Vaulting in the Big Leagues

So far this season has been a lot of playing around and figuring it out.  I’ve still had some great jumps and have come into meets very calm and collected.  I’ve been waiting for it to all come together.  Whether it’s finding the right pole or putting practice drills into play at a meet.

And that finally happened.

Too bad it was during warm-ups at the The Charles Torpey Tribute Meet at URI and not the actual competition.

The most significant thing I have been working on this season is breaking in my trail leg after a powerful swing, bringing my knees into my chest (but not to my face!), and just going along for the ride.  I swing pretty long and that just slows everything down.  So after many drills, watching videos, and visualizing what I wanted to do–it finally happened.  I warmed up on a 13′ 135lb pole getting after a bungee and I FLEW.  It felt great.  It happened! I was so excited and Coach Jackson was thrilled too.

At competition time, I passed to 10’10″ and had to wait patiently for the bar to go up.  This gave me a lot of time to focus–but it turns out I was focusing too hard.  My brain was running a thousand miles a minute: What did that feel like again? How did I do that? Remember to really pull hard. You’ve done it before now just do it again.

To cut to the chase, I choked.  No one would even recognize me on that runway.  Slow approach.  Weak plant.  And crashing into the crossbar and never actually finishing the jump.  It’s interesting to go from blowing through that pole just a week before to barely getting on it the next week.  I did clear my opening height of 10’10″ but that was it.  The rest of the jumps were absolutely useless.

It’s been a while since Coach Jackson has had to tell me to, to put it in nicer terms, “Remove my head from my–” Ummm… “opposite end.”  But I couldn’t even process what was going on during the meet to even try to fix it.  I had no idea what was happening.  How could I go from having a huge breakthrough to jumping so poorly?

After the meet, Coach and I both needed our space to cool off (I swear, this is like a marriage in itself–I don’t know how Jenn Suhr does it).  Then we were able to talk to each other without being mean.

“What happened?  What changed between warm ups and competition?  You had the girls out here nervous watching your warmups!” he asked me.

“I just wanted it so bad.  I kept thinking, ‘Do it again! JUST DO IT AGAIN!’ I don’t have much time left.  It’s this week, then BU Valentine, then A-10s.  Then only a few meets in outdoor season. And I’m graduating in the spring.  This is it.”

“But the fact that you did it during warm ups without even thinking shows that it’s in your brain.  It’s in your muscle memory.  It’s more natural now.  You don’t even have to focus on it anymore.  If you focus on it and work too hard on it, you actually end up resisting the jump and not letting it naturally happen.  You have to trust.”

So I’m just going shake off this meet and get ready for the next one.  Preparation for next week isn’t going to be about the drills or the technique that I’ve been working so hard on.  It’s going to be to trust myself and just letting the jumps happen.

It’s here! It’s here! It’s here!!!

Myself and my fellow UMass Minutewomen made our way to the URI Sorlein Invitational yesterday morning–our first meet of the season.  URI’s newly resurfaced track was ready to finally be broken in with a track meet.  We were excited to all be together as a team for the first time.

Due to budgeting, we all hopped into 3 vans and set out for Kingstown, Rhode Island, instead of taking the Peter Pan bus like we have in the past.  We squeezed 13 young women and our gear into our 12 person van.  For some reason, I didn’t technically have a seat–so I had half of my tush on the bench and the other half, well–let’s just say it was a balancing act for the two hour ride there.

Besides hanging off of my seat for all of the ride, there were other things about this trip that felt different.  I wasn’t nervous–AT ALL.  I laughed.  I joked with some teammates. I didn’t listen to music (probably because my iPod broke).  It was nice.  I think this really helped set the tone for the meet ahead.  I felt relaxed and confident in my abilities.  I have plenty of experience.  With this being my final year as a collegiate athlete it just felt time to leave it all on the runway.  Each meet that passes is a step closer to graduation.  It’s time to take all the strength and knowledge I’ve gained these past 4 years and JUMP.

