When the fiberglass pole arrived, it brought an obvious observation: the pole bends, stores energy, and releases it upward. The athlete grips higher than on a rigid pole. The pole acts like a catapult.
That observation was not wrong. It was incomplete. And the conclusions drawn from it set the sport back by a generation.
The honest mistake
The first coaches and athletes of the flexible pole era looked at the bend and saw the opportunity. Bend the pole as much as possible — that became the objective. Drive it, force it with the bottom arm, maximize the load on the ground. Then stay close to the pole, ride the recoil, and catch the upward momentum at the top.
It made intuitive sense. The pole bends, the pole springs, the athlete goes higher. Simple cause and effect.
Ride the recoil.
The pole is the engine. The athlete loads it, waits for it, receives from it. Passive phases are not just acceptable — they are the point.
because it has to.
The athlete is the engine. The pole bends and unbends on its own — a consequence of the energy in the system. The athlete focuses entirely on maximizing their own physical inputs.
What the catapult model missed was this: the pole can only return what was put into it. And an athlete focused on loading and riding the pole was spending limited, irreplaceable time managing the pole's behavior rather than their own. For elite vaulters the time on pole — from the moment the feet leave the ground to the release of the pole at the top — is 1.10–1.20 seconds, but the actual window for active energy input is only 0.6–0.7 seconds. A passive phase of just 0.24 seconds is nearly a third of that — gone, unrecoverable, and directly reflected in the bar height that was never reached. Passive phases — moments of waiting, of riding, of receiving — became not just acceptable but coached.
The catapult became the objective. The athlete became a passenger.
What Petrov understood
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a different line of thinking emerged. Its most consequential voice was Vitaly Petrov.
You do not need to bend the pole. The pole bends and unbends by itself — it is a consequence of the energy in the system, not something the athlete manages or times.
The athlete's objective is identical to the rigid pole era: get off the pole as fast as possible. Somewhere in that process the pole will bend and unbend. The more energy the athlete puts in, the more it bends, the more it gives back.
But the athlete is not managing that process. They focus entirely on maximizing their own physical inputs.
This reframing changed everything. Flexible pole vaulting was not a new event requiring a new set of objectives. It was the same event with the same athletic obligation — continuous maximum energy input from takeoff to release — now aided by an instrument that amplified the output.
Applied with Sergey Bubka, the Petrov framework produced thirty-five world records. The catapult model, dominant everywhere else, produced nothing comparable.
Free takeoff — and the resistance it met
One concept that emerged from this thinking was the free takeoff — leaving the ground before the pole begins to bend significantly, rather than using the takeoff to force the bend. The takeoff serves the athlete's energy system, not the pole's loading requirements.
When Alan Launder introduced the "Pre-Jump" concept in England circa 1985, people laughed. At the Reno Vault Summits in the early 1990s, when I introduced "Free Takeoff," the concept invited open skepticism. Today free takeoff is standard terminology in every coaching program in the world.
That is how long it takes a paradigm to shift — and how completely it shifts once the results are undeniable.
The terminology now in worldwide use — free takeoff, inversion, time on pole, continuous chain, active and passive phases — originated in this line of thinking. The m640 model is its fullest development.
Where we are now
The catapult model has not disappeared. It has evolved and refined itself into a strong framework that remains widely used in coaching programs worldwide. Many athletes today still vault with significant passive phases — waiting for the pole, riding the pole, receiving from the pole rather than contributing to it.
Armand Duplantis is approaching 6.40m — the height we believe was within Bubka's theoretical reach, the target this model was built to make achievable — and to surpass. That number is no longer a dream. It is a matter of time.
Women are a step behind but moving in the same direction. A vault of 5.20m and beyond is definitely achievable — probably within the next five to six years.
Neither will happen inside the catapult model. Both become possible when the athlete is the engine — when passive phases are eliminated and every moment of the active input window is directed toward one purpose: maximizing energy input into the system.
That is the New Thinking. It is not new anymore. It is simply not yet universal.
The complete m640 model — how to apply this framework to every element of the vault — is inside the membership.
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