The Rookie's Guide to Your First Pole Vault Practice (So You Don't Look Like You Don't Know What You're Doing)

By Jake Winder, founder of RISE Pole Vault. Adapted from the One More Jump podcast. Watch or listen below.

Walking into your first pole vault practice is intimidating. Everybody seems to know the words, the rules, where to stand, what to do. This is the cheat sheet I wish every new kid had, whether you're heading into your first class at a gym or club or your first high school practice. And you'd be surprised how many experienced athletes still do the rookie things on this list without knowing it.

To be clear, this is not everything you'll need to know. It's a sample of a few things we see all the time at RISE, in four areas: the lingo, not pretending you know what you're doing, where to stand and where not to stand, and a few simple habits that keep you from getting hurt doing things that aren't even pole vaulting.

1. Learn the lingo

There are a few things people say that quietly drive pole vaulters crazy. Here's the equipment, named correctly.

It's a pole, not a bar. The thing you run down the runway with, plant in the box, bend, and ride into the air is a pole vaulting pole. You would be shocked how many people say "I need a bigger bar" or "how do I hold the bar?" It is not a bar. It is a pole.

It's a pit, not a mat. The thing you land on is a pole vaulting pit. Every time someone says "we were pulling the mats out for practice," it eats at me a little. Now, this one might be a soda-versus-pop situation, and I'm from the Midwest, so I say pop. But I'm pretty sure this one is universal. It's a pit.

Those are the standards. The uprights on either side of the pit that raise and lower the bar are called the standards, at least in America. In Europe you might hear uprights or stands. Here, if you need someone to move them, you ask for the standards.

The crossbar is the bar. Same idea as the pole, in reverse. The thing you're trying to clear is the bar, or the crossbar. It is not "the pole." When someone says "I just need to get over the pole," they mean the bar.

Then there's the lingo you'll hear from a coach. The big one is takeoff position. Picture putting your pole tip in the box and standing under the pole with your top hand over your head. Draw a line straight down from your top hand to the floor. Taking off with your foot right on that line is called being on. If your foot is closer to the pit than that line, you're under (you'll also hear "too close" or "you got ripped"). If your foot is farther from the pit than the line, you're out. Under, on, out. That vocabulary will come up on your very first day.

I know I missed a bunch of terms. Send us the lingo you hear at your practice and we'll cover it in a future episode.

2. Don't pretend like you know what you're doing

This is one of the most common things we see, from young vaulters and sometimes from older athletes learning the event: they put on a front like they know what they're talking about. It's cringey, because the coach you're working with actually does know what they're talking about, and they can see right through any BS you're spraying.

The classic version is the athlete who answers every correction with "I know, I know, I know." If you just started, you're a beginner. You should be a sponge, absorbing every bit of information you can get out of that coach.

Here's how I explain it at RISE. Every person pays the same amount of money to train here, but not every person gets the same amount of value. The coaching is the same. The difference is that some kids extract far more value out of a normal membership than others, and the kids who get the most are the ones willing to accept that they don't know what they're doing yet. That's the whole reason they're here. The kids who come in saying "I know what I'm doing" wouldn't need to be here if that were true. The kids who ask "I don't understand, can you explain that again? What do you mean by that?" are the ones who become superstars.

A coach can't give you a ten-minute lecture on every question, but I'd be very surprised to find a coach who isn't chomping at the bit to explain something an athlete sincerely asks about. And here's the secret: the athletes standing silently at the end of the runway usually have the exact same question. That's why I encourage our coaches at RISE to gather everyone up when a question reveals a common misunderstanding, so everybody shares in the answer.

Be humble. Ask as many questions as you can. We can't help you if we don't know what you do and don't understand.

3. Where to stand, and where you'd better not

Nobody explains the flow of a pole vault workout to new athletes, so here it is.

Don't stand right behind the person about to vault. Almost every vaulter takes a step back before they start running, and a lot of them take a big one. We constantly see new kids standing practically in the back of someone's head, and then the vaulter steps back right onto them. Give the person taking their jump seven to ten feet of space.

When you walk back to the line, stay way off the runway. Don't walk a foot from the edge. The vaulter coming toward you is trying to focus, and having someone walk past that close is extremely distracting. Worse, the person walking back is usually carrying their pole vertically, and the vaulter's pole either slams into it or has to wiggle around it, which wrecks their technique and probably their vault. Take a wide angle to the back of the line. Every time.

Don't hang out next to the pit after your vault. When you get off the pit, don't just stand there talking, because somebody is about to vault right into that spot. Move 15 or 20 feet away. It's partly about not distracting the next vaulter, but it's also about you: people miss the pit sometimes, and you don't want to get smashed like a bug. And in the really bad scenarios, poles explode, and you don't want to be standing there hoping a piece doesn't catch you in the back of the head. If you want instruction, walk over to the coach, who will be standing well off to the side of the pit for exactly these reasons.

4. How people actually get hurt, and it's never the vault

Some of the most common injuries in this sport come from things that aren't even pole vaulting. These are simple to avoid.

Don't land on your feet in the pit. This is counterintuitive, because we do have a controlled drill at RISE called the on-the-foot drill (very creative name), where the pole stays straight and athletes intentionally land on their feet. In every other drill, don't. The pit, not the mat, is a very unstable surface. It's built to absorb energy through your back, not your ankles. I've seen so many people land with the pole in their hand and straight knees, and it looks as risky as it is: knees, ankles, all of it. If you do find yourself coming down on your feet, collapse. Drop to your butt or your side and let the pit do its job.

If you have to run through, don't throw your pole forward. First, a definition for the true beginners: a run-through is when you're running, realize the vault isn't going to work, and abort without planting, running through to the pit instead. We never want to encourage run-throughs; they're a bad, toxic habit we try to avoid at all costs. But sometimes they happen, and there's a right way to do it. What we see constantly is athletes throwing the pole forward to get rid of it. That pole can catch in the pit and rock straight back at you. I have two horror stories from my years in this sport that I won't fully tell here, because they're gnarly. One involves an eyeball. The other involves a pec getting torn off. Both were run-through injuries where the pole went forward and came back. So drop your pole to the side, or get it up and over your head so the top end travels away from your body. Never out in front of you, where it can quite literally stab you.

(Side note. There's a piece of drywall behind our pit at RISE, and every thrown pole puts a hole in it. I built a camper van during COVID, a dream of mine, traveled the country in it with my family, and then sold that camper van to put up the drywall at RISE. So my dream is hanging on that wall, and every time a pole goes through it, I die a little inside. Please don't throw the pole.)

Don't jump off the side of the pit. When you land, you're on the high part of the pit, which slopes down to the front buns about a foot off the ground. Walk down that ramp and step off the front. Instead, people constantly jump off the side, which is three to three and a half feet up, and every time I think: that's just not necessary. Walking off the front chews up the mesh on the front of the pit, and I have to keep repairing it, and I still want you to walk off the front, because a rolled ankle from a one-foot step is a bad day and a rolled ankle from a three-foot jump can be a lost season. If I can eliminate injuries that come from things that aren't even the act of pole vaulting, I'm going to.

Now you know

None of this makes you a good pole vaulter, and it's nowhere near a complete list. There's plenty more you'll pick up in your first weeks, and that's the point of showing up and asking questions. But if you understand these few things before you walk in, the first day won't be as scary. I remember being young and nervous about anything unknown. These are the unknowns, handled. Learn the words, be a sponge, stand in the right places, and don't get hurt doing the easy stuff, and honestly, nobody will guess it's your first day.