Steve Hooker's New Swing

[Pogo Stick]

"we must be seeing diffferent video.." That may indeed be the case -so what are you seeing dj? Funny never got an answer to that? What about the latest clip - what do you see there??

Well folks it doesnt matter what you see there because there is no new Hooker swing! Alex got back to me last night and made it clear what he thinks about this issue -unfortunately he forgot Perth is 2 1/2 hours behind Adelaide and woke me up -so I was not at my best when he gave me his take on this.

He DOES NOT CARE what the athlete does in that phase of the vault! He focusses on only two things. The run and take off - and the amount of energy the athlete gets back at the top of the vault after covering the pole. Many of his athletes keep their knee up - including Budge, Vikki and Liz - others do not. It seems that Steve is in the middle, responding intuitively to what has happened at take off. So re the Sydney jump Alex says it was a b......t jump because Steve was way under at take off -over striding over last five steps. They worked on that and in Doha he took off at 4.40m.

Here are some pictures taken from video(s):
At 570 he is holding knee high:

SH570.jpg (29.14 KiB) Viewed 7441 times

At 6.01 he is dropping the knee:

SH601.jpg (29.96 KiB) Viewed 7441 times

At 6.16 he is also dropping the knee and hold it down little bit longer:

SH616.jpg (29.31 KiB) Viewed 7441 times

[dj]

hey

this is what i had started to add a few days ago... but never got a chance to finish and post.. i'll drop it now and finish it later when i have time..

i have started coaching on this side of the water again and have gotten busy again.. plu the new business..

dj

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i stop framed the 6.01 on here from both the angles.. I didn’t think it was different than many of his jumps from the past... and this is not to criticize just to compare “position” without prejudice for what they are. I though a subtle knee drop was still there, much like Earl Bell had early in his career and even Dave Roberts (a classic knee driver) had a slight drop on his 18-8 world record.

I tried to explain Earls’ Knee drop as “not” a bad thing.. I actually compared it to a high jumper who “blocks”, typically we think arms but the quad of the lead leg (and has a greater mass) is driven up along with the arms.. stopped abruptly to accelerate the upper body.. if you watch a huge basketball running slam dunk you will see the athlete drive and then seemingly “pump the lead leg”…

In Earl and David I felt this came from using a higher grip and them intuitively doing what the body needed to move the pole.. as long as they continued to swing.. and try and swing even faster than normal they worked with the physics…

A longer swing or lowering the mass to swing is not a bad thing for “physics” IF the swing is still fast…

What we need to know is.. first did he get past vertical enough so his trajectory off the pole to send him vertical into the parabola.. ?? no because he came of to the side which would lower the peak of his jump..

The other important data would be the amount of time of the jump from TO to peak height. Longer distance (

[rainbowgirl28]

I'd like to thank everyone who has taken the time to break down the videos and post still pictures. Very helpful

[altius]

Two final points on this from me. First we must make sure not to confuse what Steve is doing with a double leg swing!

Second - it is interesting to note that in BTB One I wrote with regard to the swing "=... the movement and timing of the body parts are so subtle and complex that they appear to be performed intuitively than deliberately learned or trained. They seem to depend on what the athletes internal kinaesthetic - body feel - at that instant 'tells' them what to do." I think that is why we are seeing these relatively small changes in Steves technique in this phase.

[KirkB]

I would ignore the 5.70 jump ... where he went off to the side too much ... and focus more on the 6.01.

Based on his facial expression, he was clearly surprised at his poor bar clearance and landing to the side ... there's no point in studying jumps that aren't intentional ... or "peak form" ... unless you're trying to pick apart what went WRONG.

Kirk