Advice for Coaching Middle School Kids

[Vault101 Boy]

I'm supposed to start helping our middle schoolers tomorrow and teach them how to vault, run through drills and watch some of their vaultsnd was wandering if any of the very wise coaches on these forums have advice for helping coach largely inexperienced and almost frightening vaulters. I helped the vault coach a lot last year but mostly i would show them drills not actually critique them. I'm more concerned about overloading them with too advanced technique which is what ive begun to delve into, yet at the same time I dont want to screw them by not showing them the more desirable ways to vault (that happened to me my first year and vaulting and i had to teach myself and seek many private lessons to repair the damage).

Now in case you're wondering why a senior in high school should be helping to coach completely inexperienced kids the situation is such: Their coach from last year had to leave to D.C., my coach is purely a high school coach and has an infant child so hes out, leaving pretty much me as one of the few folks knowledgeable in the vault.

The middle school team usually has like 30 vaulters try it out and considering their coach left last year they're going to need some help. I'd reckon they have around 350-400 middle schoolers on the track team this year (thats only 7th, 8th and 9th the way our schools work). Problem is they have like 4-6 coaches who know what they're doing and none of them are really vault specialists. So if you were to divide that number up thats like 65 or so kids per coach.

Obviously there's some risked attached for a non adult to assist at practice, I'd assume there's a large liability if i were actually a coach, so I plan on calling myself an experienced adviser or something.

Anyways thanks for sifting through my always long and rambling post, let me know if you have any words of wisdom or such.

[tsorenson]

Good for you, giving something back as a coach or official is integral to the survival of our sport. And I am glad to give you a little advice, for what it's worth.

When I was in HS I didn't have a coach in my town that was knowledgeable about the PV. So I went to a few camps, watched some videos, learned some things, and had the middle schoolers come up to the HS track to practice once a week, where I would help them. It was much safer, since the middle school was still using a 20-year-old cloud 9 inflatable pit!! Classic. I also functioned as the HS coach to the younger vaulters under me, several of whom went on to be pretty good jumpers. This was before girls vaulting, so definitely things have changed a bit, and there's a lot more kids out there. Back in the day we only had big poles, so if you couldn't jump on them you couldn't vault! Stiff poling was mandatory until you learned how to move a big grip.

I wish I would have had someone tell me then what I can tell you now: that the formative years are absolutely essential to developing the right technique, and that jumping high early is not usually the path to success!! From your comments I can tell that you already have learned this, and I commend you for asking for advice.

Long story short: most young vaulters should not be allowed to bend a pole until they are proficient at the run, carry, drop, and plant. This may take a few months, or a year or two, depending on the vaulter, and the type and amount of drills they do in their spare time. Then they will progress super fast and not have any bad habits that develop from trying to bend poles. Here are a few drills to help with that learning. BTB may be of some use to you for clarification.

Rule #1: Never move on to more advanced skills until the kids have mastered the previous skill.
Rule #2: Always focus on the little details of the run/carry/drop/plant. They are the limiting factor for 90% of HS kids, and 99% of MS kids. Don't bother coaching what happens in the air until kids are good at running and planting. It will just hamper their development.

First of all, teach them how to hold the pole. This may take a lot of work for some kids. I line them up on the football field and have an experienced vaulter demonstrate while I go around and correct each kid. Bottom hand centered on sternum, elbow down, open grip, more of a pedestal than a grip. Top hand on the hip, top hand can be open or closed grip, depending on wrist flexibility of the vaulter. Tip is up high and maybe a little off to the left (right handed vaulter).

Drills (right handed vaulter):
1. Standing pole drops. Shoulders square. Keep left hand higher that left elbow and raise hands in timing with the drop of the pole. Keep right hand rising along the right side of body. Extension should be reached before the tip of the pole hits the ground. Once they start getting it, have them drive the right knee in timing with the hands and rise up onto the toe of the takeoff foot.

2. Six-stride walking plant drills. Shoulders square. High knees. With each step roll up onto the ball of the foot. Keep left hand high and raise hands in timing with the drop of the pole. Keep right hand rising along the right side of body. Extension should be reached before the tip of the pole hits the ground. Usually I help kids by walking alongside and manipulating the pole drop/plant so that they can focus on their footwork until they get the hang of it. If you only have heavy poles you can have the kids grip the pole in the middle so that it is balanced and not pulling them on their faces.

3. Pole runs from 6 strides. Shoulders square. High knees. With each step roll up onto the ball of the foot. Keep left hand high and raise hands in timing with the drop of the pole. Keep right hand rising along the right side of body. Extension should be reached before the tip of the pole hits the ground. Pole should start at about 45 degrees and drop immediately, having it reach about eye-level at the third-to-last footstrike. Last three steps should be quicker than the first three and the vaulter should jump off the ground.

4. Take them to the long jump pit, dig a "box" and have them work from 1, 2, and 3 lefts until they can stand up a pole from at least 2 or 3 feet above standing grip, keep the pole centered, stay behind it, and swing deep into the pit.

5. Find a highbar and get the kids swinging back & forth on it. Be careful, people can get hurt if they lose their grip. Tell them the importance of learning to swing by doing gymnastics drills. Once you show them the drill they can do it on their own time at a playground.

Now they are probably ready to jump into the pit from 3 lefts with a pole that won't bend. There are many more drills, but this should get you going for a while. You may notice that I repeated some details; those should get special attention, no matter what the drill or run may be.

Good luck!
Tom

[Vault101 Boy]

Thanks so much for the reply!

