10.
Training for pole-vaulting should begin in the gymnasium early in the winter. The arm and chest and dorsal muscles are the ones that must be developed, and these may best be strengthened by work on the chest weights, rope-climbing, dipping on the parallel bars, and by using the travelling parallels. If you have no gymnasium to work in, a good exercise is to stand four or five feet off from the wall of your room, and to fall forward on your hands, and then push yourself back into an erect position. Do this a few times at first, increasing the number as you grow stronger. Sprinting is also as necessary an exercise for the pole vaulter as it is for the broad jumper. When the weather moderates, work should be begun and continued daily out-of-doors.
For practice the vaulter must have two square posts similar to those used by the high jumpers, only higher, bored with holes two inches apart above six feet, then one inch apart up to eight feet, and half an inch apart from there up. The pegs should be between two and three inches long, and the bar, of one-inch pine, should be about eleven feet long. I say the "bar," but it were better to say the "bars," for the vaulter will do well to buy a dozen at a time, as they break very easily.
The posts are placed ten feet apart at the end of the runway, which should be from eight to ten feet wide, and as long as possible, say fifty feet. Like the high-jumping and broad-jumping runways, it is made of cinders rolled down hard, and must be kept well dampened so that it may be springy. Beyond the posts the earth should be turned over and raked, so as to make a soft landing-place. This landing-box is usually divided from the cinder path by a board sunk into the ground running perpendicular to the upright posts, and across their bases.
The costume for a pole-vaulter should consist of an entire jersey suit, although many of the best men of late seem to prefer linen trousers. The advantage of jersey trousers, or tights, however, is that they keep the legs warm, and consequently the muscles more limber. The shoes are the regular jumping shoes—made of kangaroo-skin, and fitted with six spikes in the toes, and two spikes in the heel of the foot that takes off. These two spikes should be fixed at the extremities of a diagonal drawn through the centre of the heel, to prevent stone-bruising.