New Years Eve Jump Session

Today I went in for a jump session from 12 steps at UNI with Jacob, and ended up having a pretty good day. I have been having some confidence issues from the longer approaches finishing jumps on the right poles, and finally had a few good jumps today. My best jump was a blowthrough on a 5m 14.5, but instead I'll post the next jump which was a clearance at a 5.30m bungee on a 5m 14.0. I mostly missed this jump, but I'm hitting the downswing hard, getting a hold of the pole through the bottom and I'm (sort of) committing to the jump even on a decently big pole from 12 steps. After this I took some decent shots at a 5.40m crossbar on the 14.0, but realistically I had taken too many jumps and was out of legs from there.

Happy Holidays and the Future

Well I'm back in San Diego for a few days, getting some solid training in (though over the course of 4 days I have trained at 3 different outdoor tracks), and can't complain about the weather and being able to run longer than 60m on a straightaway. There isn't a whole lot to do around here during the day, so we spend a lot of time relaxing, stretching, hydrating, and preparing for the day's workout. It's a pretty solid environment for training for sure.

In a few days I'm going to head back to the midwest, but I'm heading to Cedar Falls, IA to train with my good buddy Jacob Pauli for a week or so. I usually really enjoy my time in Iowa, and am looking forward to some quality training with Jacob. I'm also getting some brand new UCS 4.90m poles (14.9 and 14.2) shipped straight to Cedar Falls next week so we can hit some serious mid-approach jumps. I can't wait.

At the moment, I'm planning on opening my season with a rust-buster on January 8th at home, getting another little meet in two weeks later at home, and then hitting my real season opener at the Reno Vault Summit at the end of the month. I have to give thanks for Steve Chappell and the boys from UCS for being beyond cool to me and inviting me to the summit. The guys at UCS are ridiculously supportive of my dream, and I'm so lucky to have them as friends and contacts. I recently shot a little video for them answering a few questions about my training leading up to the summit, and I hope you guys can check it out and enjoy it soon on their website for the summit.

Anyway, that's pretty much it for me for now, but this blog looks boring so I'll post a video from last week of myself jumping a PR for 3 bounds with a 2 step walk-in.

Stay tuned!

Jeff

Good Training and A Few Vids

Well training has been going well. I just finished a hard three-week cycle, and am going into a much needed rest week, where I take the volume down by about 50% for a week and give myself a chance to recover and enjoy the holidays! Here's a video from my last jump session from 8 steps on a 4.60m 13.0. I've been really working hard on hitting an elastic position through the bottom and letting that help me get out of the "window" quicker and swing long and fast. Things are starting to look good from here, and I ended up having a few good jumps on this day during my first session from 18 steps. Anyway, here's the 8 step jump:

The next video is from today's lift session. I wanted to work up to a heavy double in the power snatch from the low blocks (which is a tough position for me). I ended up working up to 90kg (about 200lb), and even that felt pretty light and I caught it nice and high on both reps. Last year at this time I was diving into the hole to catch 95kg for a single, and this year I feel like I am way ahead of that. Here's the video:

Anyway I'm headed to San Diego this evening for the holidays, but I should be getting in some good training out there, and I'll be sure to update! Happy holidays!

Jeff

6 Step PR

Well I dont know why it took me so long to post this, but I jumped a 6 step (3 left) PR last saturday. My previous PR was 4.65m from outdoors last year just after the USA championship on a bungee, and last saturday I made 4.70m and 4.75m crossbars during my session. Here's the video of my 4.75m jump. There's also a link to a more clear version on the right in my "Run PR" list.

The pole was a 15' 13.6, which is a 195 (I think), and the grip was somewhere around 14'3'' or so. I was definitely happy about the jump, and the flow through the bottom. In a perfect world I would be on a bit softer pole with the standards back at 80, and would come around the pole better up top, but the 13.6 is the softest 15' pole that I have, so I have to make it work! Anyway, maybe soon I will be able to roll that pole a little better and be able to catch the ride better up top.

