Coaching and Care of Athletes

THE POLE VAULT enough apart. Too heavy a pole, or too much leverage, will cause the athlete also to wobble in his run, or to turn out his toes. The latter is a fatal error. If the hand-hold is too low the pole will not reach the perpendicular when the vault is made, and the vaulter cannot gain the maximum height of which otherwise he may be capable. If the pole-point, -shaft, and -tip do not retain the straight– forward direction in line with the approach run and slideway it is impossible to plant properly. If the shoulders and hips do not remain square to the front one cannot run at optimum speed. Some athletes commit the fault of slowing down or shortening the last three strides, or they overstride or step short of the take– off spot, represented, approximately, by a plumb-line dropped from the hands when they are in the position shown in Plate XXXIV, Fig. 99· It is equally bad for the athlete to ta~e off to either side. The foot from toes to heel, the centre of the body, and the nose must be in line directly behind the point and shaft of the pole when it reaches the stop-board. In planting numerous mistakes can be made. In the under– hand style the athlete may fail to co-ordinate his action smoothly in three strides. In the overhand style he may fail to circle the elbow of the arm which has the higher hand-hold. He may lean his head and incline his body to one side of the pole, or he may fail to hit the base of the stop-board squarely. We had a vaulter at the Summer School in 1937 whose style looked perfect, and yet something, obviously, was wrong. It took Comstock and me a week to discover that his timing was being ruined because the pole-point was first hitting the floor of the slideway, so that there was a slight bounce before the point reached the stop-board. Some vaulters have the fault of leaving the ground just before the pole-point hits the stop-board, the subsequent jerk on the arms breaking up the rhythm of the swing. Others take the lower hand off the pole il]. making the hand-shift. Yet others make only a partial shift of the lower hand, in which case both pull-up and push-up suffer, because the ' hands, being separated, do not afford the body full support. Some check their momentum by driving the heel into the track with too hearty a foot-stamp. Many fail to achieve the proper taking-off-foot roll right up on to the toes. Some spoil their effect by tensing instead of relaxing the muscles 335