My calm demeanor really helped me in competition.  I started at the very comfortable height at 10’4″ and cleared it my first jump of the season.  Some old habits crept back in on that one jump, but I laughed it off and went full speed ahead.  With a clear head and relaxed body I was able to execute everything we had been working on preseason and intersession.  I felt my arms come back, my chest open, and a powerful swing come through.  For once it actually felt natural instead of constantly thinking over and over.

Yesterday was more of an experiment.  Vaulting over the summer and straight through to the season I had made a lot of progress in my technique.  When placed in a competition setting, anything can happen.  Adrenaline is a crazy thing.  It can make even little girls like me blow through the biggest poles in competition that she can’t even think about touching in practice.  Coach Jackson and I had to play around a bit with different poles and we moved the standards a lot.  I started on a 12′ 150.  Then switched to a 12’6″ 145, a 12’6″ 150, then a 13′ 130–a pole that freaked me out at practice.  I was jumping on that with my standards at 75 and 70.

Each jump felt amazing–but the bar still fell.  I kept looking to Coach Jackson for what I did wrong.  I checked my step each time, but he shook his head and smiled, “Your step is fine, Silvar.”  He told me I was doing great and the other coaches assured me that I was getting some great jumps in.  I guess I was still doing everything I was supposed to.

I was surprised at my own reaction to the crossbar falling each time.  I didn’t get upset like I normally would or let it get to me.  I ended up jumping 10’10, which is 8 inches under my personal best, but I still felt successful because of my attitude during competition and taking some great jumps.  And Coach Jackson was happy with it–and when he’s happy, I’m happy.

“I could have kept you on the 12′ 150 all day and you would have cleared these heights no problem, but this won’t help you later in the season,” he told me after the meet.

So maybe the height wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but I’m very happy with this start to the season and hope to take these lessons with me for future meets.

So when I was first planning this blog post my big piece of news was that I got hurt. Nothing significant but it was my first trip to the trainers EVER, and my first time missing a practice due to injury since freshman year of high school. I subluxed my shoulder. Which basically means I dislocated it, but it’s not as bad as a dislocation because it pops out and right back in on its own. And of course I did it doing a drill that I have done 3 million times with no issues, a straight armed back extension roll (a backward roll to handstand for you non-gymnasts). So I was out for two weeks back in November.

That brings us up to our first meet. Which I felt no where near ready for. But really, nobody ever feels ready for their first meet. I jumped 11’6″. I was not at all happy with it, but I was definitely behind schedule as far as training goes because of my shoulder. I jumped 12′ at our second meet, which I still wasn’t particularly happy with but it was progress.

And that brings us to winter break. Which didn’t really exist for me. Since I was on co-op I had work every weekday up until December 30th. So I was only able to go home on the weekends; I had long weekends for Thanksgiving and Christmas at least. Since I was in Boston the whole time, I trained through the two weeks that the majority of the team was home for. So it was nice to get some extra practice in. The rest of the team got back January 2nd for practice. That week I only had practice to worry about since I was done with work and classes hadn’t started yet.

And now for the big news. Brenner is no longer our coach; he is now coaching at Harvard. We found out that he was leaving on January 2nd and that was his last week with us. It was certainly an emotional week of practice ending with an emotional meet. I only jumped 12′ again, but I’m trying not to worry about heights so early in the season. I don’t blame Brenner at all for leaving. It was a great opportunity for him and he had already turned down several great offers over the years. And I know he felt bad leaving us too. It’s still really tough to deal with though. Brenner got me a huge PR last year and I can’t help but think that I won’t be able to progress as well without him. And on top of that Brenner was not only a great coach, but a great person in general and he will be missed a TON! But everyone has to move on at some point. Our weight coach made a good point: All great coaches are replaceable because they actually taught you something. So our new pv coach is our very own Brian Daly; he has retired as an athlete and is now an assistant coach. I have a lot of confidence in Brian as a coach, it’s just really different and is going to take some getting used to. Being coached by someone that you’ve been a teammate with for so long is just so weird. Anyway, I’m trying to stay positive about all these changes, but it is a lot to deal with.