Other than that, training is going great. We're doing some heavy running on the track right now, lots of heavy sled pulls and sled pushes and a good amount of bounding. Today I'm going to try going back to 12 steps on the runway. Lets hope for the best.

New Videos

Today I'm just going to bombard you with videos from this week.

First, my strength coach Wil Fleming putting up a big 140kg clean from the blocks and making it move as fast as 60kg. I guess thats how he once cleaned 182kg. This one's for you, Adam Hamilton (Wil's nemesis hammer thrower).

Next is my final clean from the same day. I was doing cluster cleans, so 1 clean every 45 seconds. This was my third single on 45 second intervals at 110kg and Wil got creative with the video.

And this last one was my response to Wil's dare to me today that I couldn't push a 160lb sled down and back on the turf in less than 20 seconds. This one was tough and left me laying on the ground for about 3 minutes. I guess it's necessary to add that before this I pushed a 135lb sled for 10 rounds of 6 seconds with 40 seconds rest, so I was a bit thrashed already.

We have been having tons of fun at Force lately, and have been getting in some great workouts. Everything is transferring right over to the track and I'm feeling great running my intervals. Super happy with it right now! Big ups!

Jeff

Bounding, 150s, Olympic lifting and Jumping!

Well the last week has been jam packed with the items from the title of this blog. I've jumped a few times from 3 and 4 lefts now, working on hitting an elastic position at takeoff and swinging long(er) to the top. I'm still having a hard time catching the ride on the right hip and resisting the urge to pull up the bend, but I'm hitting much better takeoffs and the jump is flowing way nicer than ever before already! We've also been doing some pretty good workouts on the track, like 150m repeats on the track in the 18-19 second range. I am feeling really good during those workouts, feeling like I have a better ability this year to run fast repeats and not break down. I can't stress how much of this I believe is due to an increased emphasis on the olympic lifts in the weight room. This year I have probably tripled the total amount of olympic lifting per weight workout, and I'm feeling good! Here's a little video from today of me hitting a pretty decent position at takeoff (for me) and then missing the most of the rest of the jump (not too concerned about that just yet). The run is 4 lefts from 60 feet, the takeoff is out around 12' and the pole is small (as you can tell) - 4.60m 13.6. Enjoy!

Snatch PR

Well, it was probably the ugliest PR lift I've ever had, but I PR'ed in the snatch today, and hit a HUGE milestone goal in my training. The idea was to work up to a heavy single in the snatch from the hang, and go for a PR if I felt good. I started with a few triples at 60 and 70, then moved to a double (power snatch, snatch) at 80kg, and a single at 85kg. Then I skipped to 95kg, which was my previous PR, and made it on the first attempt with no issue whatsoever. It felt like a great lift, so we moved to 100kg. At 100kg I honestly didn't do much right at all. I collapsed at the direction switch, and my knees immediately came forward a little. I pulled hard and long through the second pull anyway, but ended up way behind the bar. I decided to dive under anyway, and ended up catching, stabilizing, and standing up with it. All in all its pretty amazing how ugly the lift was, but I caught it and stood up with it, so a PR is a PR!

This year, my overall goals in the clean and snatch were to make 120kg in the clean and 100kg in the snatch by the end of the year. I somewhat expected this to end up happening between indoor and outdoor season, but I have already made both of those goals before I have even really started jumping at all. I can't give enough credit to Wil Fleming at Force Fitness and Performance, and I have to also thank Ryan Ketchum down there who coached me through my PR session today and has instilled a lot of confidence in me throughout my training. I feel more powerful and explosive right now than ever before, and it's thanks to the work I have been doing at Force.

Well another thing this week that's pretty exciting is that we're gonna start getting on a regular jumping schedule. We'll be jumping mondays and thursdays and I'll start with some 2 and 3 left stuff this week and work back to 6 and 7 by December. Should be fun.

