The Sand

So yesterday's vault practice wasn't the best. To recover from it a little we went back to the basics in the sand. All I did was 6 step jumps into the sand for over an hour. It was probably about 40 or 50 jumps, but by the end I really felt like I was making progress. The first few things we focused on were moving my hands earlier (starting the plant earlier), then speeding up the last 3 steps, and then making sure I could see both arms in front of me before I jumped. I felt like I could master all of those without too much difficulty. Then we moved on to trying to have a free takeoff, basically jump before my pole hits the sand. It's not a difficult concept. And I have had coaches in the past that have talked to me about it, but it has never been a priority so I have gotten very used to feeling the resistance on the pole before I jump. It's a lot more comfortable. So even though I don't have a long history in pole vault, this is going to be one change that will be difficult to make. Call it a bad habit if you want. But I'll be able to make it happen. From 2 steps I can do it almost all the time, from 6 it wasn't so consistent. Towards the end I figured out how to change the plant and jump to make it happen, but it's still not very consistent.
After the sand we moved to the track and did some easy pole runs with a plant. Very simple, there was just a shoe on the track that gave me a reference of where to start the plant. I was amazed to find out that even when I'm jogging and even though there was no box I still planted late. The problem is that I started to think about planting when I got to the shoe, which meant that it actually started 2 or 3 steps later. I feel like this was a HUGE revelation because I do the exact same thing on the runway. And there is an easy fix, start thinking about the plant earlier. Simple, right? The kicker is that when I try it out on Thursday it's going to feel really uncomfortable and really wrong but I've just got to turn off my brain and make it happen. :)