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2017 VAULTER MAGAZINE
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RIGHT NOW N O T H I N G E L S E VAULTER
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MATTERS TIME TO FLY
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VAULTER MAGAZINE 2017
MARCH 2017 ISSUE
CONTENTS h c r a
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FROM THE EDITOR
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INVERSION TECHNIQUES
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ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY
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“PHYSICAL THERAPY IN THE 21ST CENTURY: BABY MOVEMENTS”
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Cover photo by Mike Renner
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FROM THE EDITOR What a difference a month can make! Here at Vaulter magazine - Vaulter Club Inc., we have raised the money through all-comers, invitationals, and more to make raised runways and buy the gear the kids need. We are very active and driven to provide the tools necessary to not only bring this magazine to you the reader but also to our athletes that train. Three runways with pits and we are off for 2017! With all of that said, March is here! In California, the flowers are blooming, and the sky is wetter than normal, but we are happy. Happy to
be outside in the warm weather pole vaulting for the outdoor season. Soon the dog days of summer will be upon us, and we will be into fall.
This month we have Arizona State University on the cover of our magazine. Ron Barela as his team is set and ready to make a huge splash in 2017. Check out their article inside and see what they have planned for their indoor and outdoor season. Samantha Kaplan is bringing the news to the people this month with this in-depth article. Kreager Taber is back and writing about Inversion Techniques and the struggles that some athletes have to get their hips in the air. “Rope vaulting, or simulating the swing, inversion, and top of the vault by jumping from a high platform while “vaulting” over a bungee onto a mat, is another surefire way to help develop the inversion.” Check out her article in this issue of Vaulter Magazine. Sumner Swartz comes to us with, “Physical Therapy in the 21st Century: Baby Movements.” Injuries are very common and preventing and treating them are just as frequent. Check out the article this month and get an in-depth view of what Sumner is facing with his real life experiences. We will see you next month when April comes knocking. Thank you for following us and reading about the sport that we love!
Doug Bouma Editor, Vaulter Magazine - Vaulter Club Inc. editor@thevaultermag.com
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MARCHWWW.UST-ESSX.COM 2017 ISSUE
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Sam Kendricks
Vault with Confidence The lightweight Kendricks Special Edition and Recoil Series poles by UST-ESSX are engineered for superior power, stability and consistency. The world’s best vaulters trust our technologically-advanced designs to help them reach their full potential, from approach to push off. Jump with UST-ESSX, and start raising the bar on your level of confidence.
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WWW.VAULTERMAGAZINE.COM Kortney Ross
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INVERSION TECHNIQUES By: Kreager Taber Pole vaulting without first being a gymnast is similar to learning how to ride a bike without using training wheels beforehand. A gymnastics or acrobatic background helps not only with a general fearlessness that is beneficial to high-flying, gravity-defying athletes, but also the inversion portion of the vault. Former gymnasts tend to have less of a problem dropping the shoulders during the inversion and also tend to have a powerful swing to begin inverting. However, developing a clean and effective inversion does not have to involve the difficulties of actually becoming a gymnast: easy drills and the incorporation of simple gymnastics skills into workouts reap the same benefits. Erin Gerardo
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Bubkas, the quintessential pole vault drill named after legend Sergey Bubka, are a great way to help athletes develop the strength and technique to
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drop the shoulders and invert completely while vaulting. The drill strengthens the core and shoulders as well as teaches the vaulter to pull completely from the feet to the hips while inverting. Bubkas can be done on the rings or on a horizontal bar, both leading to the same result- a stronger inversion.
Rope vaulting, or simulating the swing, inversion, and top of the vault by jumping from a high platform while “vaulting” over a bungee onto a mat, is another surefire way to help develop the inversion. This drill helps vaulters who may be “caught in the bucket”, or those who have difficulty inverting completely, by assisting the vaulters swing and forcing the vaulter to pull completely from their feet to their hips during the inversion in order to clear the bungee. The pressure of taking off correctly is taken off of the jumper, letting the athlete focus only on the swing, inversion, and top of their jump. Rope vaulting also allows the vaulter to overemphasize their swing, and therefore the vaulter has more power to translate into vertical height. In order to specifically work on the inversion, have the athlete swing to kick their feet to the same side of the rope as their head before pulling through to their hips. Doing so helps the athlete get properly stacked
Kortney Ross
up with their shoulders down before starting to pull through and finish the vault.
Swing up drills on the rings are a tried-and-true method to improve the swing and the inversion. Lowering the rings to a point where the vaulter can run as a quasi-approach phase before leaving the ground adds a valuable inversion component- the vaulter can draw energy from both the run and the swing. Adding netting to the ropes that the rings are attached to in order to catch the
foot assures that the vaulter gets totally inverted. The net also lets the vaulter know whether or not they have swung and inverted with enough power to put together an effective vault based on how hard their foot hits the net. Additionally, it acts as a strong visual cue to remind the vaulter to invert completely.