Until next time,

Jeff

First PR of the year!

Well today I had my first real PR of the year. Hopefully there will be some more, but for now I figure I might as well document the first one! Well, really there were two! Today we wanted to hit a PR in the clean, and we ended up succeeding twice. The idea was to do some triples, a moderately heavy double and then hit singles. My PR in the clean leading up to today was 112.5kg. Truth be told I cleaned 110kg sometime during my Sophomore year of college and have always been upset that I haven't cleaned more. My 112.5kg PR came from about a year and a half ago at IU, and since I know I'm stronger now than I have been before, I pretty much knew a PR was going down today. Well I did my double at 100kg and then moved to singles at 105kg and 110kg. I then moved to 115kg, which was a new PR, and made it way easier than I had expected. We looked at the video and debated skipping to 125kg because 115kg looked so fast, but decided to stick to the plan of trying to make 120kg. And it's a good thing we did. I ended up missing three times at 120kg from the floor, leaving me pretty tired. I told Wil I wanted one more try at it, and he was stoked that I still wanted to go for it. On my fourth attempt I finally made it, and it was pretty sweet. I was feeling pretty happy about it, since all of our training focuses really heavily on the olympic lifting and a PR there means that the work that we have been putting in is showing results.

Here is a link to the video, which includes my makes at 110kg, 115kg and 120kg:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3olJ6Jd_v58

Stay tuned!

Jeff

Bloomington Training Rolls On

Hey all,

So to give an update, not a whole lot has changed since the last time I posted. I have been training hard 6 days a week keeping the focus on power and speed development. I feel like I have made some huge gains and am more explosive and powerful on the track and in the weight room every week.

Today, for example, I went into the weight room for a nice snatch day with 2x3, 2x2 and 2x1. My triples were 70 and 75, my doubles were both at 80 and my singles were 85 and 92. Those are some pretty solid numbers for me in training, especially since I was coming straight off of the track where I had run 10x200m. Next week I get to go for a max in the clean and the week after that I max in the snatch. Pretty exciting stuff!

My track workouts have also been really good lately, and I have sticking to the plan of acceleration development backed by speed development and speed endurance. I have been doing a lot of acceleration ladders (sets of 10m, 20m 30m), hills, sled pulls, pole runs, elastic runs and speed endurance runs (120m-200m repeats), and I am feeling really good on the track right now.

I have been sticking to the straight pole drills once a week, and have started doing 6-8 fiberglass vaults at the end of each straight pole session from 2 lefts on tiny poles. The focus is the exact same thing as the straight pole work, and things have been going pretty well with it. Here's a video of me from 2 lefts on a small 15' pole from last week.

Tomorrow is my drills/jump/acceleration dev day, and I might just move to 3 lefts and see if I can get on some sort of decent pole from there. If so, I'll post video!

Until next time, Thanks for following!

Jeff

San Diego/The Real Work Begins

I just got finished with almost 2 weeks of really awesome training in San Diego. I got the opportunity to train at the Olympic Training Center with my good friend Yoo Kim while I was out there, which was absolutely amazing. I learned a lot training with him. I spent some time doing some really short run jumping in flats and worked a lot with him on my running, plant motion and takeoff. We also did a bunch of work off of the runway on my running form. We were working on trying to keep my hips up and run tall and elastically by finicking a little bit with my run timing and foot strike. All in all I was working on a lot of new ideas, but felt like I picked up a lot of cues and am already working toward getting better in those areas. I also did some really solid workouts in the weight room, including 6x2 in the snatch at 75kg, 4x5 in the clean at 90kg and some good running workouts like 2x4x120m at 85% with Recovery of 2' and 4'. Of course I got to spend a bunch of quality time with my family, but I was glad it also ended up being a really good training trip.

