When is pole vault on

It was a difficult night for Frenchman Renaud Lavillenie, the Olympic gold medallist and silver winner in Rio. Lavillenie sprained his ankle two weeks ago and had a hard time in the qualifying, failing in his first two attempts to clear 5. It did not get any better for him in the final, though, as he visibly struggled with the injury and could complete only one of his attempts at 5.

Subscribe for our daily curated newsletter to receive the latest exclusive Reuters coverage delivered to your inbox. Increased volume of training can also improve numbers of traumatisms and stress on the body during those work phases and generated injuries as already reported in other sports Damsted et al. This result seems quite obvious as a higher exposition to the risk logically can lead to higher rate of the problem. This reinforces the need of using values of injuries reported to the exposure e.

For practical implication, pole vaulters with high training volume should be at the center of attention in order to limit the occurrence of injuries. Since training is fundamental to improve performance, we do not never say that it is needed to limit training to prevent injuries. As previously discussed, future studies should confirm the latter assumptions, since injuries were retrospectively collected and it is not possible to conclude whether these parameters associated with injuries are a cause or a consequence of the injury.

However, some associated parameters could be hypothesized as consequences of the injuries. Our results reported that higher contact time t c was associated with a higher proportion of history of all injury. This is in agreement with results from Mann et al. In addition, we observed that stride length variability SL var was associated with the injuries history outcome. An increased stride variability could also be a consequence of lateralized injuries and higher neuro-muscular control to compensate disorder caused by previous injuries Donoghue et al.

Regression models of history of hamstring and ankle injuries related with biomechanical patterns are presented in Table 2. As discussed previously for all injuries, it seems that higher engagement in pole vault would be associated with higher ankle injury history.

For history of hamstring injuries, although there were no significant association, larger inertial loads during high speed running tended to be related to history of hamstring injuries Chumanov et al. Higher aerial time reported in our present study could be related with this aspect. Increasing the aerial time would mind increasing the swing phase, and thus potentially the end of the swing phase, which has been reported as associated to hamstring injuries Chumanov et al.

The models were not significant, and did not report significant association between biomechanical parameters and history of injuries for hamstring injuries. Moreover, the number of observations were small. Thus, it is therefore impossible to conclude of the association. Nevertheless, we would like to discuss some assumptions regarding these preliminary results in order to provide some perspectives for future researches since the present insignificant results are in agreement with some previous findings.

Indeed, Although we reported some differences in pole vault biomechanical parameters between sex, in agreement with previous study Schade et al. As strength, this study is the first analyzing biomechanical data together with injury data in pole vault, with the goal of better understanding injury risk factors and mechanics. Regarding limitation, we can acknowledge the small number of pole vaulters included. The small sample size lead to a small number of some injury diagnoses e.

We performed and presented logistic regressions for all secondary outcomes i. The number of explanatory variables could be considered as too important in comparison to the number of observations. We did not collect anthropomorphic parameters height and body mass , which would have been of interest to adjust biomechanical parameters. There was a high inter-subject variability in biomechanical parameters, especially in junior. The injury data collection was retrospective leading to the risk of recall bias, and do not allow to determine the cause-consequence relationships regarding the biomechanical pattern and the injury occurrence.

Finally, since injury is multifactorial Bittencourt et al. All these limitations represent perspectives of future researches, including a prospective data collection of injuries in association with the data collection of biomechanical pole vault parameters, and other parameters which can influence the injury occurrence. During energetic exchange, especially at take-off, many mechanical constraints are applying on musculoskeletal system.

Those constraints are generated by the impact and the long force moment from beginning of pole bending until toes off. During this crucial phase for performance Linthorne, , many parameters e. In addition, body position of athlete and pole vault pattern used by the athlete can produce more or less traumatisms. Therefore, we think that specific attention should be done for each pole vaulter given its specific pole vault pattern. Performance-prevention management should be a win-win strategy based on individual management.

Given the importance of the position of the grip superior hand at the tack-off related to the risk of injuries, we can suggest at a practical prevention measure to train athletes to increase the angle between the pole and the horizontal axis at the take-off phase.

Mastering the transitional phase between the run-up and the take-off phase should also be at the center of training activities. An optimal balance in training volume and intensity training load should be found and pole vaulters with high training exposure should be at the center of attention. Finally, the technical training of pole vaulters with previous injuries should be improved by taking attention to potential compensation.

Our present results reported that one biomechanical parameter related to the take-off phase lower H2 and some biomechanical parameter related to the terminal phase of the run-up phase higher Spd, SL adj , SL var , t c were significantly associated with higher proportions of all injuries. The datasets generated for this study will not be made publicly available because they are included in a preliminary database.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest. Angulo-Kinzler, R. Biomechanical analysis of the pole vault event. Arampatzis, A. Koszewski, and H. Google Scholar. Bahr, R. Understanding injury mechanisms: a key component of preventing injuries in sport. Bennell, K. Musculoskeletal injuries in track and field: incidence, distribution and risk factors. Sport 28, 69— PubMed Abstract Google Scholar.

Bittencourt, N. Complex systems approach for sports injuries: moving from risk factor identification to injury pattern recognition—narrative review and new concept.

All Lifestyle Performance Culture. Season Top Lists All time Top lists. Home of World Athletics. Pole Vault. Share Tweet Email. World Rankings Men's Pole Vault. Duplantis was one of 14 men to go through to Tuesday's final after clearing 5. Armand Duplantis, of Sweden, competes during the qualification round of the men's pole vault at the Summer Olympics, Saturday, July 31, , in Tokyo.

World record-holder Armand Duplantis sailed through qualification for the men's Olympic pole vault on Saturday — a competition missing his arch-rival Sam Kendricks, who tested positive for coronavirus.