Coach’s Critique - Tim Reilly

Tim Reilly breaks down technique in this analysis of a vault by Pole Vault Carolina athlete Bailey Tart.

Run

Your approach starts with a strong push with high cycling mechanics that gradually quicken in tempo all the way. Your pole carry is fairly weightless, supported by your skeleton rather than torqued back muscles seen in many young kids carrying too low or with too much tension in their arms.

Pole position during runup

Minor adjustments I might encourage in your plant are to let the pole drop to a slightly lower point before initiating the plant. It should be about at head level at this point. Yours is a bit high on the 2-step, and this adjustment could free you to quicken your final strides even more.

Plant

In this video, you get a little inside at takeoff, as most young athletes do, but it is a minor thing in your case. We’d rather not see the pole bending until your free knee passes your support knee. Since you don’t reach for this final stride, it’s merely a matter of moving out your starting point 3-6”.

Plant off of the ground

Problems begin into flight when you lose a little tension in your trail leg and fold it up into the swing. While it looks pretty great the moment you toe off, you lose elastic tension and your center of mass by trying to swing with the shortened trail leg. The second photo shows a second mistake that does not happen in all of your jumps, which is the pulling/collapsing of the bottom arm to initiate swing combined with the shortening of the trail leg.

Swing

A final adjustment is needed to get you realigned with your unbending pole through the turn. For various reasons, your heels arc down into the bar as the pole unbends and you crest the bar on your backside before turning. Empowering the swing as described above will help get your hips up higher and keep you behind the bending pole a little longer while you are inverting. Luckily, you do not get stuck in the bucket with hips below shoulders as most young vaulters do. But most often your lower body is too far ahead of the pole to ride the rocket so to speak off the top. You are also getting your left elbow caught behind or outside the pole which inhibits proper turning.

Bailey Tart

Commentary

Bailey, first of all, I congratulate you for your success so far. You’re clearly a good athlete who has been well coached in the phases of the vault I consider to be paramount, which are the approach, pole drop/ plant and takeoff. Normally when athletes manifest troubled top ends, the root cause is on the ground. For the most part, this is not your case.

Though swing styles vary, all world class vaulters initiate flight with a firm, stretched out body and initiate their swing with an extended trail leg, preserving and even adding to pole rotation velocity after they leave the ground. The first focus for you here should be the takeoff strike. Be sure it’s an aggressive vertical punch that engages your whole left side from the hip down. Second, include swing activation drills to reprogram your nervous system to swinging long. Hanging rings, running rings, straight pole swing ups to deep landings and light pole swing ups that flex a little without much bottom arm emphasis, again, to a deep landing. In practice, make long swings a requirement for swinging over bars. If the trail leg shortens, remove the bar and return to the activation drills.

Realigning the top end takes reprogramming drills as well, and I know of no better exercise than the deep swing drill which is to use a light pole from 3 lefts to swing to the deepest reach of the pit as possible, staying perfectly straight toward the back end. Because most athletes do this decently on a straight pole and dang few do it well with a bent one, I bridge this divide with a light pole that will flex a little as the athlete swings the hips to the top hand. Emphasize the punchy jump off the ground first to establish pole speed before swing speed, whip the extended trail leg, not a shortened one, and finish with the hips and top hand closed off together, bottom arm flexed in against the body.

As your coach I would stand behind the pit in the center, calling you farther and farther toward me with your feet. Once you can engage the swing well enough to get your hips up to your top hand while there is still a little flex in the pole, you’ll start to feel a pop at the top that will launch you beyond the pole. Once you can do this without a turn, you can begin initiating a turn around the top hand and landing on your left side, over onto your tummy or corkscrewing a full 360 onto your back again.

A couple of reminders: This deep swing drill on a light pole that flexes without bottom arm emphasis can dramatically accelerate your progress on larger poles and higher grips, but bending the pole is not the objective, vaulting with proper positions and movement is. Once mastered in this small and safe context, it can be enlarged with longer runs, higher grips, and stiffer poles. I know you will find that swinging long and realigning the top is SO empowering to your vault that your pole sizes and heights attained will explode. You’re that good an athlete.

Congratulations again on your success, and please count me among your team of supporters moving forward.

Best,

Tim Reilly NWPV Club