People ask me all the time who has the best technique. Before that can be answered, we have to agree on what the question means.
Height alone does not answer it. The highest bar cleared often tells you who had the most to work with, not who used it best.
So the definition is this: the best technique belongs to the athlete who clears the most height for the energy they generated.
That is a different question from who jumps highest, and it has its own answer. In my opinion it is Sam Kendricks.
Speed on the runway is the largest contributor to height, provided the technique is efficient enough to carry it. We estimate that roughly 75% of the energy needed to raise the body to bar height comes from the run up. The remaining quarter comes from the work on the pole.
I do not have exact figures for Sam's American record of 6.06m. But according to my information he did it at a runway speed lower than anyone else who has cleared 6.00m.
Sam's push-off in that jump was over 1.40m, depending on his exact grip. In a private conversation he told me he had cleared bars in training with a push-off of 1.50m, and I have no difficulty believing it.
A good high school vaulter pushes off somewhere around 70 to 80cm. Medalists at major championships are around 1.10m. That is the scale Sam's 1.40m and 1.50m sit against.
Sam is a great athlete, but he is not an Olympic gymnast. A 1.50m push-off is an unparalleled achievement for a pole vaulter, and it is a large part of his efficiency.
The point is that runway speed is only partly responsible for it. Nobody produces a 1.50m push-off off a six-step approach — speed matters. But if speed were the whole story, the faster vaulters would all have larger push-offs, and they do not. Emmanouil Karalis, in his Greek record of 6.17m, reportedly gripped at roughly 5.17m within a couple of centimeters, giving a push-off of about 1.20m. Outstanding. It is not 1.50m.
It is not an accident that Sam also has one of the shortest times on pole in the event, if not the shortest. I have measured it from broadcast footage and from my own video recordings over the years, and my lowest measurement for him is 1.11 seconds.
A push-off approaching 1.40m is a dividing line. A vaulter who is deliberately catching the recoil of the pole maxes out somewhere around 1.20 to 1.25m — a foot short of 1.50m. Vaulters have reached the 1.20 to 1.25m figure before; Joe Dial is the clearest example. But they arrived there advocating the tuck and shoot method, and that is where the method tops out.
A 1.50m push-off does not require exceptional runway speed. Somewhere around 9.0 m/s is enough, provided the natural rotation is not interrupted. Above that, more speed does help — again, only if the rotation is not interrupted. What the push-off measures is the energy the athlete generated on the pole.
Another vaulter approaching this efficiency is the world record holder himself. Armand Duplantis reportedly gripped at about 5.05m, perhaps slightly higher, to clear 6.31m — a push-off of roughly 1.45m. That is the top of world performance.
Duplantis runs at about 10.20 m/s. Kendricks ran approximately 9.4 m/s (subject to speed measurement interpretation). At these speeds, 0.1 m/s is worth close to 10cm of height in raw physics terms, and real-world conversion runs at about 70% of that — call it 7cm. The speed difference between them is therefore worth about 55cm.
And speed does affect push-off. A system rotating from 10.20 m/s runway speed comes up far faster than one from 9.4, and that rotation is part of what a push-off is built on. Duplantis's 1.45m is produced with that speed advantage. But the advantage would be worth little if he delayed the natural rotation, and he does not — his time on pole is often under 1.20 seconds. He does not substantially delay the rotation and he does not wait for the pole to recoil at the top. In fairness, he also does not accelerate the natural rotation as well as Sam Kendricks does.
Push-off on its own does not settle the question. It is one measure. But put it next to runway speed and it does point at the answer: the athlete who produces the highest clearance from the least speed is the one converting most efficiently, and that is what best technique means.
There are two ways to leave the pole, and today's vaulters are spread between them.
One is the method already mentioned — catching the recoil of the pole. The pole is bent deeply and the athlete times the return, riding it up as the pole straightens. This was the dominant view before Bubka, and in many ways it is still dominant now. Conventional thinking is hard to overcome.
The limit is not the athlete. A body riding the recoil cannot rise faster than the pole recoils, and that speed belongs to the pole. Training does not change it. A stiffer pole recoils faster, but a stiffer pole is harder to bend, so the athlete runs into a limit at the other end. The ceiling moves a little. It does not go away.
The other way ignores the timing altogether. The athlete raises the body themselves, and the pole adds its recoil regardless — it does not need to be caught. Kendricks has one of the shortest times on pole in the event, my lowest measurement is 1.11 seconds, and the largest push-off. The short time and the large push-off go together.
With the first method the limit is set by the pole. With the second the limit is the athlete's own, which is a different kind of limit — it moves with training.
Put an Olympic gymnast on a pole and, with nothing interrupting the rotation, a push-off over 1.60m is a reasonable expectation.
There is a second consideration. Efficiency measured today tells you where an athlete stands. What matters as much is whether the technique they are using promotes further development, or whether it has a ceiling built into it that additional training will not move. For example, a dependence on the recoil speed of the pole. Or a plant and takeoff that only works at a constant speed, forcing the athlete to slow down or run from a shorter approach to achieve maximum efficiency. Either one disqualifies a technique from consideration, in my opinion.
Duplantis is much closer to the second method, at about 1.45m push-off. With his runway speed, achieving 1.50m and beyond is on the horizon.
You may be reading this and thinking about how to achieve an 80cm push-off. To you, 1.60m is not even in your universe.
Right. But the two methods are taking you in different directions — one toward more efficiency and one toward less, one toward open-ended development and one toward development capped by the equipment.
Considering the horizons we can see from here, enhanced rotation with higher runway speed can produce a 1.55 to 1.60m push-off. That sounds unreasonable today. So did 1.45m ten years ago.