On Thursday I got back to Bloomington and went to Force on Friday to test in the clean. My PR in the clean is 112.5kg, which is fairly low, and I set a year goal of cleaning 120kg. First we started with some heavy doubles from the blocks, and I made it all the way up to 105kg for 2 without missing at all. We moved to singles off of the floor at that point and I easily made 90kg, 100kg and 110kg. I was pretty happy with 110kg and how easy it felt considering I haven't yet done a ton of heavy cleaning. I felt so good at 110kg we decided to skip straight to 120kg, and I barely missed. I pulled it high and racked it, but was barely forward and missed it. I was super happy with that effort though, and will hopefully be able to make that weight in a few weeks when we test again.

Now onto the real deal. While all of my posts so far have been fine and dandy, tomorrow is when the real work begins. Tomorrow is the first day that my coach, Jake Wiseman and I will meet for training at the track. From this point forward until January I will be going to the track 6 days per week with Coach Wiseman and lifting 3-4 times per week with Wil Fleming. This is when the real work begins, and we are going to focus hard on building raw blow and power on the track just like we are in the weight room. Needless to say, I'm excited. Check back soon!

Jeff

Oakland and San Diego (... so far)

Well I flew out on Friday to Oakland to visit my brother and ended up having some great times and some really fun workouts. On Friday I went to visit his school (he teaches P.E., coaches Track and XC and is the Men's Athletic Director) and do some warmup drills and strides with his XC team. They seemed to enjoy it and so did I.

After that we went straight to King's Gym in East Oakland to do some boxing. I'd never boxed before, but Paul has been going for about three months and he hooked me up with his trainer for the day. We warmed up with 3 sets of 3 minute of jump roping, then did some basic learning stuff and then I worked the punching bag for a while before going to work the gloves with the trainer. I probably did three or four sets of 2-3 minutes on the gloves and was absolutely beat. After that we worked the heavy bag some more, and I went home exhausted. It was super fun.

The next day we got up early and went to a cross country race that my brother was running. He ran well and we had a good time people watching and talking about how funny those cross country races are. Everyone takes it super seriously, which is really cool at times and pretty funny at times. Anyway, after that we hung out for a while and then he took me to a place called the Great Western Power Company, which is actually a cross-fit gym and a rock climbing gym all rolled into one. I got a good workout in with some snatch complexes, medball, core and KB swings, and we went home. That evening we went out in Berkeley with my friends Mike Morrisson and his girlfriend Herdis and had a great time.

On Sunday I flew into San Diego, where I will be training for the next two weeks. Today (Monday) was a super fun day, as I got to do some stand-up paddleboarding for the first time ever! I've really been itching to try it, and my step-dad Jim got a board and a paddle recently and let me try it out. Here I am in beautiful San Diego Bay on my first paddleboard trip:

Anyway, Jim and my Mom hopped in some kayaks and we ended up paddling around the bay about two and a half miles. Afterward, Jim jumped on the paddleboard and showed me what I should really look like paddling that thing around. I hope I'm that smooth when I'm 60! Here he is trimming the bay:

Anyway, this is a pole vault blog so I guess I should get back to that. Later in the day I went over to UCSD, a weight room I love to train at, and got in a really solid monday workout with some good hang cleans, plyos overhead pressing and split squatting. Tomorrow I'm going to head out to the Olympic Training Center to train with my friend Yoo Kim. We're going to have a little jump session out there hopefully, which will be my first real jumping of the year. I'm not planning on doing much, but I'm excited to bend a pole a few times late in the session after some more straight pole work. Hope for the best! Until next time...

