Pole Vault Timing Guide: The Plant Zone and the Release Rhythm

Updated October 2026

Pole Vault is a two-tap timing game, and most players treat both taps as separate reactions. They are not equally hard, and they do not work the same way. The first tap is a moving-target judgement that gets tighter for as long as you keep scoring. The second tap is a fixed rhythm that never changes speed. Once you understand that difference, and what actually decides whether the bar stays up, your scores become far more consistent. Here is how each attempt is judged, with the numbers taken from the game itself.

How one attempt works

Each attempt starts with your athlete running in from the left edge of the track. A green band on the track marks the plant zone. Your first tap plants the pole, and it only counts if the athlete is inside that band at the moment you touch the screen. Tap while the runner is short of the band or already past it and you lose a life. Do not tap at all and the attempt also fails once the runner has gone a short distance beyond the band.

A good plant starts the swing. The pole sweeps from leaning back to leaning forward, and your second tap releases the athlete. The release only counts while the pole is close to upright, and the end of the pole glows green as it approaches that position. Release too early or too late and you lose a life. If the release is accepted, the athlete flies on towards the bar.

You have three lives for the whole game and they never come back. After each attempt the result is shown for a little under a second and the next run-up begins automatically. When you first open the game, nothing moves until you start it, and the touch that starts a game is never judged as a plant. Pressing New, by contrast, sends the runner off straight away, so be ready.

The plant zone: a target that keeps shrinking

The green band always ends at the same place, about three quarters of the way along the track. What changes is its width and how quickly the runner crosses it. At the start the band is 18 percent of the track width, and it loses 0.6 percentage points with every point you score until it bottoms out at 8 percent from a score of 17. The runner, meanwhile, starts at two thirds of the track width per second (240 pixels per second on a 360-pixel track) and gains about 2.2 percent of the track width per second for every point, with no upper limit.

Put together, the time the runner spends inside the band is what you really have to hit. On every screen size that window works out to about 0.27 seconds at the start, about 0.13 seconds at a score of 10, about 0.08 seconds at 17, 0.06 seconds at 30 and under 0.05 seconds at 50. The band stops shrinking, but the runner never stops speeding up, so the plant is the part of the game that keeps getting harder.

The game judges your plant at the instant your finger touches the screen rather than at the next drawn frame, so a slower phone does not shrink this window. The screen size does not change it either: the band and the runner's speed are both measured in track widths, so a small phone, a large phone and a sideways phone all give you the same time.

The release: the same rhythm every time

The swing is completely fixed. From the moment the pole is planted, it takes 1.1 seconds to sweep from start to finish, and it passes exactly upright 0.55 seconds after the plant, every time. That does not depend on where in the band you planted, how fast the runner was going or what your score is.

The accepted window around upright is plus or minus about 20 degrees at the start, which is roughly 0.15 seconds either side of the perfect moment. It narrows with every point you score and reaches its minimum of plus or minus about 6 degrees at a score of 20, which leaves roughly 0.04 seconds either side. After that it never narrows further.

This is the most useful fact in the game. Because the delay is always 0.55 seconds, the release is not really a visual judgement at all. It is a beat. Plant, count a steady half-second, release. Players who watch the pole and react to it tend to be late, because by the time the eye registers upright the window is already closing. Players who tap on an internal count are far more consistent, and they can use the green glow only as a confirmation.

Does the bar ever knock you down?

Yes, and more often the higher it gets. The bar starts at 28 percent of the play area's height and rises by 1.4 percentage points per point scored, reaching its top position of 55 percent at a score of 20. How high your athlete flies is decided at the moment of release, and only by how close to upright the pole is: a perfectly upright release lifts the athlete to just over 60 percent of the height, and every degree early or late costs a little under 1.6 percent. Where you planted makes no difference.

Up to a score of about 5, every release the game accepts also clears the bar. After that the clearing margin shrinks faster than the accepted window. At 10 you need to be within about 12 degrees of upright while the window accepts about 13, at 15 within about 7 degrees against a window of about 9, and from 20 onwards within about 3.4 degrees, roughly 0.025 seconds either side of upright, while the window still accepts about 6. In our test of every release angle across the accepted window, the share that cleared was 100 percent up to a score of 5, about 94 percent at 10, about 82 percent at 15 and about 60 percent from 20 onwards. Because the lift is worked out in proportions of the play area, those numbers are identical in portrait, on a small phone and with the phone held sideways.

Where lives are really lost

• Early plants. When the band is wide, the natural instinct is to tap the moment the runner reaches its left edge. On a fast run-up a nervous early tap lands just before the band. Aim for the middle of the band, not the edge.
• Settling for an accepted release. Past a score of about 5 the green window accepts releases that are too far from upright to clear the bar. A release that is merely accepted costs a life just as surely as a missed one, so aim for dead upright every time.
• Reacting to the glow. The green glow gets brighter as the pole nears upright, but reacting to its brightest moment is usually late at high scores, where the window is only about 0.08 seconds wide in total.
• Rushing the run-up after a miss. A failed attempt shows its result for a moment before the next run. Use that pause to reset rather than to brace.

A practice plan

1. Play a few games focusing only on the release. Plant anywhere in the band, then count a short, even half-second in your head before releasing. Your release count should feel identical every time.
2. Then work on the plant. Pick a spot on the screen just inside the middle of the band and tap when the runner's feet reach it.
3. Past a score of 20 the release no longer gets harder, so most of your concentration can go to the plant, which keeps tightening as the runner speeds up.

Your best score is saved on this device, and any score above zero can be sent to the Hall of Fame from the game-over card. Treat the plant as aim and the release as rhythm, and keep tightening that rhythm as the bar climbs.