duhcalvin wrote: soo i did that and everything felt the same but i just sprung up less. ... before i could hardly bend the pole, now that i have that accomplished (for the most part) i need to figure out how to swing up completely ... Once i plant i kind of bring my legs up but thats it. if i could fully swing and get a push off i would be in business ... i am really eager to begin working to accomplish a full swing. ... here is the picture of the position i am getting stuck in
This pic is at the same meet, so it doesn't describe what happened when you lowered your grip 4" and moved your standards to 31.5". I concur with RG ... but don't expect instant results. It will feel HARDER to swing up and over the bar when you grip lower and need to swing better ... but that's what you need to do.
You can't expect the pole to do all the work. "
I kind of bring my legs up but that's it." That's not a swing. To SWING you need to stretch your trail leg long, and drive your lead knee up.
Since you do have some experience in "
hardly bending the pole", you should have a feel for what a proper swing feels like. You should feel resistance from your top hand, and then your body rotates around that top hand. Meanwhile, your trail leg should be swinging in a long arc. If you can remember how that felt when you barely bent the pole, that's really what you need to get back to ... just a bit. Dropping your grip 4" isn't much, so I don't see why you won't STILL bend the pole quite a bit ... but with the side effect of getting your body rotating around your top hand ... while you're whipping your trail leg around. Hard to say exactly what you're doing wrong without vid, but that's my best guess right now.
I know you want to "
fully swing and then get a push off" ... but that comes from improvements in the bottom half of your vault ... not any magical trick you do once you get to the flagged out position in your pic. It's too late to do anything about it by then. You need to fix your plant, takeoff, and downswing, and the upswing and extension (push off) will come quite naturally.
Search for some of the key words I've mentioned ... like "
downswing" and "
whip" (or "whipping") and "
bottom half" and "
top half" and "
flagged" or "
flagging". Try different combinations.
You will find several threads where I've given similar advice. And in almost every thread, there's more advice from other posters that's just as good as my advice. Take a few hours to try to figure out what we're saying to the other vaulters ... and you have the advantage of looking at their vids and figuring out if your flaws are similar to them ... then reading and absorbing our advice.
I'm willing to be that you'll "
see yourself" in some of the other vaulters' vids ... so you'll be able to follow the advice that we've given them. Without vids, it's a crap-shoot ... so I think this might help.
Kirk
