Six
Meter
Club
Fifteen world records, one centimeter at a time. This is the equation underneath it — and it works on your vault too.
Armand Duplantis · 6.31 m world record · Uppsala, 12 March 2026 · video used with permission
How the model predicts your vault
Every piece is a height in metres or feet. Add them up and you get the bar you can clear.
What’s inside “Run speed (when you don't enter a PR)”
What’s inside “Pole shortening”
Where this model is actually tested
4.70 m to 6.31 m — six real vaults, 5.9 cm RMS. Two World Championship cohorts, the Olympic final mean, a WC winner, Duplantis, and one measured club vault. Every one has a real measured run speed and a real grip height, and the worst row is 10.5 cm out.
The 6.31 is a clean out-of-sample hit. Fed the real specs behind it — 10.3 m/s, a 5.20 m pole, flex 10–11, top hand 6" down — the equation returns 6.33 to 6.35 m. It also says that vault needed 10.19 m/s, against a reported 10.3. Both are inside 1%, on a jump it was never fitted to.
Below 4.70 m it is extrapolating. No published dataset gives run speed and grip height for developing vaulters, so nothing down there is calibrated — it is the same equation run downward and sanity-checked against the poles coaches actually hand people. Treat it as a starting point, and use the PR field above to pin it to a jump you have really made.
Where a 6.31 m vault actually comes from
The world record, term by term, on a strict energy budget — nothing here exceeds 100% of the run. Duplantis hit the plant at 10.3 m/s on a 5.20 m pole.
| Phase | Term | Metres | Running |
|---|---|---|---|
| Approach | Run energy, v²/2g at 10.3 m/s | +5.407 | 5.407 |
| Approach | Standing centre of mass, 0.66h | +1.221 | 6.628 |
| Plant | Collision loss — the box is steel | −1.171 | 5.457 |
| Plant | Plant-arm compliance | −0.036 | 5.421 |
| Bend | Drive into the bend | +0.150 | 5.571 |
| Bend | Swing and rock-back | +0.156 | 5.727 |
| Extend | Top-arm push-off | +0.345 | 6.072 |
| Clear | Turn over the bar | +0.288 | 6.360 |
| Clear | Speed carried over | −0.050 | 6.310 |
The pole is a spring. You are not a sandbag.
Most vault models treat the athlete as a mass hanging off a spring. But you inject work in three places, and you leak it in one — and the difference between doing that well and badly is worth more than any pole on the rack. These are estimated from torque-through-angle and limb stiffness, then checked against published whole-vault energy audits.
| Where the energy moves | Elite | Mechanism |
|---|---|---|
| Top-arm push-off | +0.35 m | 0.7–1.0 bodyweight through ~0.45 m of extension |
| Swing and rock-back | +0.16 m | hip torque 250–350 N·m through ~2.3 rad |
| Drive into the bend | +0.15 m | pressing the pole while it loads |
| Total work in | +0.65 m | 504 ± 19 J — 14% of the run's kinetic energy |
| Plant-arm compliance, braced | −0.04 m | arm stiffness ~27 kN/m, 9 cm of travel |
| Plant-arm compliance, collapsing | −0.18 m | arm stiffness ~12 kN/m, 21 cm of travel |
Beginner to elite
The full swing of work-in minus arm-leak. Bigger than the free take-off, second only to run speed — and unlike speed, all of it is trainable in the weight room and on the rings.
Your top arm alone
Braced versus collapsing, with 80% confidence between 0.11 and 0.19 m. The arm stores 120–260 J at the plant and hands back only part of it.
Is the push-off
Of all the work you put in, over half is the last thing you do — the top-arm extension as the pole straightens. The swing is only a quarter of it.
Tall vaulters aren't stronger. They're better aimed.
Height barely helps you through energy — a higher centre of mass is almost exactly cancelled by hanging further below your own hands. The real effect is geometric: a taller vaulter's top hand is higher at take-off, so the pole stands up more. Less shock into the box, cleaner transfer, and a much higher grip available at the same angle.
| Your height | Grip ceiling at 30° | at 28° | at 26° |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5' 3" (1.60 m) | 4.27 m | 4.55 m | 4.87 m |
| 5' 7" (1.70 m) | 4.51 m | 4.81 m | 5.15 m |
| 5' 11" (1.80 m) | 4.76 m | 5.07 m | 5.42 m |
| 6' 3" (1.90 m) | 5.00 m | 5.32 m | 5.70 m |
| 6' 7" (2.00 m) | 5.24 m | 5.58 m | 5.98 m |
Stature → pole angle
Across all 15 finalists at a World Championship, taller vaulters planted with the pole standing up more. Take-off distance was uncorrelated with height — so it really is just the higher hand.
Of grip ceiling
At a fixed 28° pole angle, that's the gap between a 5'3" and a 6'7" vaulter — seven times bigger than the direct energy effect of being tall.
You can flatten it
A shorter vaulter can drop the pole angle to reach the same grip — but every degree given up costs energy into the box. That's the real ceiling, and why tall vaulters end up on bigger sticks.
⚠ Read this before you change poles
Never vault on a pole rated below your body weight. This tool floors every recommendation at bodyweight plus 5 lb, but the rack doesn't know that — check the number printed on the pole yourself, every time.
Move one pole at a time, with a coach watching, on a full runway with a proper pit. Flex numbers aren't comparable between manufacturers, so a 17.0 from one brand isn't a 17.0 from another. A website is a starting point for a conversation with your coach, not a reason to grip four inches higher at the next meet.