best vaulters FAST at the beatboard

For forward approach vaults the best men in the world (e.g. Dragalescu) peak at over 10m / sec velocity.

But the important velocity is on contact with the board.

Here’s one (predictable) finding from a recently published study …

Mean values of individual step velocity for top class and middle class gymnasts.

Just like my coach told me in the 1970s: “start your run slowly and accelerate as much as possible to the board“.

That study has much more though the sample size is small.

A CASE STUDY ABOUT DIFFERENCES IN CHARACTERISTICS OF THE RUN-UP APPROACH ON THE VAULT BETWEEN TOP-CLASS AND MIDDLE-CLASS GYMNASTS

That’s from the most recent Science of Gymnastics journal.

Update – See discussion on this topic on Chalk Bucket.