moving up to a bigger pole

[polevault23]

This is my first year pole vaulting and i have jumped 11' 6" on a 13' 175 holding as high as you can. Recently i have been blowing through this pole and today in practice i used a 13' 7" 170 holding at the top and crushed it as well. I then proceeded to use a 14' 165 pole and was having trouble using it. does anyone have any suggestions about how to transition onto the 14' 165?

[vault3rb0y]

That should only be 5 Ibs bigger, and you need to be holding in the same place you did on the 13'7". Hit everything the same, and if you blow through the 13'7" 170 theres no reason you cant hold at the same place on the 14' 165 and jump with it. You shouldnt hold any higher until you are jumping over your grip hieght either, for sake of progressing in the vault. Sounds like you are doing pretty well for your first year! Any video and we can tell you technical parts of the jump to work on to get in easier on a number of poles as well.

[polevault23]

thanks. i was trying to grip at the top of the 14' so ill try the same grip as on the 13'7 tomorow. I have a meet this saturday that should be recorded so ill try to get a video up.

[rainbowgirl28]

This is my first year pole vaulting and i have jumped 11' 6" on a 13' 175 holding as high as you can. Recently i have been blowing through this pole and today in practice i used a 13' 7" 170 holding at the top and crushed it as well. I then proceeded to use a 14' 165 pole and was having trouble using it. does anyone have any suggestions about how to transition onto the 14' 165?

When you say crushing the 13'7 pole, are you bending it a lot AND landing deep in the pit (like knocking the bar off on the way up with the standards all the way back)? Or are you just bending it a lot?

If you are bending it a lot but not getting anywhere, you need to drop your grip a fist at a time until you are landing safely in the middle of the pit. On the 13'7 pole.

[polevault23]

What I meant by crushing it is I have the standards at 80 wlwhich is as far as they go and hit the bar Down on the way up and land deep in the pit

[KirkB]

PV23, since you are truly "blowing thru" your 13-0 170, you should be able to get onto the 14-0 165 ... which as you can see from the chart is equivalent to a 13-6 175. Just do everything the same, and the worse that should happen is that you won't blow thru quite as much. In fact, it should be the perfect pole for you.

If what you mean by "having trouble" on the 14-0 165 is that you're stalling out (the opposite of blowing thru), then you're definitely not using the exact same speed, grip, and technique as on the lighter poles. You need to keep everything the same!

To give you an idea of how close in weight your 3 poles are, I'm showing you an excerpt from the SkyJumpers Relative Flex Chart. The full chart is here: http://www.skyjumpers.com/articles/relitive_resistance_chart.html.

polevault23 poles.JPG (15.52 KiB) Viewed 10675 times

You can see that they're very close ... about 5 pounds apart as 3P0 said.

That's not much, so you should be able to get onto the 14-0 165 if you follow our advice.

There's a slight possibility that your 13-6 170 has an abnormally high flex #, and/or your 14-0 165 has an abnormally low flex #. Tell us what those flex #s are, and someone (not me) can tell you if they're "average" or not. But I doubt that this is the problem.

Kirk

[rainbowgirl28]

I agree with vault3rb0y, hold the same height on your 14' pole as you were on the 13'7 pole, instead of raising your grip 6". I think you just had trouble because you raised your grip too much, but you should be fine with a lower grip.

[starkey480]

what do you mean by having trouble getting on it? are you getting stood up or does the vault just not seem the same? it seems like for me when i move up a length in the pole i just have to adjust and get used to the timing of it if that makes sense