Jeff

Maxes and Travels

So this week was max week in the weight room. On monday I went in hyped and ready to max in the snatch, only to have my shoulder flare up during the warmup to the point where I just went home and went for a jog. I came back in Tuesday and did my Monday workout minus the max, because my shoulder was still bugging me. I went in Wednesday ready to max in the snatch and the front squat, and was able to get both in. I warmed up and started my snatch progression. I started with some 5 rep sets at 40, 50 and 60 kg. I then hit triples at 70 and 75kg pretty easily, and moved up to make 80kg for 3 from a hang. I was real happy about that one, and you can watch it here. I moved to the squat rack, where we were going for a 5 rep max in the front squat. I have never been much of a squatter (at all), but was able to do some warmup sets at 50 60 and 70 before moving to 85kg for an easy 5. I probably could have gone for 6-8 at that weight or gone up to 90 or 95 for a true 5 rep max, but we decided to cut it off there where I was fairly comfortable but it felt heavy. I was really happy with my maxes, since both of them were probably rep PRs, and then I moved on to do 12 sets of 10 second weighted vest vertical jumps with 40 seconds rest and was done for the day!

The rest of the week has been interesting. After my weight session Wednesday, I jumped in the car and headed to Manhattan, Kansas (9 hrs) to pick up my friend John Jefferson, whose car had completely broken down in Colby, KS. His friend Christian Smith was nice enough to give him a ride to Manhattan, and I met them there, had a snack, drank some of Christian's coffee, and headed back to Bloomington. All-in-all it was a 20 hour trip through the night, and I took a 4 hour nap today followed by my jog and now I'm spent.

Tomorrow I get on a plane and head to Oakland to see my brother for a weekend before heading down to San Diego for about 10 days to hang out with my parents and hopefully do a little bit of training at the Olympic Training Center with my friend Yoo Suk Kim. Should be good!

Jeff

Progress etc.

Well this week was a down week in the weight room but I did manage to get in a couple good workouts in there and otherwise. I have been sticking to doing some straight pole work a few times per week so that I can learn some new concepts there (getting the top hand moving up off of the ground, jumping through the center of the pole with elastic arms and pushing through the penultimate step to name a few) during the fall and transfer it to my fiberglass vaulting in the winter more easily. This week I managed to do a stay behind drill with a grip of 12'10", which is basically a 6 step or 3 left straight pole drill with no swing-up. The highest I've ever really been able to hold before and swing up is about 12'3", so hopefully if it gets even a little bit better and I can start to swing up on it, I will be ready to approach some serious 6 step straight pole PRs. My goal this year was to be able to swing up with 13' of grip comfortably, so I'm right where I need to be there, and it has been 100% a result of working on a number of technical changes on the runway and at takeoff.

Anyway, this week is going to be pretty fun. Tomorrow I get to put up my first max of the year, which is going to be a 3 rep max in the hang snatch. I'm looking for something around 70kg, and 75kg would be absolutely awesome. On Wednesday we go for an 8 rep max in the front squat, which I'm less excited about haha. I'm not much of a squatter but while we're all friends here I can tell you that something around 80kg would be pretty darn good for me at this point. I operate only in kg, so hopefully I'm not confusing you too much! Thats all for now.

Jeff

Change of Plans?

I had a chat today with one of my good friends, Aarik Wilson. Aarik is hands down the best triple jumper in the USA and quite possibly the world... when he's healthy. In 2007 he was beating the best of the best in europe regularly, and posted something like 20 out of the top 25 results of the year in the US in the triple jump, and also has long jumped over 8m!

Anyway, he has suggested to me that I should take indoor a little more seriously this year, and try to get after it a little bit and even get over to Europe. That of course sounds great to me, since I'm itching to get over there and compete ASAP! He explained to me that I could get fired up for indoor, compete hard, get my USA mark and some good experience in Europe, and then not have to worry about jumping outdoors until June. I think it sounds like a good plan, and Jake is totally behind it, so I'll have to talk to Wil, my strength coach, and formulate a plan to make it work. We'll see!

In other news, I have been training hard in the weight room and am feeling pretty strong down there! This week is going to be pretty tough, and then next week we back down the volume and hit a couple maxes for reps to get an idea where I am. Stay tuned!

