

"A good example of this whipping kick would be Janice Keppler and drills she is doing to achieve that". GOOD -RECOMMEND THE KICK WHIP OF THE TAKE OFF LEG.

"Some coaches like Don Hood (Billy Olson, Tim Bright, Brad Pursley at Abilene Christian University) and some other coaches for example advocate a flat direction of the takeoff, so the pole bends more and therefore stores more energy for later use". NOT GOOD - THEY ARE IGNORING ANOTHER IMPORTANT ASPECT OF THE BIOMECHANICS OF VAULTING - IE. INCREASING POLE GROUND ANGLE AT TAKE OFF. THE POLE BENDS AFTER TAKE OFF WITHOUT ANY EFFORT TO BEND IT BY TAKING OFF FLAT - THAT IS GOING BACK TO THE MISGUIDED IDEAS OF THE ORIGINAL FLEXIBLE POLE VAULTERS.

It’s a good conversation, I believe, because it makes us all aware of the issues and we all could get on the same page, speak the same language, no pun intended. Conversations like that would move our understanding forward, so I think it is very positive![/quote] TOTALLY AGREE - THAT HAS BEEN THE VALUE OF THIS WHOLE PECULIAR EPISODE.
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Re: The location of the take off point in fiberglass pole vaulti

Unread postby dj » Sat Sep 22, 2012 9:14 pm

hey

not everyone was teaching a "flat"- runoff the ground takeoff back during or before the coaches that were mentioned, as far back as at least 1974 there were other coaches that were teaching a penultimate (long-short) long jump type takeoff. also in 1982/83 Mike Tully started the change from a "run of the ground straight toward the back of the pit" to an "impulsed" penultimate takeoff that was "through" and UP.....like a Carl Lewis takeoff but with a pole plant in front of it…

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