The last few months I've been working on my private pilots certificate. While I was flying my instructor asked me "How do you make the plane go higher?" and like the dummy I am I responded "put the nose up". So we increased the pitch of the airplane to a pretty steep climb and before I knew it we were losing altitude and the stall horn was going off. We were almost falling out of the sky.
My instructor laughed, and we tried the same angle of climb again. This time he told me to put full power in, and we were able to achieve the altitude. Power controls altitude.
Later that day I used the same explanation for my vaulters. If a vaulter pitches their bodies to vertical without a lot of speed they are not going to clear a very high height. It's speed that allows a vaulter to jump high.I also told them an airplane is built to efficiently use that power in order to fly. An airplane that isn't built aerodynamically will not fly even if it has a massive engine. A vaulter that can not efficiently use his power isn't going to jump very high either.
On a side note my flight instructor was a pole vaulter as well. He jumped 11'6" on a bamboo pole landing in SAND. That was his freshmen year in high school. He cut his vaulting career short by volunteering for the navy when he was 16 and was a fighter pilot in the south pacific in WW2. 11 air to air kills. Guess vaulters have always been gutsy
