The Art of Pole Vault Practice
The Art of Practice is the quiet force behind every real success. It’s the commitment to showing up, refining the smallest details, and pushing through the plateaus when progress feels invisible. Mastery isn’t born from talent alone — it’s built through deliberate repetition, patience, and the willingness to learn from every attempt. In the end, the art isn’t just about practicing — it’s about practicing with purpose.
That’s why it’s not enough to simply go through the motions. Practice must mirror the intensity, focus, and standards we expect in competition. Every repetition should carry the same attention to detail, the same calm under pressure. When we train with discipline instead of emotion, we don’t just prepare our bodies — we train our minds to perform when it matters most.
The Problem with Traditional Vault Practice
Too often, pole vault practices prioritize the wrong objectives. Coaches push athletes to move up to longer, stiffer poles, jump from full competition approaches, and chase PRs against soft bungee bars set too high. This approach rewards adrenaline over technique — chaos over control — and creates a false sense of readiness.
When the bar is real, the pressure is real, and the margin for error shrinks, these athletes often crumble. Their inconsistency isn’t a mystery; it’s a reflection of how they trained.
Practices built on emotional effort, adrenaline spikes, and last-minute heroics condition athletes to need chaos just to perform. Instead of trusting their technique, they rely on fear, panic, or the hope of a big moment to bail them out. In competition, this shows up as wild inconsistency — flashes of brilliance followed by inexplicable misses. They don’t fail because they lack ability. They fail because their practices never taught them how to stay calm, technical, and reliable under pressure.
What Consistency Really Looks Like
An athlete should be able to clear their competition’s opening height with ease — and not just once, but with 90% success in practice. No adrenaline. No urgent coaching corrections. No drama. Just a clean, repeatable jump off an easy run, with a forgiving pole, built on sound technique and feel.
They should know how a good jump feels, not because a coach is telling them in the moment, but because they’ve trained their body and mind to recognize it. If an athlete can’t consistently clear basic bars calmly in practice, they will never consistently clear them under competition pressure.
You don’t rise to the occasion — you fall back on your training.
Why Mental Wellness Matters
Technical mastery is important, but emotional health is just as critical for long-term success. Happy athletes are good athletes — they play, experiment, build friendships, and approach challenges with curiosity instead of fear.
A healthy, positive training environment encourages athletes to take risks, trust the process, and bounce back from failure without losing confidence. When athletes are supported emotionally, they become more consistent, more resilient, and more willing to grow.
They aren’t just learning to jump higher — they’re learning how to compete with joy, purpose, and sustainability. When you build a positive foundation in practice, you don’t just produce better athletes — you produce athletes who last.
Our System for Building Consistency
We use two core methods: Rounds and 10-for-10 Repeats.
Both are designed to develop athletes who can perform under real competition conditions — without relying on adrenaline, desperation, or constant coaching.
Rounds: Training for True Consistency
In rounds, the athlete starts 1.5 meters below their personal best, using whatever pole and approach make success easiest. Real crossbars only — never bungees. Bungees create bad habits, false confidence, and unrealistic timing. Vaulters move differently when a real bar is up, and if you don’t train with one, you’re not preparing for competition.
Each time the bar is cleared, it moves up exactly 10 centimeters — no skipping ahead, no rushing the process. If the athlete misses, the bar resets immediately to the starting height, and that round is counted. No second attempts. No bargaining. A miss has to mean something, and the coach’s role is to enforce that discipline without exception.
This approach teaches patience, precision, and accountability. Athletes learn to expect clearances — clean, consistent, repeatable clearances. A miss becomes a surprise, not an expectation, and should only occur when the bar exceeds what the pole — and the athlete — can realistically deliver. Most athletes complete 3 to 5 rounds per session, layering quiet confidence into every jump.
10-for-10 Repeats: Owning the Jump
In this drill, the bar stays fixed at a height 1.5 meters below the athlete’s PR. The goal: 10 attempts, 90% success. Easy runway. Soft pole. Minimal rest. No coaching corrections.
The athlete must adjust on their own, listen to their body, and solve the jump themselves. There’s no safety net — and that’s the point. We aren’t just building physical skill — we’re building ownership, trust, and the ability to self-correct under pressure.
Precision Over Emotion
We don’t push athletes to grab bigger poles, chase longer runs, or summon emotional highs to “make it happen” in practice. Moving up poles should happen naturally, not by force. When it’s time for the next pole, it should feel obvious — effortless — a byproduct of better execution, not desperation.
We keep the runway, the technique, and the expectations steady. The jump is the focus, not the equipment. When an athlete’s technique is clean and efficient, pole progression becomes automatic.
We teach athletes to master precision and patience — because in competition, it’s not the ones who burn all their adrenaline early who rise to the top. It’s the ones who save their fire for when it matters most — when the bar reaches personal record heights, and focus makes all the difference.