After watching the world championships this past week, it makes me wonder, where’s all the analysis? Why aren’t their people breaking down the meet, the good, the bad, the ugly? Every other sport has great analysis. It’s because our sport has a problem with honesty. Pole Vault, like the rest of track, wants to paint a picture of a friendly nice sport, where everyone is kind and caring. Everyone hugs each other after every event and no one can be criticized. And then there’s

Does getting inverted matter? Maybe. It all depends on how fast your jump is and whether you can get to the invert and start the turn soon enough in your jump. Forcing an athlete to invert can actually slow down their jump and create jumps without turns. When watching a jump and looking at the off the ground sections there are three distinct sections, take off, swing, and turn. Every jump needs those sections. There are times that you have beginners, especially an athlete who

Coaching is a rewarding job that allows you to connect with so many people and change lives. The reward comes from knowing that you made an impact, but there’s only one way you can actually have an impact. Stop making yourself the priority! I see many coaches out there who want to win, and who doesn’t. However if you coach long enough you realize it takes time to develop a county, state, or national champ. And even more importantly it take the right athlete. On a long enough

When I think back to when I first started coaching, one mistake I made was not using and implemented enough drills. The longer I coach the more drills I use and knowing when to use a drill and what the purpose is becomes more important. Every mistake an athlete makes could use a drill to fix it. I am the first to say full jumps are great and any pole vaulting program should include a high volume of full jumps, but there a couple thing to keep in mind. Full jumps can be done a

I often get asked how many times you should do a drill in practice, and the thing is there is no magic number of reps, and what I would argue is that how frequently you do a drill is more important than the volume at any one practice. In fact if you do a drill for too long in practice the drill will go stale (they stop getting better and actually get worse after a certain number of reps). Certain drills may have a time and place during a certain time of year, but then there’s

I can already hear the haters, gymnastics drills translate to the pole vault so well, many great pole vaulters were former gymnasts, gymnastics develop “body awareness”, and lastly gymnastics develops strength. I will address all of these areas and explain how at best, gymnastics exercises can have some carry over in movement and similar muscle groups being used in pole vault, and at worst little to no similarity to pole vault and complete waste of time. Let’s talk about the

It seems that no matter how high, or low, you vault all anyone comments on is whether or not your bottom arm is collapsed. Should you care? Probably not as much as the rest of the vault community, but you should probably care about your bottom arm only as much as you care about your pole carry, running mechanics, plant, jumping mechanics, swing etc. Although I don’t think a vaulter should have a collapsed bottom arm I do not think the emphasis that the vault community puts on

Many times in pole vault we hear stories about athletes who began working with a coach and in no time they pr several feet. This creates a mindset that lead many in the pole vault community to believe in a magic bullet. We all want to believe that if we just get taught the right drill, or hear the right technical cue we too can pr several feet. However this really couldn’t be further from the truth. Once an athlete is introduced to a system and integrated, progress comes from

Every pole vaulter that has ever lived has ran through once in his/her life. Whether it is a once in a moon occurrence, or a persistent problem, we’ve all struggled with it at some point in our vaulting career. Words can’t express how frustrating running through is. Your coach sometimes can’t relate, your parents always pester you with questions about it; you just don’t have an explanation. Something just feels off and it’s not allowing you to take it up. Everyone always give

Hold your coaches to a high standard! I want to start this article by saying that there are lots of great coaches out there that have a system, progressions, and show great passion and commitment to their athletes. The club scene in pole vault is especially great. I see lots of great club programs out there that coach over a hundred kids, up to 8 years at a time. And people who need help coaching should search out these coaches and clubs to learn from them, everyone in the p