Facility

It's near impossible to beat indoor training for the pole vault, especially in the state of Vermont. Only a 70 degree sunny day with a light tail wind beats indoor training. We all know how often that happens in Vermont. Our goal is to train indoors year-round as much as possible. This way we have no issues with weather dictating our workouts.

UVM offers the club use of a competition pit and standards made by UCS, the best in the industry. We use a 100' rollout rubber runway to protect there indoor surface. Track spikes are ALLOWED so bring them. Since we rent 2 basketball courts worth of space there's plenty of room for drills away from the pit.

 

 

The club has two pits, one competition and one sand. The competition pit has standards that adjust as low as 5 1/2 feet and a 150' runway marked at every inch for quickly adjusting and measuring approach run lengths.

The sand pit is the perfect place for perfecting take-offs. Instead of a plant box, you plant the pole in the sand. This allows a 3+ foot window of error for approach run steps to be off while still being able to execute a great take-off. It takes awhile to learn correct approach run technique (high knees, staying erect, smooth acceleration, etc...). The snad pit lets you focus on take-off technique without worrying about your steps being on.

The club also has a 4' high platform for learning how to swing and invert. Standing on the platform with the pole in the plant box, the athlete executes a one step take-off into the pit. At this point you can can more easily initiate a swing to inversion. The platform takes the whole approach run and most of the take-off out of the picture so you can focus more on the swing and inversion.