Pretty Good Day

Of course no one likes to have a vault session where you never get out of your sweatsuit but that's the way it was today, and will probably be for the better part of the next two months. I used this as an excuse to stay on small poles and work some technical details without rushing to get to the next pole. Because of this, I had a solid and consistent technical effort and feel I gained some momentum toward progress.

Started at 10' 6" (3.21m) from my four step run 22' (6.50m) and made that and 11' (3.36m) on first jumps so I moved back to six steps or 33' (10m) run and stayed there the rest of the session. I skipped 11' 6" (3.51m) and went to 12' (3.66m) and made that pretty easily after working through a few more poles and refining some technique. The only missing piece is not allowing the hips to break during the swing. It wasn't horrible but I didn't get to it as a focus point.

Next session (Saturday) I'll try and use my two biggest 13' (4m) poles from 33' as I won't be able to get in enough to complete the jump from such a short run unless I do that part right. Long story short (too late) was that it felt good to have a session where I didn't care what pole I was on on what height the bar was on - I just wanted to vault technically correct. It was fun to have a day like this.

MOmentum. The MO you get, MO you CAN get!! I feel like I'm really starting to gain some training momentum and my body is finally responding. I felt pretty good out today even though I had hard training sessions since my meet on Saturday. The key is to get quality work done and don't get impatient and start jacking up grips and poles. It's too cold and I'm training too hard right now to be inviting injuries. Save the big poles and runs for the meets.

We will see where Saturday goes but I'm guessing I'll end up on my lighter 4.30 poles with some higher level technical jumps. The cleaner you can get on your technique on the smaller poles, the harder the big poles will throw you. The jump at 4m at Sydney http://www.bubbapv.com/Images/Sydney/4m.MOV felt no different than my practice jumps today on small poles and short runs. The difference is I can jump a lot more jumps without the risk of injury if I stay at the lower level. This also conditions my body for jumping so that I am less likely to get hurt when I step up a level.

Right now I have a bag of poles for practice and a bag for meets and rarely do I ever hit a meet pole in practice nor do I use a meet approach run. It's a philosophy - if I can't do it right from the closer run I can't from the next one. When I get it right there for a couple of jumps then I move back a stride. In March I won indoor nationals from a 44' run though I've already run from 64' in my first meet last weekend. That's the same run I ended on in Sydney. I think when I run consistently from 77' to 88' in meets, big things will start happening, but not if I don't carry over the same technique. It's a process that consistently proves correct. You move on when you're proved you're ready. If you go before then it slaps you back down.

Thanks for being here and listening. Looking forward to Granbury (Dallas) on 12/19. Bubba