Simple gymnastics-based skills, such as swing ups, bubkas, and rope vaulting, assist vaulters in cultivating the strength and technique necessary to invert completely.
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Haleigh Fritts, Kristiana Warth, Athena Masolini, Vanessa Davis
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Arizona State University:
COLLABORATION
IS THE KEY TO SUCCESS By: Samantha Kaplain Matt Eckles, Jacob Flores, Dillon Groener, Nate Heitt, Garrett Starkey
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Known for its cultivation of outstanding sports teams, Arizona State University is definitely an athlete’s environment. The ASU track and field team is no exception to this excellence. Staffed with six full-time coaches, two volunteer coaches, and two assistant coaches, each and every Sun Devil on the track team gets intelligent, individualized event coaching. ASU pole vaulters are lucky enough to be coached by Ron Barela, a knowledgeable athlete, and teacher with quite the résumé. Coach Barela has been coach-ing the vault for 23 years, 14 of which have been with ASU. During his time at ASU, Coach
Barela has produced three repeat All-American pole vaulters, one of whom earned National Champion status. Currently, the ASU vault squad consists of five men and four women. They form a tight group, since all but one competed in the area in high school. Seniors Jacob Flores, Garrett Starkey, and Dillon Groener collaborate to lead the group. Matthew Eckles and Nathan Hiett are the upperclassmen who will become the team leaders when the seniors are gone. The highest-flying ASU boys are Starkey at 5.30, Hiett at 5.20 and Eckles at 5.15. On the women’s side, Kristiana
Warth, Haleigh Fritts, and Vanessa Davis are all over four meters. The team is riddled with record holders including Starkey, with an ASU top ten mark of 5.30, Warth with her leap of 4.00 and Fritts are both on ASU’s top ten women’s all-time list. Davis earned Student Athlete of the Semester honors, showing an admirable commit-ment to both sport and school.
Prospective ASU pole vault-ers should know that the re-cruitment process is based heavily on a vaulter’s potential to grow. “ASU pole vault looks for athletes that have a lot of heart and are up to the chal-lenge of earning the privilege
Kristiana Warth
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to wear the pitchfork.” Scholarships for ASU pole vault are provided on the basis of development and improvement. Overall, ASU is looking for open-minded athletes who have the ability to grow into strong, goal-oriented competitors.
The vault program credits it’s success to a training regiment that highly emphasizes weight training. ASU pole vaulters lift three times a week. Along with their lifts, the Sun Devils do a lot of plyometric and gymnastic training. ASU philosophy is to make sure the vaulters never forget their past training, so the program allows athletes to continue some old training techniques that work for them. “The program takes into consideration the training forms that previously worked for athletes and their own opinions.” On breaks from school, ASU vaulters are encouraged to train however they see fit, whether that be following an ASU regiment, or working with a club coach. When it comes to training, “ASU’s flexibility allows each individual athlete to be the greatest they can possibly be.” In season, Sun Devil vaulters are treated to high class facilities including full access to the ASU gymnastic facility for form work, three runways with two vaulting pits, and a full set of
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Matt Eckles
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poles. If ASU doesn’t own the pole a vaulter needs, it will be purchased without hesitation.
ASU is part of the Pac-12 Conference, a group of 12 highly competitive schools in the Western United States. “The conference proves to be very tough year after year in the vault. It consistently takes a jump of over 17’ in order to place.” Last year’s NCAA pole vault champion was a Pac-12 competitor, proving Haliegh Fritts
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how intense the competition in this conference can be. On the national scale, ASU track and field has won five NCAA championships. Nick Hysong (19’4 ¼”), the 2000 Olympic gold medalist, April Kubishta, NCAA and USATF national champion, and Brandon Glenn, USA World Team Junior and USATF National Champion are all ASU alumni who achieved great success in the vault pro-gram and later in their lives. Hysong, along with Dean Star-
key (19’5”) and elite Coach Greg Hull frequently help out with the Sun Devils’ training, coaching from the perspective of a former ASU vaulter.
Arizona athletics tries to cultivate a love for sport over all else. Unlike most other Division I schools, athletes at ASU are allowed to compete in multiple sports. “It allows for the athletes to develop more competitive atmosphere.” The track team has three such runners, who double as football players in the off-season. When athletes receive a variety of training techniques across multiple sports, their overall athleticism and team ethic grows. The official ASU track season starts in September for fall training and goes through June, but even during the summer break, ASU vaulters, unlike many other Division I vaulters, are encouraged to continue jumping. Coach Barela wants his vaulters to get the input of their club coaches, and be able to participate in fun, low-stress summer meets. ASU pole vault recognizes the value of variety in training, encouraging advice from qualified coaches outside of school, and the value of working in a lowstress environment to keep the passion for the vault alive.
