What do your vault practices look like? For many athletes, pole vault practice is a few days per week either at their high school and pole vault club. During my senior year of high school, post warm-ups I would normally take a couple jumps from 3 before moving back to my long run for whatever that day was. Most of the time it was my 5 or 7 step.

In practice, my 3 step was holding just about the tippy top of a 14’ 180lb, 5 step was using a 15’7” 180lb and my 7 step was a 16’ 185lb. Due to the number of vaulters we often leaned towards using bungees rather than bars. It’s easy to throw a bungee up at 16’ or 17’ and another one closer to 10-12’ so everyone has something that they can use.

However, this can impact bar awareness. Getting every inch of vertical height to get your feet over a bungee doesn’t always equal the best hip height for bar clearances. It can even lead to sloppy top ends. I believe this is why we see more vaulters getting in trouble with their pole after bar clearances.

So how does Mondo Duplantis practice? Bars. Bars. Bars.

Here’s a video from FloTrack on Youtube. The video details Mondo’s typical 5 left practice session. Every jump was at a bar - and in the end, he ended up clearing 17’10” from 5 lefts. At one point in the video Mondo even calls out bungees and how they’re “never something we’ve really done.”

Earlier this week, Mondo went viral around the pole vault company when several accounts started quickly sharing this practice vault of Mondo clearing 6.15m

Why is this practice jump so special? The bar in the video above was the world record for two decades and here is Mondo putting great hip height on it in practice.

It was a rainy few days in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at Franklin Field. But nonetheless the vaulters showed out! Wyatt Stewart of Madison Central in Kentucky broke the Penn Relays high school record with a clearance of 5.08 meters or 16’-8”. The scorecard shows just how tricky Franklin Field can be though. Wyatt cleared his opening bar on his third attempt and second bar on his second attempt. The competition also saw 5 men no height at an opening bar of 14’2”. Believe it or not, in 2014, the wind was so mixed that not a single vaulter cleared higher than 14’9.5” which was only just above the second bar in this meet. All participants who cleared a bar can be found below. Nathan Lutz cleared a lifetime PR to take home the final podium spot.

On the girls side, phenom Veronica Vacca put together another great day for another big meet win. Not even an upperclassmen yet, Veronica is showing college coaches that when it comes to performing on the biggest stages, she’s got it handled. Veronica was clean through 5 heights to take the win with a final clearance of 12’-11”.

In the girls competition, 7 vaulters no heighted. In high school competitions, most vault competitions have a starting height no higher than 9’ for boys and 7’ for girls. Championship meets may start slightly higher, and in big states like Texas and California, the starting heights could be much higher.

In non-championship meets, should opening heights be weather dependent? In the boys competition it took all but three heights to eliminate all but the final three vaulters. Would the competition have been better off with a 13’8” opening height?

On the men’s leaderboard, no surprise that Sondre is at the top with a 5.90m jump, closely followed by Branson Ellis and Zach Bradford. It’s worth noting that the top junior Kyle Rademeyer of South Alabama has a PR of 19’1”.

On the women’s leaderboard, Nastassja Campbell is leading with 4.55m closely followed by Chloe Timberg and Olivia Leuking. Check out the women’s leaderboard! Everyone after Nastassja has at least one more year below. The Moll sisters are going to come into some intense competition right around the high 14’ marks.

Well we already saw Mondo is ready to smash world records, so how are the rest of the pros looking? Well many athletes around the world are getting ready for the first big Diamond League meet of the year in Doha. Eliza McCartney still leads the women’s leaderboard with a top vault of 4.75m while Sondre’s 5.90m is the top men’s vault so far in outdoor.

A week of training with Katie Moon

Chris Nilsen on some monster poles from short run