The most advantageous way to mark a pole vault pole is by labeling the actual heights on the pole. In the United States, you’ll likely use feet and inches, while elsewhere it’ll likely be the metric system.
There are numerous advantages to this approach.
If you’re holding 12’ on your pole, and you move up a pole, then you know right where to find 12’. 12’ is always 12’.
From different run lengths, you can quickly understand how more speed helps your grip. You’re not holding 10 ticks down from the top of pole 1 from 6 lefts and 3 ticks down from the top of pole 2 from 7 lefts. You’re holding 13’6” from 6 lefts and 13’9” from 7 lefts. This is a HUGE advantage because you’ll start to very quickly understand where you can hold from a variety of run lengths.
It helps make coaches lives easier. It’s much easier to remember real facts in our head. For example, “my athlete holds 14’ from 6 lefts.” It’s much difficult to remember something abstract like, “my athlete holds two of their hands down from the weight label from 6 lefts.” Extrapolate these thoughts out across vaulters and run lengths and this gets very difficult.
Your bottom arm. For vaulters that don’t mark their poles, they often use their forearm length or a forearm plus a fist to identify where to hold their bottom hand. In the midst of adrenaline, what if they forget to do that and grab the pole where it feels natural? If they’re holding their hands farther spread out than normal, they might hit a big takeoff and struggle to swing. This is much harder to do when you know, my bottom hand is exactly 19 inches from my top hand.
Recruiting: It’s very easy to tell coaches where you hold when you give them exact heights and inches on the poles you’re using.
How to Mark The Pole
Lay the pole flat on the ground and get a tape measure like this one. (this tape measure is also great for laying down on runways)Tape Measure
0 on the tape measure should be at the bottom of the pole. Run the tape measure up the side of the pole tightly. At the top of the pole, the tape measure should match the poles supposed length.
From this point, you can mark the pole like shown in the image above. It’s a good idea to have every 6 inches marked completely around the pole, like shown above to quickly identify key heights. The small dashes in-between represent every inch. It’s a good idea to mark several feet down the pole so athletes can use it for their bottom hand mark as well and for athletes who generally hold lower.
If you prefer to mark your pole using the metric system, I would suggest marking every 15 cm completely around the pole at common pole vault heights like 4m, 4.15m, 4.30m, and so on. From here you could mark every cm or every 5 cm.
Mark your poles with something permanent like sharpies.
Use a white or lightly colored athletic tape so it’s easy to read.
Other Methods of Marking Poles
Mark inches down from the weight label. Therefore if you’re holding 10’ down from the weight label, you’re hand will be at a mark labeled 10.
The disadvantages of this method is that 10 means a different thing on every different length pole.
Move hands and fingers.
Everyone has different size hands and fingers. A 40 year old coach saying move down a hand is a different size than the 13 year old athlete.
This also makes it very hard to understand where you’re holding on different run lengths and get an understanding of your grip heights.
The one advantage to this is there’s no actual marking needed on poles! This method could be fine for a short run pole like 3 lefts where you consistently hold within a few inches of the weight label.
Thank you for reading Pole Vault. This post is public so feel free to share it.