Practice Vaults Frequency During Season

[gjb]

During the season for high school vaulters I am curious how many times a week do you allow your athletes to take actual vaults (short or full)? Also, how close up to a meet will you allow them to vault. I am reluctant at times to see the pole vaulters vault two days before a meet.

[rainbowgirl28]

Early in the season maybe more often, especially with sand vaulting/pole runs/etc, but once the season gets going, I had my kids generally vault 2-3x per week depending on weather, how often I saw them, and how healthy/injury prone they were. Some kids can jump every day and feel great, others can hardly vault once a week without having killer shin splits or whatever.

I try to avoid vaulting the day before a meet unless it's a kid I don't see often, and they need practice more than they need fresh legs. Most high school kids are fine vaulting 2 days before a meet, but the more injury-prone ones might need even more rest than that.

For weeks with two meets, they might only get one vault practice in. The meets are like practice. I always had my kids at 4-5 lefts for the first few meets, some beginners never make it back to 6.

Usually with the high school kids, the external factors like weather, kids not making it to practice, etc, end up having more of an impact on practice schedules than anything else.