I'll see if i can get one of the other high schoolers to stay around and help out with the pole carrying. I've taught several of our distant runners how to vault simply because they have some of the greatest reactions when vaulting, and they wanted to try it. The one thing I've noticed is that most of them are rather uncoordinated (maybe thats why they run? ha) and they have trouble putting the hand motions with the 3 steps. I've tried to teach each part separately since they are the same 1-2-3 cadence with left-right-left (ear, slightly past the head, full extension before left foot hits the ground) and that seemed to work okay. Is starting from the shoulder ok or should the kids be taught to always start at the hip for 3 steps? I'm also curious as to whether it would be too much to get them all to work on dropping the pole slightly in front of them using gravity as the downforce to pop the hands up, so that they learn that throwing their right arm back or swinging out to the side to drop the pole is inefficient and spells disaster in a successful plant? I tried it out a junior distance runner and he seemed to pick it up quickly after i forced him to do it right for 10 min or so with long and short poles.

About the swing, should they be allowed to try and swing to their shoulders if they're ready or should they hit benchmarks such as butt, shoulders and then inversion? We literally have no access to highbars, its a serious struggle for me to even get in our gymnastic center for only 45 min on wednesdays (i had to convince the AP Calc teacher to let me skip her class to go). At a clinic one time, me and the coach held up a 14' 180 or something and held it on our shoulders and let a lightweight girl swing on it for a bit. Could this be a possible substitute or would me demonstrating a correct swing be the easiest?

What's your take on grass drills? I often like to do them simply because you can nip pulling in the butt, and work on a tall run/gap between legs without having to wait in huge lines at the pit.
Last thing is that when i was in middle school we had a moderately respectable warmup with active stretching and lots of plyo, but with 400 kids they now jog 2 laps around the soccer fields. The result is that hardly any of them know how to sprint correctly or know the basic skips and drills to practice mechanics. Would it be worthwhile to get them to do these mechanics and keep them from vaulting everyday like they want to or maybe do a bit of both. Often those drills are very silly looking so they could find it entertaining but learning to run correctly was one of the main causes that led to my "a-ha" moment when i realized that i could actually be good at vaulting. I'd like to give them the chance to run right for the vault and possibly have that spill over in to their sprint events.

Sorry for the lengthy post again, I definitely liked your advice though, in fact im printing it out so i can have a little bit of a guide to work from. Thanks again!!

[rainbowgirl28]

Spend a LOT of time in the grass and on the sand pit before going to the real pit. It's hard to get hurt this way, and you'll figure out which kids "get it" and which kids should never touch a pole again. Don't let them vault on the real pit until they can do a halfway decent sand vault.

Here are some good videos of sand and grass vaulting:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SmbDCTTGw8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-H4iwvl6h1Q
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5iX29O982g

[Vault101 Boy]

Thanks for the advice! last year's coach would often ship a lot of them to the pit for 3 step drills rather quickly but it was rather painful to watch imo. Any tips on swinging drills without a high bar or is me demonstrating the best option? I was planning on waiting to practice until they show up so i can drill with them so they dont feel like theyre being forced to do something i would never do. Im a summer counselor and nothing compares to leading by example. Nothing like basic 3 step drills to make you kick yourself for picking a sport that requires repetitions of seemingly menial drills eh? Joking of course.

[altius]

Sorry to continue my advertising campaign but the very best examples of sand pit drills for young athletes are demonstrated by Lauren Eley on the BTB dvd and the best grass drills by Mitch Fox in the same place - he did them after five minutes of instruction. In fact if the school cannot provide a qualified coach they should be prepared to get you a copy of both the book and the dvd from Becca

[rainbowgirl28]

I wouldn't even worry about swinging drills. When they can sand vault with a decent takeoff, put two hurdles by the sand pit and put a bungee between them (so it'll be like 3' high). Have them do a mini swing and turn over that. When they can handle that, move them to the pit with no swing. When they have a halfway decent takeoff on the pit, put the bungee on your lowest setting (hopefully 5' or less) and have them do a little swing and turn over that. They don't need to learn how to swing upside down, that comes much later.

[Vault101 Boy]

I believe I've seen the segment you're referring to in B2B. I'm assuming its the one with the folks from Australia doing the sand drills and staying behind the pole? If that's what you are talking about then i believe David Butler's presentation at one of the Reno Summits had some good footage of sand vault drills, though it focused more on not pulling and left hand above the head as opposed to staying behind the pole but those things are kind of intertwined imo. I saw the video at a summer camp and took lots of notes on the video which i still have, it was probably the main video that enlightened me on the rather technical side of the vault (back when i was in my Dark Ages of vaulting) thanks for producing it! Ill be sure to implement those drills

[Vault101 Boy]

On another note, I worked with about 3 of the vaulters last year and most of them have some natural talent and could use a little bit of core/back strength to get started. Would getting them into the weight room for assisted bubkas or pull ups be useful or should they be taught technique and let the strength come as they get older? I've heard rumors that working out too young stunts growth, but obviously making 8th graders pump lots of iron wouldnt be effective at all, i figured body strength like push ups and crunches would be plausible.

[aseinc]

At this stage just stay with tech, and remember to let them have fun. if it's not fun they won't stick around long enough to become good or great. Try to pick out something that they did right or well at every practice. My hat is off to you for your efforts.

[altius]

Let them try for stiff pole prs from 8 steps in every session - that is where the fun is!!!

[Vault101 Boy]

Thanks for the tips, right now im just working with 2 8th grade girls and a 9th grader from last year, and all of them seem interested in the technical side and haven't been too pushy about not getting in the pit right away. Surprisingly one of the 8th grade girls wants to do a core and upper body workout tomorrow after she vaults, said she wants to be able to do more than one pull up. I'll remember that 8 step competition Altius, all of them are really competitive so it should work out great.

7th graders start practicing some next week, all 15 of them. Hopefully it wont be too crazy.