Advanced Techniques - Bar Clearance

1. Many vaulters throw their arms back after pushing off the pole. This causes you to arch and usually pushes your chest into the crossbar (and knock it off). You can avoid this by keeping your body concave and "pointing your thumbs together" then draping over the crossbar.
2. A minor note is that after you successfully clear the bar, gently guide your pole to a safe landing area for your pole. Most vaulters reading the Advanced Techniques are already clearing well above their handgrip so knocking the bar off with their pole is not an issue. What IS an issue is when a pole comes down towards the standard and hits the knob or bracket (that we use to adjust the height of the standard) and breaks the pole. Obviously, the first goal is to clear the height, then we want to make sure the pole isn't damaged. We see about one pole per year broken by hitting the standard - and while not a big deal in the global scope of things, you don't want your best pole to be broken as you go for your championship height and have to jump on a new (bigger) pole - or worse, a softer pole.