Since the video came out and over the past few months especially, an interesting phenomenon has occurred. Coaches have been emailing me telling me what a great coaching tool this video is.

The main reason is simple: the kids actually watch it. They watch it over and over again. Most instructional videos will lose a young pole vaulters attention (we know as coaches how hard that is to keep) and therefore the video sits on the shelf. What good is a video if no one watches it? With Neo Vault they enjoy it time and time again. I've had coaches email me and tell me it's a great teaching tool for this very reason.

I've experienced this first hand. I'm coaching at a local high school. I have a very young crew, mostly freshman and one sophomore. I had seventeen kids come out for the vault. Sadly I had to send some back to their other event coaches and brought it down to 12. For the first part of the season I didn't even tell them about Neo Vault because it wasn't relevant at the time. Then when it was apparent that some of them became hooked on the sport I thought that they would really enjoy the DVD.

So I gave it to one of my freshmen and he came back the next day and told me he watched it till 3 in the morning.

They started passing the DVD around on their own so I brought them all copies.

What was interesting though is that after about a week of them watching it I could tell that they had a much better visual representation in their mind of the vault. And I could refer to certain positions like the take off or the swing and they new what I was talking about.

Obviously what I'm saying to you coaches is to get this DVD in the hands of your athletes and it will really help bridge the gap of understanding.

Sometimes during practice one of my kids will be stuck on something like planting late and low. I will explain to them that they need to start to move the pole on the second to last stride and really reach up tall. Then I will tell them that when they watch the video look at how all the top vaulters begin to move their arms on the second to last stride and are really “open” at take-off.

Because the DVD content is of the best in the US, it has become an element of authority that I can appeal and refer to with my kids. I find myself saying “all the top guys and girls swing a trail leg, just watch the video” and they can go look at what I'm talking about.