Welp, it’s only the 2nd day of classes and I already have a ton of work to do. I have 2 clinicals this semester so I’m going to be super busy. So I best get going on the loads of reading I already have. Hope everyone else is having a good indoor season so far!

This semester is finally over!!!!!

After reading close to 3,000 pages in chapter books, writing close to 60 pages of essays, learning well over 300 note card, and begin stressed out of my mind, I’m beyond excited for this semester to be over.  Last year being a business major I had little work to do, but after switching over to being an early education major the work load has tripped in size.  At first I had no clue how to handle all the work which effect my jumping a lot.

The first meet of the season went no where near as well as I was hoping.  After dropping my bagel cream cheese side up  on my lap at breakfast, I knew it was not gong to be a good meet. I almost no height, had a mental break down and just wanted to go back to bed.  So going in to the second meet I was a little hesitant to jump.  I jumped better but was a little disapointed with only making 9’6, but I was happy I had a good day. After the work load finally settled down, my jumping became better.  I finally started to care a lot more and was ready to jump again. Finally with a great practiced under my belt I finally felt good about going on break.

I guess stress does really take a toll on your body if you know it or not.  Sometimes there nothing you can do but just move past it, and keep your head up.  The worst that will happen is have a bad day.

Now all I need to do it have a nice break and get ready to go RENO!!!!!!!

Happy Holidays!

Hi all,

Sorry for the hiatus from the blog. It was due to a big hiatus from the vault. At WPI we have a big project to do our junior year and I just happen to be completing mine off campus on Nantucket (living the life, I know.) I just finished my project this week, but have been stuck on this island the last two months with no track, no runway and more importantly, barely any streetlights for when it gets dark out. This made for some interesting workouts, especially with the gym on the island being $170 per month and me being too broke to pay for it.

Before the project when I was at school, there were also some complications involving my super time consuming prep class for this project and Kyle’s evening grad classes, so I only got over to patriot once during the fall

But here I am, ready to kick off break and my access to the gym tonight. It’s time to get back into weight lifting (ouch.) and get my butt into all around shape for january practices. Lots of core, yoga, sprints and pole drops for me this break.

I get one last vacation (read, cool stuff by day, NEED to work out *note to boyfriend who is taking me on this trip: NEED* by night) before the January season starts and then it’s back into a whirlwind of classes, practices and meets.

I’m not sure how ready I am to step foot back onto the runway. I have not attempted a jump since September and to be quite honest, I’m chalking my first meet up to getting the cobwebs out of my legs.

Anywho, I’ll let everyone know how the season goes, but as for right now, it’s time to get my butt out of bed, finish packing and get off this island and to the local Y!

Jacqui

I figured three posts in one day was a little excessive, and then I realized if I didn’t type this up I would forget what I was going to say (either I’m getting old or finals stress is already wrecking my brain). So I waited three days.

Had my last first indoor meet, and it went really well! PR’d in weight, almost hit the 45 foot mark I randomly chose as my goal, and I didn’t suck at shot put. Now I get to wait until January 21st for my next meet. And I probably won’t throw weight again until after break. And why did we have that meet again? I still haven’t quite figured out the point of the random meet before winter break. But I did well, and I had lots of fun, and I finally saw the Dark Knight. Movies for this trip were surprisingly good. Dark Knight, then the Breakfast Club on the way there.  On the way home Bridesmaids (which I puts my headphones in and ignored) and then How to Train Your Dragon. Last one was by far the best.

