An ex-athlete called me and told me a friend is trying to teach her to "row away". That is to say that when in the inverted position with the pole still bent, the vaulter should row the pole to the side away from the body and down to keep pressure down on the pole and turn. That friend says there should never be a bruise on the wrist because if you do that right the pole should never come near your wrist.
Look at Pvaultingirl's picture above. That's what happens if you press your bottom arm to the side and "row out". Her shoulders are pressed away from the line of pull of the top hand and pole recoil.
Look at Bubka's pictures to the left and see his bottom arm and wrist close to the pole, and his shoulders under the line of pull from the top hand and pole recoil.
Think as your body being an arrow and the pole being the bow. Have you ever seen an arrow built as an "L"? An "L" position balancing or acting on a moving object is subject to many possible deviations. The "L" position is subject to easier collapsing, and the "L" position is more subject to misdirection of flight.
This technique is nothing new. Thierry Vigneron and the French pole vaulters used to use this technique. They also had a huge bottom arm pressing the pole away in the take off.
What do you think?
"The pole vault growth during the decade (1975-1985) was very high but discontinuous, the average growth was 32 mm/year but we can recognize two steps. The first one, in 1980, was related with the appearance of the French school and the second one, in 1983-84, with the great duel between Vigneron and Bubka. After 1984 the era of Bubka begun and the growth becomes constant and continuous at a rate of 7 mm/year. Another interesting data is that the differential between the world record and the top ten average performance during years 1975-1984 was in the range 7-14 cm, while after 1984 when Bubka begun to be the leader of the world lists, it passed to 14-26 cm. This to confirm how much Bubka was ahead in comparison with the other vaulters!
Note: I do not make distinction in these lists between indoor and outdoor results. This is because I consider the 6.15 indoor obtained by Bubka the best performance of these last 25 years."
To see the chart relating to the above click
http://digilander.libero.it/rzocca/men/PV.htm
To see photos of Bubka's pull phase see
http://www.advantageathletics.com/polev ... oints.html
) i guess you can call it insentive to never let go of your pole!