"Dear All Social Media 'Coaches'" -An open letter to those that need to critique the videos we post.

I have been intrigued by the idea of having a blog for a long time. I was never one to love writing papers, so while I had things I could write about, having a full blog seemed intimidating.

A couple weeks ago I posted a video of one of my jumps. In the caption I specifically said, "This is a work in progress," to act as a disclaimer that I am fully aware my jump isn't perfect, that there is a lot we're working on, but that I was excited with aspects of the jump. Without fail (because I have always received negative comments or critiques on my jumps), I got yet another negative comment with nothing whatsoever constructive about it. Only pointing out the "bad", nothing to help fix the "bad" and nothing positive, just, "You're doing this wrong, and that's that".

Why? Why is this necessary? This has bothered me for years, but I've always tried to stay polite and keep my thoughts to myself, thinking that if I jump high enough the criticism will stop. I reached a point where I thought to myself, "I have jumped the 5th highest height ever, I'm a US National Champion, and I still get negativity. When will I ever be good enough? Do I have to jump the World Record to avoid these sorts of comments?"

So, I started to type up what I thought was just going to be a caption to a picture or Instagram post, but I realized to do this justice, it needed to be written in it's entirety. I may get a lot of backlash for this. A lot of, "Oh stop being so sensitive", or, "If you can't take the criticism don't post the video". But I know this is something that has bothered not just me, but many athletes, and is something we've all felt at one time or another. So without further ado, my very first blog post and an open letter to all those who feel it necessary to coach us over social media, or give unwarranted advice.

Dear all Social media “coaches”,

I am begging you. Please stop. Stop with the negative comments on videos. Stop with the backhanded compliments of how great one thing looks, but how we need to fix (insert any part of the vault). Stop trying to coach anyone you’re not working with on a daily basis unless you are specifically asked.

We understand your comments are (usually) coming from a good place. We also understand that anytime we post anything, it is subject to criticism. Here’s the truth of the matter. No jump is perfect. No matter what we do, or how high we jump, we could always be a little “better”. We know more than anyone what our weaknesses are, and the areas of the jump we need to work on. There’s no one right way to vault, and no one right way to coach. The trick to success is matching the coach and the athlete, and there’s a reason each one of us has chosen the coaches that we have. More often than not, they’re working with us to fix those things you point out.

In my case, I always knew my takeoff was the worst part of my jump. I wasn’t blind to it. I just never knew HOW to fix it. And people constantly giving me this criticism of how bad my takeoff was, or, “You could jump so much higher if you had a bottom arm”, didn’t help anything. I was fully aware of this and if I knew how, I would have fixed it!

I'm sure people we're criticizing my coach at the time for not fixing it. What people couldn't see was that I had so many mental block issues from the past that I was still dealing with. He was incredible in that he knew which things to address that wouldn't revert me back to running through every jump every practice. Even with the emotional struggles, he got me to PR each year with him. He had to deal with my emotions before he could really tackle my jump. It takes a phenomenal coach to work with someone who second guesses themselves every jump they take and still help them improve.

For the first time in a long time, even with the fear I was dealing with every time I stepped on the runway, I was having fun again! But, these comments just kept reminding me that my jump was not good, with nothing truly constructive to actually help. Even though at this point I was ranked top 20 in the world. 

It’s these critics that keep some of the best athletes in the world from posting videos of their jumps, because they just don’t want to deal with the backlash. Even though many young athletes could benefit from seeing their jumps and the different ways to jump high. I’ve talked with both US and international women that have expressed they don’t like to post videos because of the negative feedback. Negative comments say to us that we really shouldn’t be posting our videos because they’re ultimately not good enough. If the best women in the world can’t post videos, then who should? Only the “perfect” jumps? Just the men? Just the Renaud or Bubka videos? (I’d include Yelena except I’ve seen criticisms even on her jumps).

Every woman that has ever jumped 4.50 (the previous Olympic A standard) or higher, has done it a different way. Yes, there are things that are consistent across the board, but everyone accomplishes it and feels it a bit differently whether because of body type, neural firing, old habits, mental blocks, etc. The reason each athlete achieves the heights that they do is not because they have a coach that just says “that’s wrong, fix it”, but sees the whole big picture. They create a step by step process to tackle those things for the long term goals.

Usually you have to deal with several other aspects of the vault to fix that one problem. For example: I would always stride out my last few steps, lean back, and be too close at takeoff. I always just thought I needed to get my steps down, and I would back my step up so that I wasn’t taking off under. I thought getting my steps down faster would just happen by telling myself to do it. Working with Brad, he realized I was striding and leaning back because I felt too far out. He moved my starting step in 4 FEET! Once he did that my takeoff step was not only consistently where we wanted it, but my run through issues went away as well. Once I didn’t feel too far away, I wanted to take it up every time and my steps naturally turned over rather than reaching to make up the ground. Just saying “You're reaching, fix it” would never have worked. We had to fix A and B before C could fix itself. And it took him working with me for months before we came to that conclusion.

This is a sport where, because it’s so technical, it’s really easy to feel that urge to point out what went wrong. I’m guilty of it too, but until you work with us on a daily basis to understand all of those things, and give us a step by step process to “fix” our jump, your helpful tip is actually doing more harm. So when you feel the need to point out how “bad” something is, or how if we could “just fix” anything we’d be so much better, please just leave it unsaid.