Pole Vault Log Book

Reason 7️⃣ of 8 from Coach Jake Winder at on WHY YOU SHOULD KEEP A POLE VAULTING JOURNAL…
“7. REFLECTION. One of my favorite things to do is look back on training journals of the past and reflect on what accomplishments came from each journal. I like to look back at them and see what new training techniques I was trying out and if those techniques produced good results or if they were complete BS. At the end of every season, I would take my journal and scour it for three big take aways that I would apply to my next season. This is actually the premise for the fun and interesting question that I always ask our guests on the One More Jump Podcast, which is, “If you could only pick three exercises that you could use exclusively for the rest of your pole vaulting career what would they be?”. This question forces you to really cut through the BS exercises you are wasting your time with and get to the meat and potatoes of what is actually moving the needle for you. I remember one year, I was experimenting with banded barbell squats and felt incredibly explosive and had a personal best that year, so that was carried into the next year. Another year I looked back into my journal and saw that I was spending over an hour warming up, because I was doing every warm up exercise known to man. It was really eating into my energy for the actual workout and making me perform worse, so that got trimmed down the next year. Year after year, these refinements would add solid layers of knowledge to what worked for me and helped me improve. I think reflecting and drawing conclusions from past training journals is the most efficient way for someone to improve.” (link to the full blog post in bio)

Reason 5️⃣ of 8 from Coach Jake Winder at on WHY YOU SHOULD KEEP A POLE VAULTING JOURNAL…
“5. AM I HITTING A WALL OR AM I JUST BEING IMPATIENT?
If a vaulter is in the game for long enough, they will hit the proverbial “wall”. When athletes come to me and say they are getting worse, and you can sense that they may be hitting a wall, nine times out of ten this “wall” that they are hitting is just an emotional one and is not based on their performance data. If you are able to show them their improvement over time, their confidence can change in an instant. As a vaulter, it is very difficult to see improvement day to day. This is because, a lot of times improvement in the pole vault is in small, sometimes undetectable, increments. Also, vaulters are very good at forgetting the times that they made significant improvements like having a foot PR or getting on the biggest pole of their life. If a vaulter keeps a journal of their workouts/meets, a coach has the ability to tell them to grab their journal and flip to four months ago. More often than not, their numbers have improved. Then tell them to flip back eight months and the improvements are even more clear. Tell them to go back a year, and they are most likely going to have a hard time convincing themselves that they have not improved. If you are using the Pole Vault Log Book, you can use the Performance Summary Chart to easily reference this. If you don’t keep a journal, the ability to reference real change is not available to use during the difficult times. If you have ever found yourself in that situation or are a coach that deals with this a lot, you need to inject some quantifiable data into your pole vaulting journey.” (link to the full blog post in bio)