PoleVaultPower.com

I just came back from my county championship clearing 8ft. I was a 9'6 jumper my freshman year. Don't get me wrong I love pole vaulting. But I have just been doing very poorly this season. It's getting to the point of I'm just tired of vaulting 8-9 ft. and not getting a pr since last winter. is there anything I can do to get my confidence up and start doing well.

PRACTICE PRACTICE PRACTICE. I haven't PR'd this season either, but during the winter when you can't practice it's especially tough to vault at the same standard as when you can't practice. If your school coach isn't doing it for you, then you can definitely look into a club. Never give up.

Plateaus in this sport are common for beginners all the way through elite athletes. Stick it out, seek out the coaching you need to improve and you will be a better vaulter and person for it. There are great video review forums on this board to help with the technique aspect also!

Good luck!

Good advice from Getvertical_PV!
Take advantage of this site!!! The pole vault is TECHNIQUE TECHNIQUE TECHNIQUE!!! You'll find the confidence, motivation and joy for the sport again, just give it some time. For beginners and intermediates, sometimes the bar height is not always an indicator that your getting better as a vaulter. As coaches we like to put a bar up early in the learning phase, this creates an interest and sense of accomplishment but more importantly will determine if the athlete likes the sport. The next step is laying down a good foundation: proper pole carry,run technique and posture and a perfect plant. It's these very important foundation fundamentals that sometimes loose our vaulters interest because we not jumping over more bars! more PR's! When we are first exposed to high school track and field our coaches are pulling us all around the track to see what event is a good fit. You may want to PV but the distance coach may want to put you in the mile(had to put that in there !) , We as coaches may not want to lose you so we put the bar up to kept the interest going. Without a solid foundation that bar will only go so high before we plateau. Pole vaulting can have a lot of mental and emotional peaks and valleys at ANY level. I would bet your not at one of these valleys but you may feel you are! Work on the little things! THE most important things in the vault are all the little, but essential things BEFORE you leave the ground! When I was in high school this was a tough pill to swallow and later in life would regret for not believing. Without a description or video of your vault one could only guess why you may be in a rut, my guess it's roots, like most every vaulter, are before you leave the ground. The best thing to do is post a video clip of your jumping on this site. Video your whole jump, run and all, preferably a side shot from your take off point. After you post your video, don't be overwhelmed by the responses. Take one aspect of advice at at time. Be open minded to critique. Some advice you receive on this site(PVP) you can change and benefit as soon as you step on the runway, some things will of course take longer...this is life!!! The pole vault will be one of the hardest and most technical things you'll do in life and you will be glad you did it later in life. Once you start putting the puzzle pieces together(in the right place:) ), your PR's will start coming again!

The internet is a great tool to learn anything, something I never had when I was jumping. PVP can be a godsend for vaulters that want to learn, please take advantage of it!
Good luck!

On the contrary, you could try taking a break. That is sometimes very beneficial... Pretty soon you will probably be itching to vault again, which will let you come at it with renewed zeal.

Just a thought.

My daughter took a 7-month break, mostly because of injuries that killed her motivation. I was getting antsy, but I waited for her to come to me to ask to start vaulting again. Once she did, I took her to see Earl Bell, who worked on her mindset as much as her physical technique, and now she is on course to once again become the top jumper in the state. In hindsight, the seven-month layoff was the best thing for her, because it gave her time to reevaluate whether she really wanted to jump. She committed herself to conditioning and workouts, and she has improved her PR by almost a foot in the past two months.