Jeff

First Few Weeks of Training

Well training is pretty well underway at this point, with the whole focus being on my lifting and a little bit of pole drills for the time being. This past week I started my full time lifting program at Force, and really enjoyed the workouts. Monday we do some explosive work with olympic lifting and plyos, Wednesday we focus on tempo lifts with things like tempo frontsquats at 2 seconds down, 2 seconds up, no rest between reps (hard!!), and Friday we finished up with a few complexes and some biking. I filled in the rest of the days this week with things like stationary biking, pole drills (sand walkovers, 1 step and 2 step sand takeoffs, 4 step and 6 step straight vaults into the pit), and some light running (strides etc.). So far I'm feeling good and staying confident. Sorry this post was a little boring, but things wont really get dialed up until about the middle of October, so for now I just have to keep grinding out these base weeks.

Jeff

Beginning of Fall 2010 Training

Well we have officially begun the Fall 2010 training. So far I am just lifting at Force Fitness and Performance in town with my new strength trainer, Wil Fleming. This week we are doing a three-day reintroduction to lifting, with a focus on a few tough complexes. Monday's workout was four sets of a snatch complex. You can watch that video HERE! Wednesday was a little different, as we hit some stability work first on TRX bands, then did some plyos to keep the nervous system firing, and moved to 3 sets of a tough little kettlebell complex (each set was about 3.5 minutes), and finished up with 3 sets of a medball throw complex. I am laying on my couch in my apartment right now quite sore, but excited to hit another one tomorrow. Next week I will start doing some running and biking to begin my GPP (general physical prep) phase, and we will move to my first cycle of lifting.

Chat with David Butler

Last night I was fortunate enough to have a long talk with David Butler, the vault coach from Rice Unviersity. He coached Jason Colwick, a 5.72m jumper who I jumped against in college for several years, and I have always been curious about his vault theory. He had some really different ideas and was even prepared after watching my video to talk with me extensively about how those ideas apply specifically to my jump. I know that to make those changes is going to take some serious work, but I'm interested to try them from short run and during my straight pole work. Beyond that, he suggested some interesting flexibility programs that I'm going to look into starting next week in order to improve my run mechanics and power through my hips. All-in-all he was confident that I would PR quickly if I began making these changes as soon as possible, and even suggested a trip to Houston for a weekend in October for a few training/vaulting sessions so he could show me personally what he was talking about. Anyway, all in all it was a great discussion, and I'm super excited about the things he was talking about!

Jeff

Starting the 2011 Season

I started this blog to document my journey in the world of professional pole vaulting. I figured there's no real better way to do that than to start at ground zero. I just finished my 2010 season, graduated from IU, and began my professional career with Team Indiana Elite/Brooks. The real challenge lies ahead of me in 2011. I will be staying in Bloomington, IN to train with my coach, Jake Wiseman and compete for Brooks and T.I.E. I have changed strength coaches, and am getting geared up to begin working with Wil Fleming, an amazing strength trainer and part-owner of Force Fitness and Performance. We already have a plan in place to get me ready to compete only a few times indoors this year, with a focus on the May-September season. Right now I'm sitting around my apartment on IU's campus, mostly enjoying my time off but itching to get back to work. My first day of lifting with Wil is going to be on August 30th. I won't begin any real running workouts until late October, but will be doing strides a few times a week and some 2-3 left vault work every few weeks to keep the muscle memory going. Anyway, I'm excited about the progress that is yet to come, and to prove it I'm going to post a photo of the run goal board that I made for myself yesterday. Keep in mind these are my ultimate 2011 goals, and while some seem lofty, I hope I'm not the only one that thinks they are also realistic! The columns that I used are approach distance in total steps, current run PR, which pole and grip I jumped that PR on, my goal PR from that approach, and which pole and grip I believe I can jump that bar on. You can also see video of all of those PR's besides my 2 left PR on the link bar on the right! Enjoy!

Anyway, for those of you that already saw that on my twitter or facebook, sorry for the repeat, but I hope that gives you an idea of what the goals are for the year! Anything can happen! Anyway, I hope to blog regularly in the future about my training and competing, and I hope people will follow along on my journey!

Jeff