Hands up and left leg swing problems

[lhsxc2008]

I'm having trouble getting my hands extended when i'm planting. My right arm goes up completely but my left arm just collapses no matter how hard i focus on keeping it straight
and on occasions where i can keep both of my hands extended, I have trouble swinging my left leg....do you have any advice on how to practice swinging without full run throughs?


If you need info about me i'm 5'7" 122 lbs and im on a 11'6" 140lb pole...the best i can seem to clear is about 9 feet

[OUvaulterUSAF]

Don't worry about trying to get have a completely straight bottom arm, it can be bent and hitting you in the face just as long as it's rigid. Focus more on getting your top hand early and high above your head. And having a bounding take-off.

For the leg swing:
Drills on the high bar work well for leg swings, stiff pole drills (pop-ups), and short approach vaulting on a soft pole.

[AKell]

I dunno about that...
You have to be really strong to keep a bent arm rigid on a pole that's 20 pounds stiff for your weight. It's still a good idea to get it stiff; you can do this by practicing with a power through drill where you keep your arms out and push through the pole all the way into the mat. It's infuriating but works really well, it cured me of the same problem in 3 days and got me and immediate 2' soon after I started.
Get that down first so that you can lag to have power for the swing- the shove really has to come before the swing or you'll get nowhere.

[reggiereeves]

i started out just like you, weigh about the same compared to pole, i'm sure the pole whiz nows more but just from my personal experience, i practiced for a week to get my top are as high as i could, once that became natural i focused on keeping my lower arm as straight as possible. once i had that down, it made it easier to keep the other arm strait, one thing you can try is to make sure that you are not going to one side or the other of the pole, jump right at it and look at your lower hand and keep it in front of you, if you don't you won't catch yourself bending it.

[AKell]

pretty much- yeah