Who is qualified to give technical advice on pole vaulting?

[altius]

if all the knowledgeable coaches spent the same amount of time posting their knowledge instead of crying about whether anybody's listening, we'd all be freakin' pole vault geniuses.

I'll post the only thing I know: Pole vaulters are made on the runway not in the air.

Now, how long did it take you to put that post together old son?? One sentence a snipe at folk who have made some serious contributions over the past year or so and one sentence a piece of homey wisdom that has been produced on PVP thousands of times.

How often would YOU sit down to write a post several/many hundreds of words long if you suspected that very few readers woud be interested in the topic? I would rather take the dogs for another walk or even throw another prawn on the barbie and open yet another bottle. I am not begging folk to care - I just want to know if it is worth taking the time away from other things i like to do - because if I do produce something I would like to think it MIGHT make a contribution to turning everyone into 'freaking pole vault geniuses' - and then perhaps no kids will get killed trying this great event.

[achtungpv]

if all the knowledgeable coaches spent the same amount of time posting their knowledge instead of crying about whether anybody's listening, we'd all be freakin' pole vault geniuses.

I'll post the only thing I know: Pole vaulters are made on the runway not in the air.

Now, how long did it take you to put that post together old son?? One sentence a snipe at folk who have made some serious contributions over the past year or so and one sentence a piece of homey wisdom that has been produced on PVP thousands of times.

How often would YOU sit down to write a post several/many hundreds of words long if you suspected that very few readers woud be interested in the topic? I would rather take the dogs for another walk or even throw another prawn on the barbie and open yet another bottle. I am not begging folk to care - I just want to know if it is worth taking the time away from other things i like to do - because if I do produce something I would like to think it MIGHT make a contribution to turning everyone into 'freaking pole vault geniuses' - and then perhaps no kids will get killed trying this great event.

People do care, old man, but don't expect 30 responses to every post. If you can get your point across clearly, you probably shouldn't have many responses anyway. I enjoy reading what you write, agree with it and try to implement the same things with kids (even prior to BTB). Share your knowledge without worrying if other people are listening. If it's worth listening to, people will HAVE TO listen eventually because they'll eventually plateau doing things incorrectly.

[bvpv07]

Altius,

I think that Becca (once again) is correct. It's not that people are not interested in the more scholarly posts that yours may often be classified as, it's that they aren't responding to them.

Why wouldn't they respond to them? Well, it's quite simple:

1. They don't know how to respond, but are taking in the information that they read.

2. They are afraid to respond out of fear of being "wrong" and told so (often done rather maliciously or saracastically...and no one likes to be the ridiculed fool). However, we must all realize that "the more we learn, the more we know that we know nothing."

3. They can't add anything significant to what has already been posted.

4. They don't know how to communicate what they are thinking. Ours is a very visual sport, and, as we've all learned, there isn't a set vocabulary of terms that everyone associates with a particular movement, phase, etc. This varies by experience, location, age, and a million other factors. We have a pretty good idea of the essence of what we are trying to say, but it gets "lost in translation" between the mind and the keyboard.

5. They need to try out what has been said before they respond to it.

6. They aren't members or aren't logged-in, so they cannot post.

If you are looking for every single person that reads what you have posted to respond saying "Thank you for taking the time to post! I appreciate it " I'm sorry to be a realist, but that's just not going to happen. Good deeds go unnoticed in this world. It's the truth.

However, this apparent lack of interest does not mean that your post has been ignored or that you have not done a good deed. You may not know that what you wrote was what a high school student in Indiana needed to make the solution for one of their problems "click" and allowed him to go on to PR at his next meet. You may not know that your words gave a coach and his athletes a new, enlightened perspective. You may not know that your post inspired another conversation between coaches, that it formed a friendship, or that it caused a strengthening or expansion of the pole vault community.

If you need some validation, look to the number of views...it's right there besides the title. That number represents the amount of people who were interested enough in what you had to say to click on it and read your post. That is what is significant here.

Continue to post and continue to share your knowledge...even if it appears to fall on a silent audience. For the love of our sport, let's keep this community alive and thinking

Thank you,
Sami
(a 17-year old high school pole vaulter eager to learn everything that she can)

[altius]

Appreciate your thoughts achtungpv and your wisdom Sami. You have both helped me to move on.