Oh right, I’m supposed to be talking about athletics. Well, to celebrate how awesome we were at our meet (every thrower pr’d in something) we got Monday off. And yesterday and today we’re redoing our maxes to see how much stronger we’ve gotten. Yesterday was  a super success. Increased my power clean by 52% (and we’ll just pretend we didn’t bench…). We all wore lifting belts and got to throw the bar down on the ground where it crashed and rattled and made a bunch of noise so pretty much we were super BA. Today we’re squatting and hang snatching. A little nervous about the snatching, but we’ll see how it goes. Oh, and we’re throwing weight after that. Which at first made no sense to me. Why throw 20 pounds around after doing three leg maxes. Turns out throwers are just as big of head cases as vaulters (go figure) and our coach is hoping that if we’re exhausted then we’ll focus on form instead of whining about distance.

I guess that leaves school. The good news: my finals are all due the 16th. The bad news: that’s nine days from now. I have a 15 page research paper on how the mind-body problem manifests itself in Jewish American Immigrant Fiction. Did that sound smart? I hope so. My plan is to sound like I know what I’m talking about and hope my professor doesn’t realize that I actually have no clue. I have two 6-25 page (a bit of a range there) short stories due which means I should probably start redrafting them..and some philosophy paper that hasn’t been assigned so I don’t know how long or what it’s on or anything. But it’s fine. Why would I want to know those things anyways. It’s not like finals count as a significant part of my grade or anything.

And the most important part of my college life: the fun part. 12 of our alumni from last year are coming up for the annual Christmas Party so this weekend is going to be wonderful! There are three that I really want to see that I haven’t seen since graduation so I’m super stoked. Until I remember finals and start panicking.

And now it’s nap time. Because my roommate for some reason was laughing until like 1am, and I had an 8am shift at work. Note to self: pick better hours next semester.

So I was thinking “Yeah I’m gonna be a good little collegiate athlete and write a blog post after the Smith meet this weekend. It’ll look even better since no one’s posted in a while.” Then I come on and Chriss JUST posted.

Anyways yesterday was my “first” collegiate meet. Granted it wasn’t an official meet for us so I wasn’t competing for UMass, so when all’s said and done, it wasn’t any difference between this and every other meet that I did indoor in high school. I guess one difference would be that instead of having Doug or Ingrid or someone to coach me, I just had to rely on my teammates (luckily we had quite the pole vault crew!). I decided that for fun, instead of competing just unattached I would give Patriot some representation out in western Mass since everyone else was in Boston. The meet itself went pretty well. I won it, but I only had two competitors (my teammate Alyssa and som girl from Smith). What was more exciting than winning was realizing that this was the first meet I had competed in completely uninjured in a long time. I only went 9’6, but considering I’d been hitting a solid 9′ for a while, it was good to get back over that mental block. One thing I definitely need to work on is having more patience, but the funniest moment was probably being told to be more patient up top and then proceeding to have my most rushed jump immediately afterwards…oops!

Enough about the Smith meet. You guys are probably wondering how this young padawan is doing in the big scary world of D1 collegiate track, eh? Well, sometimes I feel like my major is too sciency, and other times (especially the beginning of the semester) I feel like my life is devoted to track. All in all it’s going good so far. I mean there’s that little bit of fear that I won’t make roster since the roster hasnt been finalized yet. Preseason training went pretty well, of course I wished I had trained more over the summer to avoid some of the soreness that came with the first few weeks. One big thing that I was glad I had on my side though was the fact that I could actually do most of the drills right off the bat, never have I ever been so happy for the countless hours I spent at indoor Patriot practices. One interesting thing was that at the beginning of the season Coach Jackson told me that he was going to be telling me lots of things that would probably be different than what I was taught at Patriot, on the contrary though, everything that he has stressed to me this fall were mentioned to me within the past year while I was at a Patriot practice. Essentially, I have gotten to pick up where I left off. The worst part has been having to get used to Spirit poles since coming into UMass, the last time I had used one was relays junior year when I went up, stalled out, and crashed back down one the runway scraping up my side. Needless to say, that was a bit of a mental block.

Well, I ought to get back to homework since as Chrissy said finals are quickly approaching. I’m hoping that with this kind of start to the season I can maybe, just maybe PR for the first time since leagues sophomore year.

