Vaulting and Physics

During the event vault, you run as fas as you can and hurdle onto a spring board and up onto a vaulting table. You want to hit the board as fast as you can in order to get as much height as possible. There are all types of spring bords with different types of springs, depending on the level. Some spring boards are very bouncy and have multiple springs in them, while others have very stiff springs that you can change the amount of springs in them. Also the floors have springs underneath them, these are calling spring floors, they dont help much for the inital tumble but they help lessen the impact on the gymnasts' joints. Tumbling on a spring floor is very differernt than tumbling on grass, you also get more of a rebound when tumbling on a spring floor which can help in connecting skills. A proper spring floor is built in waves, so the gymnast lands closest to the springs, when a spring floor is old or weak it develops dead spots and breaks the tumbling pattern and can ruin the pass.