PoleVaultPower.com

So I saw an advertisement for Essex pole tips and they claim they are "indestructible". They also say that the way they are made they can give you an extra two inches in grip height right away.

As some of you may know i have currently started pushing the pole, so im wearing down my tips pretty bad.

I was wondering if I could put Essex pole tips on my UCS poles? Would the sizings be the same from brand to brand?

Also I dont really think they would be industructable but i do like the extra grip thing.

VaultPurple wrote:So I saw an advertisement for Essex pole tips and they claim they are "indestructible". They also say that the way they are made they can give you an extra two inches in grip height right away.

As some of you may know i have currently started pushing the pole, so im wearing down my tips pretty bad.

I was wondering if I could put Essex pole tips on my UCS poles? Would the sizings be the same from brand to brand?

Also I dont really think they would be industructable but i do like the extra grip thing.

I have not tried the newer ESSX tips, but yes you could put them on UCS poles.

I found that the Gill tips seemed to last longer when pushing the pole. The only tip I wore through was a UCS tip. In two season of pushing, I never wore out my Gill tips as long as I rotated them occasionally. The mandrel sizes are the same between the two manufacturers, so it's pretty easy to swap tips.

I see no way that any normal pole tip would give you two inches of grip height... What proof/scientific evidence did they offer?

Well they accualy said 2.2 to 4.4 pounds stiffer pole on their website, but i thought i saw hand grip somewhere else.

There science behind it was that the pole tip is kind of egg shaped so the edges are wider and allows for a greater angle with the pole and the bottom of the box when the pole is past verticle.

I guess it is the same principle of vaulters that used to would put a towle in the vault box and say they could use bigger poles doing that.

Interesting... Do you have a picture you could put up?

I fail to see how it "adds angle"... There are only two real components to pole/ground angle at take-off: pole LENGTH and hand HEIGHT.

If they're not talking about take-off, then they don't make that clear at all. Sorry to be a skeptic, but I think this is a marketing ploy wrapped with some science.

Not to say that they're not good tips... I'd be curious to see if you wear one out as quickly as your regular tips.

I dont think thats the angle they were talking about, but the angle between bottom and back of box. Its kind of like the opposit of what a mat pushed too close to the box would do. Ie. the mat would block ur pole when it was bending, and the tip would very slightly allow it to bend inward some. But im not sure how much it would help

Wow, yeah I guess you're right! Huh... I would think that if a tip were to serve as a 'towel', then it would just need to be really fat/bulky, no? And that would only benefit the vaulter if they were experiencing 'box push' or whatever you'd like to call it...

Have you bought one yet?

I didn't understand the physics of this at first either, but after reading this closely ...

... I realize that the diameter of the tip lets the pole bend 1-5 degrees more than it could otherwise bend ... without hitting the top lip of the box. The back of the box is angled at 105 degrees, but with the Essx tip, the pole can bend to 106-110 degrees.

This is fine ... and it would have helped my vault in my day ... BUT ... if you're getting that much bend out of your pole, you're actually over-bending it. It's better to have less bend and a quicker swing. To get that much bend, you're crushing the pole, and you're not moving your body upwards fast enough.

"Do as I say ... not as I did!"

Kirk

Hey VaultPurple, the other thing you have to consider if you are going to slide your pole is that your tips will last the longest if you rotate them every few days. But with the special ESSX tip, they are bigger on one side, so you can't rotate it and still get the same benefit from the pit, so in the end it would probably wear out faster than a Gill or UCS tip just because you couldn't rotate it.

Hey VaultPurple, the other thing you have to consider if you are going to slide your pole is that your tips will last the longest if you rotate them every few days. But with the special ESSX tip, they are bigger on one side, so you can't rotate it and still get the same benefit from the pit, so in the end it would probably wear out faster than a Gill or UCS tip just because you couldn't rotate it.

Yeah you are probably right.

But with the science behind the tip, wouldn't it just be as benificial to strap a tennis ball or something on the end of the pole?