Hand Grip Question

[Rhino]

Flexion of the Tibialis Anterior during the pull turn should help solve all of the above problems. It keeps one's legs in close to the pole during the turn instead of extension which pushes one's legs over the cross bar instead.

Yes, that is practically word-for-word what my coach shouts at me while I'm going over the bar.

[golfdane]

Flexion of the Tibialis Anterior during the pull turn should help solve all of the above problems. It keeps one's legs in close to the pole during the turn instead of extension which pushes one's legs over the cross bar instead.

Yes, that is practically word-for-word what my coach shouts at me while I'm going over the bar.

ROFLMAO!!

[Sandi]

well i guess it doesnt have to be strait, but i think it would help my plant be more powerful, and get my top form better. there are many styles of vaulting, and there has to be a vaulter out there that is good that doesnt completely straiten their left arm at any point.....but im just following the form i see in olympic vaulters. i dont think i have ever seen an olympic vaulter that doesnt have a strait left arm when the take off.....i could be wrong though

[Lax PV]

Flexion of the Tibialis Anterior during the pull turn should help solve all of the above problems. It keeps one's legs in close to the pole during the turn instead of extension which pushes one's legs over the cross bar instead.

That sounds like a good thing to focus on. I don't know whether I can break my old habit of pointing my toes, but I will try. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm sure I have been told to do this before.

Old mind, old body. Hard to teach it new tricks.

- master

"Point the toes..out you goes..."

I believe mechanically this flexion gets your center of mass closest to where the energy is going when the pole uncoils. It serves to tighten up a lot of loose ends in the body when starting the turn and flyaway stages. I have seen a lot of success using this little tid-bit.

[Lax PV]

well i guess it doesnt have to be strait, but i think it would help my plant be more powerful, and get my top form better. there are many styles of vaulting, and there has to be a vaulter out there that is good that doesnt completely straiten their left arm at any point.....but im just following the form i see in olympic vaulters. i dont think i have ever seen an olympic vaulter that doesnt have a strait left arm when the take off.....i could be wrong though

www.stabhochsprung.com

Yelena... watch her 501 jump.

http://www.polevaultpower.com/forum/vie ... hp?t=11698

[H.I.S.]

well i guess it doesnt have to be strait, but i think it would help my plant be more powerful, and get my top form better. there are many styles of vaulting, and there has to be a vaulter out there that is good that doesnt completely straiten their left arm at any point.....but im just following the form i see in olympic vaulters. i dont think i have ever seen an olympic vaulter that doesnt have a strait left arm when the take off.....i could be wrong though

I believe that is just an illusion. Olmpic vaulters appear to have straight bottom arms because the poles the use are much longer. Straightening your bottom arm may help penetrate more, but ultimately will result in energy loss and make it more difficult to get your body verticle

[H.I.S.]

Also, It was difficult to freeze frame your video, but it appeared to me, and I could be wrong, that your top arm was bent and you were almost squatting at take off.

would recommend getting your top hand as high as possible at take off, not moving up the pole, but lengthening your top arm. . .this may just have been a result of your steps being under.

Also you let you drive leg drop and it was side by side with your trail/swing leg resulting in energy.

working on these two aspects should seriously improve your jump which already looks very nice

[Thats.What.She.Said]

after all of this disagreement, i am going to say you are all wrong [ok maybe some of you are right but that sounds better]. but anyways, its not that he needs a "straight" bottom arm, he needs an aggressive bottom arm, because by the looks of the video, he is getting a nice dose of fiber face. umm i think i was going to say something else but i forget what it was.

[FerrisVaulter]

You want to plant with your chest forward to put energy into the pole, but keeping your lower arm completely straight will only "force bend" it instead of letting your energy bend it for you. If your arm is straight forward, your grip may be too wide. Just focus on getting your body and arms as up and tall as possible, and the rest of your plant will follow through better. Also, the stiffer your lower arm is, the harder it will be to swing to vertical quickly.

And don't pay much attention to that clearance/hand hold chart. I can clear 14'6'' with room to spare holding at 13'6'' with a 14'6'' Carbon FX pole about 10 pounds over my weight. I saw another guy from a different college clear 15' with the same hand grip, although he was using a 15' pole so it was pretty stiff for him at that hand grip. If you're trying to clear 14' 6'' with a 14' pole and a grip a bit below the top, you should be able to clear it as long as the pole is stiff enough (low flex rating/10-20 pounds over your weight).

[vault3rb0y]

This problem has been covered countless times and comes back to a misinterpretation of bubkas videos. It is blatantly wrong to say that "bubka has his body in "X" position, so that's what we should try to do". You can pretend that bubka strove to hit certain positions, or accept that the positions he hit were a result of certain focuses in the jump, which are covered in practically every thread in the advanced forum. Make sure your coach does not make the false analogy between what an olympic vault looks like, and what your vault looks like, otherwise you will end up blocking out and "sitting" on the vault.

[powerplant42]

That's why 'positions' should be disregarded when trying to replicate technique... instead the athlete should focus on the ACTION that is ocurring!

[KirkB]

That's why 'positions' should be disregarded when trying to replicate technique... instead the athlete should focus on the ACTION that is ocurring!

Close, but no cigar.

Positions are OK to LOOK at. After all, when you analyze a video frame by frame, that's ALL you have to look at. But what you must ask yourself when you look at a FRAME (or a POSITION) is "what happened just before this?", and "what's going to happen next?". Or as you said in a very cryptic way, PP, "what's the ACTION that's occurring when this snapshot was taken?".

So each frame is important only in the context of the 2 frames that envelope it.

To say you should DISREGARD positions is stating it far too strongly. You HAVE to look at them ... in CONTEXT ... but just on video ... not in your mind's eye.

As you said PP, when you're vaulting (or visualizing your vault while standing at the end of the runway), you should focus on the ACTIONS ... the things that happen BETWEEN each frame ... rather than the POSITIONS or FRAMES per se.

Also, a position should never be viewed or visualized as a FROZEN position. There's no pauses in the continuous chain, so you never want to stay in one position for ANY length of time ... not even a millisecond! Instead, you want to visualize yourself PASSING THRU all of the various positions that "prove" that you're going thru the correct body motions of a "perfect vault".

I think that's what some people are afraid of. If you think too much about the POSITION, then you might not be focussing on the ACTIONS that make up the various positions. Just remember to keep this all in the context of a continuous chain motion ... from the start of your run to over the bar.

Kirk