5.05 bungee from a 5 step

[altius]

"If you can take in the best information each coach has to give then you may have a chance to be a great vaulter."

NO. Unless you already have a clear model of what you are trying to achieve you will simply finish up confused if you take advice from everywhere and you will certainly not finish up a great vaulter. Those different perspectives you mention will get you into trouble - you will quickly find that they are conflicting perspectives! As Erasmus observed in 1551 -"Perhaps it is better to have one way of wisdom provided that it be true".

Forgive me if I just let you get on with it -I have already set out what I believe in BTB and on this great website and I certainly do not have the time or the energy to debate these issues again with you. I only responded in the first instance because it seemed as if no one else was going to. Good luck and give Dan my best regards. I indicated to him that I was available for a clinic in early june but have had no response. However I will be doing one with Baggett the weekend of June 4 - 6. If you are looking for a bit more than tips and black magic coaching - and if it is ok with dan - you might consider attending - in 2 plus days you really might learn something that would help you.

[AllaboutPV1]

well my only advise for giving taps and looking at the vault, from giving taps to my coach DW, is giving the tap and the fall onto the pit and watch the vault its not much but it allows for a little bit of sight of the vault. and for the taps, like you said you only use taps if you are trying to get onto bigger poles, when i am working on technique i use smaller poles, but in this case i was using the smaller pole and it broke. So thats why i used the tap.

[altius]

" like you said you only use taps if you are trying to get onto bigger poles". That is not what I said - I said that you should NEVER use a tap - for any reason. But you do what you like.

[golfdane]

" like you said you only use taps if you are trying to get onto bigger poles". That is not what I said - I said that you should NEVER use a tap - for any reason. But you do what you like.

The reason to tap is to increase penetration. If a vaulter isn't able to penetrate, is the vaulter gripping to high for his/her abilities on the given pole. The answer to this is not the tap, but to increase the athletes abilities to add energy the the vaulter/pole system that goes towards the pit, grip lower, or find a more suitable pole. The tap is a slippery slope.

Sure, I've seen vaulters coming out of a complete vaulters block just from being tapped a few times, but I believe it shouldn't be encouraged, and certainly not with young athletes.

Agree with Altius!

[Polevaulter2012]

NO. Unless you already have a clear model of what you are trying to achieve you will simply finish up confused if you take advice from everywhere and you will certainly not finish up a great vaulter.

I study the vault for hours and hours a day. If i know how the vault works then no this statement is false. You even support me in this by saying " However I will be doing one with Baggett the weekend of June 4 - 6. If you are looking for a bit more than tips and black magic coaching - and if it is ok with dan - you might consider attending - in 2 plus days you really might learn something that would help you." This is going against what you said about taking in information from other coaches. You are now agreeing with me that advice from diffrent coaches will help, or is this because the advice is coming from you?

golfdane:
can you get on your biggest competition pole in practice? Probably not. This is why a tap also works good. yeah you can lower your grip and go to smaller poles to avoid the tap, but how are you going to practice timimg up with your competion poles if you can only jump on them in a meet? If you can get a tap that is done correctly then you are able to get onto the bigger poles that you use for competition during practice. If you dont like it then dont do it, Its that simple. I know i feel more confident on my bigger poles in a meet because i was able to vault on them in practice, but it may not work for you. since pole vault is so mental you have to do things that make you feel confident. So the tap can be a really good thing or it can be a really bad thing.

[rainbowgirl28]

Why are you here asking for advice when you are not open to it? The advice they are giving is that you will jump better without a tap, and your coach will be able to better see your vault and give you better advice when he is standing farther away.

If you don't agree with that, than I am not sure what to tell you. There's probably not one magic little tip that will improve things noticeably.

[Polevaulter2012]

Why are you here asking for advice when you are not open to it? The advice they are giving is that you will jump better without a tap, and your coach will be able to better see your vault and give you better advice when he is standing farther away.

If you don't agree with that, than I am not sure what to tell you. There's probably not one magic little tip that will improve things noticeably.

I am very open. The meaning of being open doesnt mean you agree with everything people say. I listened to what altius was saying,then told him my point of view on the subject. Maybe he is not the open one. Either way people will agree and disagree on things when it comes to the vault and training methods. I am sure Altius and i would agree that an outside take off is important. We all have diferent methods and styles. As for the tap, it is done at the end of practice after we have been vaulting and moving up poles, our coach then moves us up to our competition poles for about 4 jumps to get the feel for them.(Note:This does not happen every vault practice, usually it happens the first vault practice of the week before a competition.) Our coach after he gives the tap can get a pretty good idea of what went wrong/right. All the tap is used for mainly is to get on our bigger competition poles.Like i said before if it works for you then do it. If it doesnt then dont. It has worked for years for our coach, so he continues to do it. This is not going to be true for all athletes and coaches. As for the "magic little tip" goes we were posting to see what other people thought about our vault not what people thought about the tap. It just turned into it. So we talked about it. Altius has read the book b2b, he is a firm believer in it. For me i think that you should listen to what other coaches have to say. This doesnt mean you have to do it. you are just expanding your knowledge of the different methods of the vault. We are all students of the vault. No one is going to have the perfect coaching style, Everyone learns differently. My coach is constantly going to pole vault clinics and camps to continue to expand his knowledge of the vault. He doesnt incorporate all the things he learns from the clinics into our practice. Just what he feels is useful.So would this make him not open?

