Kilmarnock Harriers are proud to offer a new exciting field event to our young athletes (age group U15 and above): Pole Vault. What initially only began as an experiment will now become a permanent feature in the curriculum among the other field events currently on offer to our young athletes. The response has been so positive that we now plan to offer athletes with an aptitude for jumps to learn this exciting field event. It is hoped that this will not only raise more interest in Pole Vault but we also aim to provide more learning experiences by organizing workshops for athletes/coaches and will hopefully see pole vault being soon added to the list of events at future athletics meeting held in Kilmarnock. One a half years ago it would have been unthinkable to offer Pole Vault to our own athletes but with the new training facilities at the Ayrshire Athletics Arena this has become a reality. Soon we will be able to train for this event all year round as plans are now underway to have have Pole Vault training set up for outdoors and indoors.
The initial signs are very promising that a Kilmarnock Harrier athlete will soon make her debut in Pole Vault in one of the upcoming competitions such as the new Youth Development League or the West District. It sounds a bit unreal considering that in total we only had three sessions (all this week) and I gained my additional qualification module Athletics Coach: Pole Vault only 2 days ago. Additional coaching modules such as Pole Vault, Hammer or Discuss are available to all newly qualified Athletics Coaches or existing level 2 coaches.
In fact, on Friday was the first day we put all theory and initial exercises into practice. I am pleased to say that it went quite well and can say that Pole Vault is actually less scary than many people think. Lets keep our feet firmly on the ground, we are still talking about the first steps in developing skills in Pole Vaulting but it looks very promising and its great fun too.
jumping from low bench, planting of pole and take off drill into sand pit
turning mid air on the correct side
Preparatory exercises/drills in the sand pit helped to establish basic movement patterns, which our two athletes were then able to apply when using the proper pole vault equipment (mats, uprights and flexi bar)
Video Sequence Evie from low bench jumping with turning and controlled landing..
Evie jumping from low bench
coach Harald passing practical test
Later outdoors we had excellent attempts using the proper mats with jumps almost over 2.00m using a flexi bar, which shows Cara Baillie’s talent in this event having only trained three times so far.
Cara finishing turn
videos of coach Harald and athlete Cara Baillie clearing 2.00m
assisted handstand
It has often been argued that athletes with a gymnastics background bring a good skill base to learning the pole vault event and our own Cara Baillie is certainly one good example of this. Gymnastics is all about having a good body and spatial awareness which are vital skills for any any pole vaulter. Take for example the simple skill of doing a hand stand on the floor, which kids already learn in primary school. But then image you are 3-4 meter in the air doing a handstand just holding on to a pole and are then required to complete a 180 degrees turn with your body before your bar clearance.
So working on basic and advanced gymnastics skills is likely to become part and parcel of advanced pole vault training. However, there are lots of exercises which will benefit even beginners to teach good postures and body awareness. Another fancy term often used is proprioception, which ‘is the body’s ability to transmit a sense of position, analyze that information and react (consciously or unconsciously) to the stimulation with the proper movement (Houglum 2001). Put simply, it is the ability to know where a body part is without having to look.’
cart wheel with one hand
walking on toes with medicine balls for developing good posture
Part of these exercises could simply be doing drills barefoot like high knees and walking on toes like a balarina, which can improve also proprioception and posture.
Anyone interested in knowing how elite pole vault athletes train there is a good video presentation on UKAcoach, just search for the below info:
