“More or Less, Today”

Alan Roark, vault coach, Amherst, Ohio

Questions:  “Do you need more or less pole to vault at 30” today?” “Do you need more or less run to hit your step full speed today?”

Part one: Pole size.

During a meet or during practice vaulters are hesitant to move to a heavier pole even when they are going through the bar or reluctant to move to a lighter pole when they stall out and can’t get to the bar.  They seem to get stuck on using the pole they’ve been comfortable with.  One of the challenges of coaching vaulters to go to bigger poles when you know they can, is convincing them that the bigger pole won’t blow them back down the runway. I wish we could remove the weight stickers from the poles and just use flex numbers or some other marking system that wasn’t so intimidating.

I use a simple concept of “more or less today” to ease them through poles.  I ask them, “do you need more or less pole today? ”  (to vault at 30” standards)  If they feel great and are blowing through at 30”, they need more pole today.  If they can’t get to 30”, they need less pole today.  If they aren’t getting any lift at the take-off, they need more pole. (I’m working with a high school senior girl who weighs 118 and is jumping on a 1340, looking for a 1345. She doesn’t care what the label says, she just wants more lift at take off.)

This is for weight changes only. Length changes are a more complicated issue.  They can go to a longer pole only if they’ve had experience vaulting on the higher sail piece by just holding one grip higher than the shorter pole and doing “high hand” fly-ins to get used to the new, bigger arc of the bend and the longer travel..

Note: You can use 24” if you want.  I believe that you don’t have enough room to fully vault any closer than 20”.   Every day at practice, I have the standards at 24 – 30”.  My boys, girls, junior high kids all think it’s normal to have them that far back.  I feel it’s a lot safer there, too.

Part two:  Run length.

After a lot of runway runs, vaulters almost always ‘hit their take-off spot’.  They will stutter to hit it or they will reach to hit it, but they will hit it.  The challenge is having maximum power when they take off.  So, what I ask is, “do you need more room or less room to hit your take-off at full speed today?”  If they feel really strong and fast, they need more room today and should move back a foot or more.  If they don’t feel so great, they will need less room today and should move up a foot or more to hit their take-off at full speed. I teach them how to “tweek” the start of the run to free them up to run at the take-off so they can get a big jump off of the ground. Don’t confine them to the same starting spot on their run every day. 

We have one meet that we go to that has a roll out runway on top of artificial turf running out of the end of the end zone going down hill with a tail wind!  It’s great and my guys back up 5-10 feet so they don’t over-run the box.  They always need more poles there!