Track and Field Blogs - Steve Hooker

Hi Guys,

To be honest I wasn't expecting to be blogging again so soon but i had quite an exciting weekend and i thought I'd tell you about it.

I had my first competition for the year on Sunday evening in Perth. The conditions we're, to put it frankly, absolutely perfect! It was about 35 degrees(celcius) during the day and we we're under the shade of the grandstand, the wind was strong and blowing directly down the runway. Perth is known for having good conditions but Sunday was amazing.

The whole idea of the competition was to convert what i had been doing in training into competition. In the past I have had issues with my run up getting out of control in competitons. So the philosophy going into the comp was to stay on poles until they are definitely to soft before moving up poles rather than moving up poles for a new height or anticipating a pole becoming soft. The idea of this was to keep the competition as close to training conditions as possible and to avoid any unnecessary stress.

I did a short warm up, just two jumps from full approach (18 steps). One jump on a 5.20m 12.5 and the second on a 12.2. The video attached is my second warm up jump, there we're issues with the video from competition so this is the only one i have. The bar on this jump is at 5.50m and the stands are right back at about 95cm.

I'll write a summary of poles, grips and heights for those that are interested:

5.50m miss - 520/11.9 Stands 80 - Got close on run up and didn't complete jump.

5.50m clear- 520/11.9 Stands 80 - Foot still a bit close at take off, completed jump but pretty rough.

5.70m clear- 520/11.9 Stands 80 - Run up was slightly better, focused on planting earlier.

5.80m clear- 520/11.9 Stands 80 - Got steps down better on this run up again, easy clearance. Felt like i was blowing through but saved it with good timing at top of jump.

5.90m miss- 520/11.9 Stands 80 - Run through, pushed too hard on the first half of my approach and couldn't turn over my steps fast enough after my mid mark.

5.90m clear- 520/11.9 Stands 80 - Best jump of the day, timing was perfect and the clearance was big, one of the first times when i have put together the top of my jump like i want it to be in a comp.

6.00m miss- 520/11.9 Stands 80 - Best run and take off of the day. I was about 10cm further out on my take off than the other jumps, the pole was mush, blew into the bar hard.

6.00m miss- 520/11.5 Stands 60- Run through, I think the occasion got to me a bit and i dropped my pole way too early and started over striding on the runway.

6.00m clear- 520/11.5 Stands 60- Solid jump. Not the best take off of the day but saved it with timing on the second part of the jump. Touched bar on way down but it stayed, perfect position fo stands would have been 55.

Click To Play

I stopped jumping after this clearance, being the first comp of the year we didn't want to push it to much and I'd already done three more jumps than the six we had planned on doing.

The result was a little surprising being the first comp of the year and considering the health problems that I dealt with during December. What I take away from this is that you can still perform if your not able to train at 100% as long as you focus on the things that really matter.

In this case I was only allowed to train for an hour a day through January but I made my focus 2 quality vault sessions a week with everything else (weights, strides and recovery) geared towards me feeling 100% for those vault sessions. I found the time constraints really made me focus on the quality of every single jump, aiming not to waste a single effort. I think that quality was reflected in my comp on Sunday.

Now I'm setting myself for a second comp in Perth before travelling to Melbourne for the WAT meet on the 21st of February, our Olympic trials on the 29th of February in Brisbane and the World indoors in Valencia...exciting times.

Steve