Play hard! Play smart! Play together! Improving the pole vaulter.

Growing up in North Carolina in the 1960's and 1970's, I idolized Dean Smith. He was not only the perfect gentleman coach, but ultimately the winningest NCAA basketball coach in the history of the game.

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As a student at North Carolina, I was fortunate enough to watch Coach Smith's masterful coaching. Last year I read his most recent book, The Carolina Way (Penguin Press, NY, 2004), and I would recommend it to anyone who coaches, teaches, or manages the pole vaulters in track.

Coach Smith expresses his credo in this fashion: "Play hard! Play smart! Play together!" he means it for his basketball players. It applies for all teams.

Between Christmas and New Year's, I was invited to coach at Jan Johnson's Skyjumpers Pole Vault Camp in Ataseadero, CA. We started not with a bang, but a splash--a lot of rain that forced us to spend about half of the time indoors.

In between the raindrops, I put together a short dissertation for our pole-vault campers, based on the key principles expounded by Coach Smith.

1. PLAY HARD

Coach Smith says that he never wanted his team to lose because the other team played harder or because the other team was in better physical condition.

Pole vaulting is a very physically demanding sport that requires a lot of proper training to ensure a superior general fitness. I encourage my vaulters to engage in a variety of activities that will improve their overall fitness.

Running, swimming, biking, surfing, skiing, skateboarding, and gymnastics provide both fun and a good fitness base.

I also encourage my vaulters to participate in other out-of-season sports, such as football, soccer, and basketball.

On a more specific level, it is obviously important to develop sprinting speed by working on both mechanics and technique. Upper body, core and abdominal exercises such as crunches, pull ups, chin ups, and rope climbing will all pay dividends.

Simple swing up drills and "Bubkas" on a rope can be especially beneficial for strength, technique, balance, and the "feel" of getting upside-down.

Of course, it's also important to get plenty of rest and not to overtrain. Recognizing how not to overtrain leads directly into the next topic, play smart.

2. PLAY SMART

Coach Smith says that he never wanted his team to lose because of mental errors. He, his coaches, and his players worked to become serious students of the game. Smith stressed that the key principle was to focus on the process of the sport rather than on the end result (winning).

To become a successful pole vaulter, it is mandatory to learn as much as you can about the history, mechanics, physics, and the coaching, training, and vaulting techniques.

There are a variety of resources available, including books, videos, internet sites (like www.polevault-power.com and www.pvei.com).

It makes sense to have someone video both your practices and competitions, and for you to go to meets and talk with other vaulters and coaches, absorbing as much as possible.

Learn to analyze vaulting. Any casual observer of a sport can tell you simplistic information. For example, in sports such as basketball, baseball, and football, casual observers need merely watch the movement of the ball and the action immediately around the ball.

The more analytical observers (typically coaches and students of the game) have to notice the important and often subtle actions that take place away from the ball. It is frequently this kind of action that actually sets up a successful play or score.

In basketball, look for the players who can move without the ball to find an opening for a pass, screen, or shot. Such players can make a critical difference.

In baseball, it's the player who backs up a throw or a base (thinking ahead), who winds up making a winning catch or saving a play that otherwise might have gone awry.

In football, it is the unnoticed lineman who makes a key block away from the ball who can give his teammate an opportunity for a touchdown.

In pole vaulting it is important not merely to observe whether a vaulter clears the bar, but to slow down the video and break down the vault into its component parts--the handgrip, carry, run, plant, drive, swing, pull-turn-push, clearance technique, and where the vaulter lands in the pit. It can provide very useful information about what a vaulter is doing right and wrong.

When you are at meets without the benefit of slow-motion video, you have to try to pay close attention to the motion of the vault, without worrying quite as much about whether the vaulter clears or misses.

As Coach Smith emphasizes, focus on the process rather than on the end result. If you take the steps necessary to make the process right, the end result will follow naturally.

I'd like to stress three specific ways that you can focus on playing smart and focusing on process in pole vaulting: Drills, One Thing at a Time, and Write it Down.

Drills. For a pole vaulter, drills are analogous to a basketball player shooting free throws and form shots in practice. The pole-vault drills should isolate the separate, individual skills that are necessary for successful vaulting.

High-school pole vaulters must devote a significant percentage of their practice time to running with a pole, working on their plant, and working on the mechanics of their swing, inversion, and pull-turn-push.

