Ive had the chance to get into polevaulting in highschool sports(as well as wrestling). ive been very succesful as a freshmen in bolth of these sports
while im in either of these sports, i dont have time to unicycle much. but somehow after 3 months without unicycling i end up imrpoving.
I improved alot after polevaulting. i think the core strength and angles polevaulters must learn are similar to unicycling.
i thought this would start a good topic.
-Riley
What a great combination! I was a pole vaulter and a successful wrestler in H.S. too. Too bad I only started riding unicycle in my mid-thirties. I took to this new discipline like a fish to water though. It would be my initial hypothesis that people with an aptitude for centeredness and an instinctive knowledge of where to throw their weight, etc. would gravitate toward these three sports. They do have some things in common despite their huge apparent differences.
My friend unicycles and pole vaults…he set the school record, I think, 14’0" if I remember right.
yeah. best combo eva.
my theory: I think that wrestling, unicycling, and polevaulting both have there own seperate types of balance. when combined, they make a “superbalance”. everything ive done since i learned how to unicycle i have exceled in.
james- last year i set the freshman record of 13’.
i killed it lol. the old record was 11’
-Riley
I’ll chime in as a wrestler + mid30’s unicyclist. I also pole vaulted for 1 year, but was never very good (was too small to bend the pole). No doubt core strength and good balance would help for all these.
Ro
Darn… I was hoping someone was riding like crazy down the runway, and then valuting off their uni over a bar.
Or even “cheating” by riding a big giraffe, and then hopping on to a pole and flying over a bar…
Anyone dare to try?
-Keld
Hey Ro - we match. Just into my 2nd year of pole vaulting, I had a nasty accident which resulted in a trip from the p.v. pit to the emergency room. All I remember from that stretch was planting my pole, being loaded into the ambulance and then waking up in a white room.
It was disappointing not to be a vaulter again after that incident. I was only a 12’ 6"er but even vaulting the bar at that modest height was a super feeling.
Cheers!
Also, the pole vaulters at my school made the greatest pole vaulting T-shirts of all time:
When they wore 'em to school, the principal made them turn them inside out.
James, I want to do pole vaulting this year just so I can make those shirts.
hahaha
nice one.
i see they have got the bruses on the inside of there are from the pole. i ahte that. it gets annoying.
-Riley
edit:james, everything is green where you live. in phoenix,Arizona everything is deserty… and brown.
Back a few years ago I did pole vaulting in my senior year in high school. I was really starting to get the timing and pole plant down.
So, I was at an away meet. I started my run, planted the pole and just near the top I found out that I didn’t have enough speed. Normally when this happens, you just slide down the pole like a fire fighter. For whatever reason, I didn’t let go of the pole, it flexed out and sprung back with great force and hit me square in the right testicle. I was in pain for the next several hours and black and blue for about a week. Needless to say, I wasn’t very good at pole vaulting from that day on. My nerve left the moment the pole made contact.
sounds like something i did.
after the state meet, the last meet of the season, i decided to go to practice one more time. just for fun. so i was pretty confident im myself but i had forgot too take my pain medication! i had been suffering from severe shinsplints and foot injuries. as i ran down the runway i was going half the speed i usually do(in extreme pain). my run ended up being short, but for some reason i still went for it. i planted about 2 feet away from the box! i jump before the pole meets the box causing the pole to bend straight inward and causing me to get flung backwards! i landed 25 feet away from the pit. i know this because the runway has mesurments and thats the first thing i saw.
amazingly. no one out of the 50 person track team saw me!
i got up and acted like nothing happend.
-Riley