The Art of Pole Vault Coaching

Our pole vault group has made steady progress, growing in numbers and celebrating various success since its formation about 1 1/2 years ago. This summer has been a real breakthrough as we celebrated 3 medal winners at the National Championships in Aberdeen and two of our vaulters are close to breaking the 3m barrier for the first time. What is particularly exciting is that we now have a wide range of athletes covering the spectrum of various age group, from U13 to U20 and there appears to be growing interest among our young athletes to learn more about this  event. From a coaching perspective it is very satisfying to see how quickly some of our young athletes have picked up the basics of pole vaulting and that their dedicated training has been rewarded with a national medal. Evie Bartl has let the way at last year’s National Championships by winning the U14 age group and it was 12 year old Finlay Walker, who continued with Kilmarnock’s success, by winning the U13 age group this summer.

It’s obviously nice to celebrate success and rightly so, in particular if coach and athletes have invested numerous hours of intensive training. However, let’s not get carried away we are still only a beginners group but do rather well compared to other Scottish clubs when it comes to introducing young kids to the pole vault event. The journey so far has been full of ups and downs but most of all it has been a great learning experience for all involved.

I can clearly remember the weekend when the whole adventure started with me completing an additional online module Pole Vault available to all qualified Athletics coaches. After successful completion of the online course (April 2013) I was presented with a certificate, a piece of paper congratulating me on “completing the online module for Athletics Coach: Pole Vault  and stating that I am now qualified to coach pole vault sessions without supervision. ” In honesty,  it sounded a bit scary holding this piece of paper, which upgraded me to a pole vault coach. Did it? Can a few hours studying theory and answering  a multi choice test really make you a pole vault  coach? Obviously not, and in fairness I knew that I didn’t know very much about this event. Did it hinder me to forge ahead trying to coach this new event?

Initially, it was a bit like consulting a user manual for the most basics steps but nevertheless our small group made excellent progress with all of our group members being able to compete in the event after a few months. Looking back I would say that my lack of knowledge did not really hinder my progress to introduce young kids to the event. I believe the knowledge required to introduce kids to any event does not require an in-depth knowledge about the event anyway. Maybe here’s a message for coaches going through their coaching qualification that basic knowledge is often good enough to coach the basics, be confident, brave enough and prepared to make mistakes. A famous latin quote says err?re h?m?num ests, or in plain English “to err is human”.  As I was only coaching very beginners that worked very well for me, learning by doing. Was it important that I didn’t know how to coach an athlete how to bend the pole or how to coach safely the inversion (basically going upside down during the jump) ? As I did not have any athletes, who actually were at this stage in their development, this coaching puzzles was irrelevant at this particular time. It was only 6 months later that I figured out myself what is required for an athlete (myself) to bend the pole, although I was lucky to have a guinea pig  – myself. This helped me later to to teach my more advanced athletes how to progress their vaulting to the next level.

Introducing pole vault to younger athletes has been a particular good learning experience for me as a coach, as it really helped me to understand that this event can indeed be coached to athletes starting U13. Finlay Walker (12) is a good example how quickly athletes from this age group can learn the basic of pole vaulting. Practice jumps into the sand pit provide a safe environment where younger kids can learn the basic movement patterns. Furthermore, it offers the opportunity to introduce a bar clearance at an early stage, which instills a sense of achievement in the athlete. Athletes can easily monitor their own progress as the starting height can be set very low, which is important before athletes attempt to move on to vault on to the proper matts. Even mastering a height as low as 1.30m can take some time.

Finlay struggled to clear 1.40m for a long time but his perseverance paid off in the end. Finlay started pole vaulting at the beginning of this year and since then has steadily progressed, not only in height but more importantly in developing a good technical understanding of the event. His progress is also remarkable as he is a typical late developer, so cannot rely mainly on strength or height as the early developers often do.

 

 

 

 

 

 

His recent vaults do indeed look very good as he even has now learned how to bend the pole.

The recent Lottery grant has certainly helped our group as we could purchase lighter and smaller poles more suited for our younger athletes.

 

 

 

 

 

All in all our pole vault group has been very busy this year and I am very pleased that new members have joined our group. There is a particular interest among younger athletes, which is very encouraging. Finlay’s example shows that this versatile event can successfully be coached from an early age. Finally, it’s a lot of fun too, as we do other interesting things like gymnastics. Anyone interested in learning pole vault should contact Harald. Our group meets usually on Wednesday and Friday 6.30 – 8.00pm.