Short-run drills using three or four "lefts" either with no bend or using a soft, short pole are some of the most efficient means for breaking down the building blocks of the vault.

Vaulters can develop a "high" plant, learn to count their lefts (which contribute to an early plant), a strong, aggressive takeoff and drive, and a powerful trail leg swing, by constant repetition of elementary three and four-left drills (e.g., swing to L-Seat, Swing to Invert, Swing and Shoot the Turn).

High-school vaulters should probably spend about 50% of their practice time doing these types of drills, to make these component elements automatic (what we old-schoolers used to call "muscle memory.")

One Thing at a Time. This holds true in both practice and competition. Although the pole vault is a complex event, it is important to concentrate on only one aspect at a time.

So, when you're standing at the back of the runway before your first step, take a couple of seconds and clear your mind. Then repeat to yourself the one thing that you're going to focus on for that particular jump.

The sport is too complicated to focus on more than just one thing. This is part of the reason that you spend so much time doing drills in practice. Repetition will enable you to automatically perform each component element. Once you've perfected this, you can progress to another element.

Write It Down. It is important to keep a journal of what you do in both practices (including running, gymnastics, and weight training) and competitions. Distance runners are usually fanatic about keeping a log of their mileage and workouts, and pole vaulters should borrow a page (or in this case, many pages) from their training book.

On one level, keeping a journal is just fun. It provides you with a concrete, black-and-white record of your personal accomplishments. More importantly, however, it provides you with extremely useful information. By recording what pole you use (length, weight-rating, flex number, brand), how many "lefts" you run, what your runway distances are, what the height of the bar is (whether it is a "make" or a "miss" ... and if it is a miss, whether you hit the bar going up or coming down), and what the depth of the standards is, you'll be better able to predict all of those things for use in future.

Prior to practices and competitions, you and your coach should review your journal to improve your ability to predict what poles, length of run, standard depth, etc. are likely to work best for you.

In his interview immediately after winning the Olympic Gold Medal in Athens (setting an Olympic Record of 5.95 meters), Tim Mack remarked that one of the reasons for his success was that he had been keeping a journal and writing all of his numbers down.

Keeping a journal and using it to analyze what works and what doesn't, takes a lot of the guesswork out of vaulting. It will make you a better and safer jumper.

3. PLAY TOGETHER

One of the things that set Carolina teams apart during the Dean Smith years was the unselfishness of their play.

In one respect, unselfishness is related to playing smart. Coach Smith emphasized the team concept by requiring his players to pass the ball to a teammate who had a better position for a shot or a higher percentage shot.

His assistant coaches studied game videos immediately after games to "grade" the players on how well they performed as team players.

It became a standard joke among the TV analysts that Dean Smith was the only person who could hold Michael Jordan to under 20 points a game.

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Another example of Coach Smith's emphasis on teamwork is the custom of pointing to the passer who gave a shooter an assist. This custom originated with Carolina and became a Tarheel trademark.

If you think of track and field, in general, and pole vaulting, in particular, as the quintessential example of an individual (non-team) sport, you are wrong.

I want to be a fanatic about this with my vaulters. I think it is critical in building a team concept. You should begin by helping each other in practices, and it goes without saying that you warm up together, using the same routines every day.

At away meets, you should help each other measure your steps, carry your poles and gear together. Share your tape. Rely on your teammates for coaching advice, especially about standard depth, steps, and technique.

You should try to train your eyes to notice the details and particulars of your teammates' vaults: plant, drive, swing, action of the trail leg, etc.

Analyze the mechanics, not just the end result. If the event judge doesn't have someone catching the poles at a meet, ask for permission to catch your teammates' poles.

In practices, have a simple rule: After climbing out of the pit, after a jump, stay next to the pit and catch the pole for the next vaulter.

Praise your teammates' success. Pat'em on the back when they miss and go out of the competition. You'll be doing that a lot, since we all generally miss three times in a row at the end of the competition.

Be a helper, be a cheerleader, be a friend for your teammates. It is important to cultivate a brotherhood and sisterhood of vaulters in order to be successful.

CONCLUSION

You can borrow the three principles that Coach Smith used to become the winningest NCAA basketball coach in history, and apply them to your pole vaulting. They can make anyone much, much, better pole vaulters.

By Russ VerSteeg, Pole Vault Coach, Norwich (CT) Free Academy