Unread postby altius » Thu May 22, 2014 12:02 am
Just to clarify a point made some days ago.
CoachEric is correct when he states that BTB is an “interpretation” of Petrov's views on teaching and coaching the pole vault. However it is worth noting that Vitali himself appreciated the fact that I was presenting the essence of his ideas to a broader audience; in fact some readers may well remember him specifically thanking me from the stage in Reno for doing so.
Buts lets be clear – I didn’t pull my version out of the air! I had read the transcript of Vitalis presentation at the European Coaches Congress in Birmingham , England in 1985 – where incidentally the other major speaker was Maurice Houvion (whom I had spent two weeks with at his training centre in Vincennes, in January 1979) I was especially interested in the Birmingham presentation because it was sponsored by Steve Chappell of UCS Spirit – and I had introduced Steve to the vault as an 11 year old boy at a school in England (and in the process, as teachers and coaches tend to do, changed the direction of his life).
I included Vitali’s presentation as Appendix A in BTB but I have since said that nothing in it appeared revolutionary and I suspect few gained much from it at that time. The fact that it was a translation from Russian may be part of the reason for this because the importance of novel concepts may have been missed in that process.
In fact much of the following information is in Chapter One of BTB but since many may not have read that work I am detailing it here.
In 1986 Vitali and Sergei came to Australia for the World Cup in Canberra and as national event coach for the vault at that time I was given special access to them. With an amazing piece of luck I discovered that one of my young athletes, Serge Ambrose (aka Sergei Ambrosovich) spoke fluent Russian and he wanted to come with me - so I had my own personal interpreter -fortunate indeed because at the time neither coach nor athlete spoke English and I certainly could not speak Russian. Another slice of luck was that another friend who was inCanberra - Efim Shuravetsky - a Russian emigre - told me exactly what was need to ensure Vitalis full attention!
In those three days in Canberra my concept of the vault was revolutionized. This is significant because in January 1979 I had travelled to Europe to study the methods of Houvion in France, Krupsky in Leverkusen and Krzysinski in Warsaw –so to have my ideas thrown into turmoil by Petrov was an epiphany.
The critical concepts were the free take off and no ‘rock back’ , just free take off and swing to ‘cover the pole’. Because he drew me diagrams that suggested the free take off meant that vaulter was in the air before the pole tip hit the back of the box I coined the term Pre jump and wrote an article “The Russian revolution in the pole vault ‘ that was published in our national coaching magazine “Modern Athlete and coach’ in 1989 and subsequently reprinted in the German “Leichtathletik” – and possibly ‘Track technique” but I am not sure about that. I subsequently clarified all this in C26 of BTB.
While I certainly have not spent as much time in Formia with Vitali as David Butler, I managed to meet him on many occasions and could safely say that we are friends. I have been three times for periods in Formia- his training base 9once with a group of my athletes) , a one week clinic in Canberra where I organized a camp for all Oz vault coaches, then there was three weeks when he came to Adelaide working with my athletes- and then other meetings when we sat through the 92 Olympics together, the 98 World Juniors and the 99 World Championships.
Naturally I have had less time with Sergei but I was able to have a 2 hour session with him in the Nordic Sport area at the Munich ISPO, where we needed an interpreter because my Russian was worse than his English and then of course the time in Jamaica where in addition to asking questions that confirmed what he had told me in Munich. In Jamaica one of my athletes was able to spend time quizzing him. The major issues that came out of the questions I asked, are in Chapter 26 of BTB.
It is also worth noting that Roman Botcharnikov lived with me for a year in 91 -93 and I coached alongside Alex Parnov in Adelaide from Nov 96 until Oct 98. Between them they have coached one Olympic Champion, two World Champions and one indoor world Champion.. Obviously this experience influenced my ideas because neither followed Vitali’s methods exactly.
However my contribution is that I was able to begin to apply Vitalis ideas with my own athletes and to prove to myself at least, that even if they mastered only elements of the model they would improve as vaulters. Once I had done that I felt it might be worth while creating a work that took Vitalis ideas to a wider audience . Hence BTB1. As I have often said the stimulus for that work were the deaths of three US vaulters in March 99 and my subsequent trip to Reno where it became clear why they might have been at risk, because there appeared to be at that time no clear model of the vault, and taking off under –indeed well under -was the rule - as was having the stands as close as was permitted. Those deaths had worried the pole vault community and especially Steve Chappell because he could see the event vanishing from high schools – where it is continually under threat.
The key thing is that in the book and dvd I used film and images of seven of my own athletes taken during the period 2000 – 2003 ; film that I was lucky to have because PVstudent had been filming my athletes in competitions without me noticing. These were not specially selected images – as some US coaches have claimed - but simply taken when youngsters were competing in national championships or trials. And apart from Wendy Young none of these young athletes would have been seen as especially talented – this again gave me confidence that ordinary youngsters could benefit from attempts to master this model.
Re BTB – in both books I gave the biomechanics my best shot - as a coach - not as a biomechanist. However I still think the concept of seeing the flexible pole as an infinite series of stiff poles is a useful contribution to understanding this event. In the end I missed one important element of the biomechanics of pole vaulting in the relevant chapter. It is touched on Chapter 26 by Bubka, but I did not emphasize it as I should have done in the chapter dealing with biomechanics. Would love to see who - if anybody cares - is first to tell me what it was!!!
Incidentally I now believe that PVstudent should put his analysis together in a booklet. Perhaps PVP readers can encourage him to do so.
What I would really like – and I keep asking in vain – if for everyone who believes that they can clarify our understanding of the vault, to put up film of THEIR athletes showing us the model of the vault that they are actually teaching.
Unless and until folk do that I will continue to rant, because talk is easy, performance is hard. I continually make the point that anyone can describe the Petrov/Bubka model, and some will even deign to tell us how to improve on it, but few seem to translate their knowledge into anything approaching that model with their own athletes.
I must also say that it is tiresome to have folk continually chiding me for publicizing my books. When you have spent three years or more writing them and taken out an overdraft to publish them, it becomes irritating to be criticized by folk who have either not started the coaching journey at all or have only just setting out on it. I have paid my dues to this sport, as many coaches around the world would confirm, so if the cap fits put it on and get off my back about BTB.
For anyone interested, the tests yesterday showed that I am clear of cancer for the present, more tests in 6 months. This means that I hope to be on the West coast of the US from late June into July working with coaches of the caliber of Rick Baggett, Kevin Magula and hopefully Bubba Sparks. There is an open invitation for anyone to attend – you never know - you might learn something!
Its what you learn after you know it all that counts. John Wooden