Oh! Doug, coach Bell from Pioneer Valley Pole Vault says hi.

Merry Christmas! Happy Hanukkah! Happy Kwanzaa! Happy winter solstice! Happy other winter holidays that I can’t remember since I don’t feel like running down to the lobby!

Bless me, PPVCers, for I have sinned.  It has been over a month and a half since my last post….I think.

Well, hello again!

I think it might be better to just separate this post out into categories: Athletics & Academics.

Athletics:  Training has taken an interesting turn this year.  I had been mostly injury-free (besides nasty shin splints) and training really hard.  I’ve done the most sprint-training since my freshman year back when I actually was a sprinter.  It felt really good for a while to be back on the track, but then it took a nasty turn.  I was pounding too hard on my legs.  I was absolutely useless on actual pole vaulting days.  I couldn’t get off the ground.  My runway was off.  Coach Jackson said I was running “gingerly” towards the box–which is not something I take lightly.  I’m proud of my powerful runway, because well…for a while that’s all I really had going for me in pole vaulting (probably still is!).  It looked like workouts were starting to do more harm than good.

So we both decided (okay, Coach decided) that I would pull back on the pounding and focus on keeping legs fresh.  My training is off the track, very little sprinting and more mechanics and technical stuff.  Pole vault practices are the pounding days and he wants me to treat them more like meets when it comes to my legs.  He wants to really see how I can get stuff moving and have quality practices because I’m already in good shape running-wise.  We’d taken the approach of less is more.  It’s always kind of hard to hear that–especially when you’ve been taught your whole life to train hard and push harder to work for what you want.  But you can’t just train hard, you have to train smart.

Then I got into a car accident.

I’ll bet you were starting to think there wasn’t going to be anything crazy in this post.

My mom and I got rear ended at a stop light coming from Red Apple Farm in Phillipston, MA.  A big pickup truck towing a trailer with 4-wheelers on it didn’t stop in time and crashed into us.  No one was seriously hurt, but we had a lot of weight slam into the back of our vehicle (my previous car, my 95 Jeep Grand Cherokee–which surprisingly took the hit like a CHAMP!).  It resulted in some serious soreness and whiplash for the both of us, which meant a week off for me and multiple trips to the chiropractor and athletic trainers.

As stressful as it was to manage the before-Thanksgiving-”get all your work in”, now adding scheduled appointments, and that I was in so much pain I couldn’t even carry a backpack around campus, I was grateful for the week off from track.  My legs recovered nicely and I came back feeling fresh and ready to jump.  I already see an improvement in practice and I’m taking better quality jumps.

We’re still continuing with the less is more routine, so it’ll be interesting to see what Winter training will have in store for me when we go up to 3 sessions a day and start competing.

Academics: This semester flew by!  This week is the last week of classes and finals start next week.  I’m ready for the break.  I believe I’m going through what they describe as “burnout”, at least that was a vocabulary word from one of my education classes for “teachers who have little to no motivation for their work and tend to take it out on their students.”  I hear ya, Teach.  Except I don’t take it out on my students, more like my roommates and family (when I see them). I wander the house grunting, “UGH!” and they hear obscenities coming from my bedroom while I click clack away at yet another paper.  (Thanks, guys! Love you!)

But ’tis the season to be jolly.  Christmas/Winter break is almost here!

Apparently the trend right now is to be talking about preseason training. Technically we’ve moved into our regular season, but since our first meet isn’t until December 5th and our first real meet isn’t until January 21st, regular season is a bit of a stretch. Except, it means we can have coaches at practice. And that means throwing!