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Haleigh Fritts, Kristiana Warth, Athena Masolini, Vanessa Davis
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WWW.VAULTERMAGAZINE.COM Matt Eckles, Jacob Flores, Dillon Groener, Nate Heitt, Garrett Starkey,
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“PHYSICAL THERAPY IN THE 21ST CENTURY: BABY MOVEMENTS” By: Sumner Schwartz All too often coaches see their athletes develop injuries. Injuries happen quite frequently in the vault because
of the intense energy output needed for sprinting and jumping; and, from the not so uncommon airborne mishaps.
The standard response from athletes—most of whom have never really trained to the level they do before high school track & field—is to ice until it hurts too much for them to bear and only then see a physical therapist to get better. Melissa Braun, now a sophomore at Occidental College, experienced this all too familiar narrative. Melissa developed shin splits in the seventh grade. They progressed to the point that by her sophomore and junior year the day after running, she would crawl around her home in utter pain. Her pangs were so severe she couldn’t practice running or
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vaulting during the week in order to save her shins for meets. Reminiscing she finds the situation “very ridiculous. I’ve never heard of anyone having shin splints like that.” She went through almost her entire high school career unable to complete a full sprinting workout and plateaued in her vaulting. Melissa fell into the all too fa-
miliar high school injury story but it didn’t end with conventional physical therapy. Instead her injury kept getting worse.
Melissa began to see a physical therapist two years after the excruciating pain first manifested. She went to a local physical therapy facility once a week for several months
and tried many approaches: she bought new shoes, she got x-rays, she underwent electrical stimulation, but nothing improved after several months of this “band-aid stuff.” During this period she sought out other remedies including acupuncture and an alternative doctor whom prescribed walking workouts. After some
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research it turned out that the first physical therapist trying to help Melissa was actually an athletic trainer who advertised false credentials. She laments that “he had plenty of time to do something about it if he knew how.”
This betrayal is not uncommon. Many athletes find themselves seeking advice from so-called physical therapists that actually have no certifications to practice in such a capacity. Athletes— especially young adults who are only beginning to visit physicians—need to double check that the people they seek help from have the knowledge and certifications required. Failing to do so will lead to injuries lasting far longer than they should and can even make injuries worse.
Urgently in need of a solution, she tried a different physical trainer on a recommendation. He began by talking to her finding out what she could and could not do, her medical past, and most crucial: how she moved in her daily life. Within a month Melissa could do workouts with only a fraction of the pain. Her path led her to the sports medicine field. She tried to shadow him in order to pursue her new interest but paperwork
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got in the way—much how it should have for the first unscrupulous athletic trainer. On his recommendation, she began to shadow Austin
proach to training. DNS focuses on training the body to follow the movements that children learn naturally in the first thirteen months of their life. Austin finds that these movements allow athletes to produce more power without wear“Movement is key. Static ing the body down bepositions can only improve cause they follow the you so much. There body’s natural moveneeds to be elements of ment paths. After movement in the training” teaching these movements to Melissa, Austin discovered that Melissa’s left oblique Einhorn, a Certified Strength was weaker than her right side. and Conditioning Specialist From this asymmetry she was who founded Apiros. overextending her back and ran using her calves rather than Austin uses, among other her core. She was surprised methods, the Dynamic Neu- her shin splints came from her romuscular Stabilization ap- torso and diligently performed
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the exercises he prescribed. Her the pain quickly went away completely and she was able to clear 11’7” by the end of her high school career. Utterly amazed at the quick recovery, Melissa decided she wanted to train athletes the same way Austin trained athletes.
The process to overcoming her injury led Melissa to her calling, helping other athletes. She now studies Kinesiology and vaults for the tigers at Occidental College. After becoming Strength and Conditioning Training Certified she follows Austin’s tutelage at Apiros, where she harnesses years of experience to best
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help athletes get through their injuries and train more efficiently. Part of their success comes from focusing on causes rather than the effect of an
injury. Feel free to contact Melissa, she is always looking to help others in their pursuit of athletic success.
“I have seen worlds of difference in my own performance mentally and physically through his training, so I feel excited about being able to give that back to another athlete and starting to work with people”
Melissa Braun | Instagram: @jump.this | Melissa@apiros.team
Apiros | Instagram: @apiros.team | Facebook: @ apirosteam Twitter: @apirosteam | Podcast: www.fourpercentpodcast.libsyn.com
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