[AllaboutPV1]

Altius, i know where you are coming from with your perspective on the vault. if it is from beginner to bubka, which i have read, i agree with a lot of what you say because it is based off the world record technique. there are a couple of things that i don't agree with in beginner to bubka. Im not saying its wrong i just don't agree. it is hard to become a great vaulter in the us because, we go from high school, with no coach or very little coaching, then college with coaching and completely change our vault and program, then if we make it to the next level we change coaches again. Thus making it very hard to stick to one and only one technique. each and every coach has there own style of coaching so for me, to make it to the next level i have to take all the things that work for me and jump as high as i can jump. if that means droping the right leg to jump 6 meters then by god im gonna drop my leg. if it means doing something out of the ordinary to gain an advantage to get on big poles then do it. ex: what does toby do with his right leg? the straightening of the right leg may help him get on those big 5.20 poles he still jumped 6 meters. yes he could have jumped higher if he would have kept his right leg in the right position but then again. maybe that right leg is the reason for his succes. every vaulter has his or her own style. no one jumps the same they take there advantages and use them to the best that they can to jump high. Im looking forwad to what you have to say to this because i am no bubka! i have to use my advantages (height, and whip swing) to make it to the next level. there is more than one way to jump high!!!! Ex: Dean Starkey not the greatest form but he was a hell of an athlete and he used that to his advantage. Another ex: is scott huffman, his form was by far not correct but if droping the left leg at the top and doing the huffman roller keeps him from stalling out and going higher then you have to do whatever it takes. yes he didn't jump as high as bubka but he did the best he could to achieve success. yes bubkas technique was the best but he was one of the very few that could pull it off. Thats why he jumped the highest. i am working towards that technique but i will use every advantage i can get to jump high, technique wise. I hope u have an opinion on this, because i would much like to hear it so i can take the good out of it and forget what i don't want to hear, and continue to vault till the day i die. Thats what its all about in my opinion.

[altius]

"Altius has read the book b2b, he is a firm believer in it." Not quite true! Altius wrote the book.

"Dean Starkey not the greatest form but he was a hell of an athlete and he used that to his advantage." If you talked to Dean -as I did when I did a clinic with him at his place last year, you will find that he dearly wishes he could have had coaching in the Petrov model. That said his technique was much more efficient than it appears at first glance - in fact the biggest problem was that he did not run or carry the pole properly!

"it is hard to become a great vaulter in the us because, we go from high school, with no coach or very little coaching, then college with coaching and completely change our vault and program, then if we make it to the next level we change coaches again." If you trawl back through pvp a few days you will find that I stated precisely that and indicated that it is a major weakness in the US situation. Hooker has had two coaches in his career - and they were both on the same page. He does not take advice from everyone who might want to offer it.

"if it is ok with dan". That was the key in that sentence - because Dan knows where I am coming from technically and if he believed we were on the same page -to coin a phrase - he might feel that another set of eyes looking for the same things that he would be looking for would possibly be of value. if you ever become a coach you will discover that one of the traps is that you begin to 'see' what you expect to see -what you are used to seeing - and so you miss other things that you should be seeing. However both coaches must have the same technical model for this to work. If one believes in smacking the left arm in and taking off under - and many do -while the other believes in the Petrov model there can only be confusion. In two days it is possible to discover what you are trying to do and to work out if you are actually doing what you are trying to do - and if not why not.

"every vaulter has his or her own style" Yes indeed but that 'style' must always be based on the principles of biomechanics -BTB P39.

Well at least I stirred up a topic that seemed to be going nowhere -keep up the good work.

[AllaboutPV1]

well then i know who u are and i am pleased with the Infromation that you have given me. this is what the vault is all about. outside T-O is one of the keys to jumping high and i think you agree. i love gathering new information, and since you wrote the book, could you give me your opinion on the left arm. i might not have got what you were trying to point out in the book. its hard to think that the left arm doesn't do much or maybe i'm just misunderstanding. my team mate and i are just trying to pick people apart trying to gain as much knowledge of the vault as we can. it may seem like arguing but this is how we talk because our pv squad lives together in the same house. this is how we get infromation across, as u can picture 5 college athletes bickering at each other. and on the tap method what i understood your opinion to be is that vaulters will become dependent on it, thus loosing the proper t-o form and will loose energy in the vault because it will not be as efficient, and the confidence to t-o. am i correct? and thanks for putting up with us!

[Polevaulter2012]

Altius: I am not arguing with you about anything, I was just stating my opionon on the tap. Come to find out this is a sore subject on pvp . Like robby said we have 5 pole vaulters all living together underneath one roof, This is what is pushing us to get to the next level. We are constantly picking vaulters and eachother apart, So sorry if you feel like we are just arguing with you. I should have been clear at the beginning that we like to pick people apart to fully understand where they are coming from. To us this seems like discussion, but it my come across as arguing to others.This is just how we learn.

[IAmTheWalrus]

Another thing about the tap that you may not think about is that it adds an additional, unnatural, rotational velocity to the vaulter. Most coaches tap on the lower back, and doing so causes the vaulter to not only move slightly faster, but also rotate faster. This can throw off timing significantly, leading to potentially dangerous vaults in a competition. I know it can be tempting to use a tap to get on big poles in practice, but if you need a tap to get on that pole, you probably shouldn't be using it then. I don't practice on my competition pole, and if I did, I would call it my practice pole. Focus on the technique of the takeoff, and carrying the energy of a fast, tall run into the takeoff, and THAT will generate more confidence than a tap. As a former tap addict, you can trust me.