It’s amazing how you look forward to something so much and then once you get it, you wonder how you were excited. Or if you were experiencing memory loss. All I wanted was regular season to start so I could throw (even shot put, I must be crazy) and then it started, and I’m back to being super frustrated. But sometimes still excited. There are just so many things that can go wrong and often they do (sounds like pole vault to anyone?). Luckily I have a fantastic teammate that I made a positivity pact with. Yeah, it sounds kind of stupid, but the worst thing you can do is get into your own head. Plus, with one teammate who spends all practice pouting like her puppy died and two people that just started dating and are super giggly/PDA/why would you do that when I’m holding a twenty pound weight in my hands and have pretty good aim, it’s nice to have a close friend. One to push me and remind me to stay positive.

And it’s working. We’re lifting partners, and I’ve started lifting above my weights. We’re going to be maxing out again in December, and I can’t wait to see how much they go up. I’ve never felt this strong or this comfortable in the weight room. It’s amazing what a new coach can do. Plus, I had two really good practices this week. Shot put actually went well and I was consistently hitting 36-38 off a nice easy full spin. And I’m starting to figure out my feet in the weight throw. Which is good. Plus, I started 2-turning there and got a few decent throws (BU, here I come???)

And then this happened.

I mean, it’s fine. I’m fine. Everything’s fine. Completely snapped the bolt so Coach is going to have an interesting time reassembling the weight. Our only competition implement by the way. What I’m actually angry about is that it was going to be a rocking throw. I have never felt so good-fast, powerful, balanced, in control. I hit all my steps, I got a push with my left hand, and then suddenly I was flying out of the ring. And my entire team was laughing at me.

But like I said, it’s fine. I picked up our back-up weight and started 2-turning. I suppose there’s a lesson in there about perseverance and pushing through adversity and getting back on the horse, but I’m too tired to care. And really, I was just angry that it had to break on one of my good throws.

Hello all! I hope everyone had a great summer and start to fall! My summer went well. After my season ended I took a couple weeks off then started running again to get back in shape for preseason. I started off small and increased my mileage each week. By the end of the summer I was doing about 4 miles 3 times a week. Which is quite an accomplishment for me considering I’m about as far from a distance runner as you can get.  In addition to running I did a conditioning circuit twice a week. Nothing too intense but just enough to stay in shape. I went down to Westborough when I could, but it was a bit difficult to get there very often while working. I was working at the place where I did gymnastics. When I did vault I mainly just had fun with it. After vaulting competitively for 6 months it was nice to not stress about vaulting and just have fun; remind myself what a great and fun sport it was, even though it can get extremely frustrating at times.

But anyway, I felt pretty in shape heading into preseason. During preseason we run a timed 5k on Mondays, trying to beat our time each week. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we do a conditioning circuit or prisoner squats. As you can guess by the name, prisoner squats are NOT fun. It’s basically jump squats up a set of bleachers, run down and do the same for the next section of bleachers. I did the math out to over 200 jump squats. The circuits are pretty tough too, but not as bad as the prisoner squats. Wednesdays we usually did just a 25 minute recovery run. And Fridays were captains practice and we’d just go for a slow jog. We also do abs after practice everyday and lift twice a week. So preseason is not very fun. But now we are vaulting again and life is good! Now we have sprint practices on Mondays which are usually pretty miserable. This week we did 400, 300, 200, 400, 300, 200; it was pretty awful. But then Tuesdays we vault! Yay! Wednesday we do drills usually. This week we did a ton of baby hurdle running drills. Thursdays we vault again. And Fridays vary. This week we did pole runs and short sprints.

It felt amazing to get back on the runway this week. Even though we just did 3 steps on Tuesday and got back to 4 on Thursday, it was still great.  We still have a month until our first meet so there’s no rush in getting back to full runs. We’ll just be really working on form for the next couple weeks. But I look forward to seeing some fellow patriots at the first meet!

As far as life outside of track, I’m currently on co-op. Which basically means I’m working full time instead of taking classes. It’s a great way to gain some experience in your field before graduating. I’m working at Children’s Hospital and love it! I’m super busy during the week. Work 7:30-4, then straight to practice. But nights and weekends I have some time to relax since I have no homework. It’s pretty great!

Well that’s it for now! Hope everyone else’s training is going well!