The psychologist gave Elina Lampela a tip about the way the pole vaulter lowers her stress level

Pole vaulter Elina Lampelaa will not be seen this weekend at the World Indoor Championships in Torun, Poland. And a month ago, he had to miss the Espoo SM halls after falling ill ruined his training plan.

Lampela’s reign was completely wasted due to illness and adversity. At the end of January, everything still looked good. The intention was to open the hall season only in February, but Stockholm unexpectedly received a competition invitation already in January.

“I had a really good jump practice at 12 paces and I decided to go jump at the same speed in Stockholm,” 28-year-old Lampela says.

Normally, he runs at a pace of 16 paces. In Sätra’s athletics hall, Lampela noticed that her body was not in shape.

“I already felt the day before that everything was not okay.”

In the competition, the Finn did not get any power out at all and remained at the starting height of 402.

Uncertainty the reason for the collapse of fitness weighed on the mind.

“It was really frustrating when you didn’t know what was causing the messing up in training,” Lampela reflects and makes an educated guess.

“That good jumping exercise obviously took all the juices out of the body, which was visible on the trip to Sweden.”

Later, blood tests revealed that white blood cells were elevated.

“It must have been due to the disease I had in January.”

Since the symptoms were mild, the jumper wondered at the collapse of the powers.

Returning to the state before the trip took a surprisingly long time. So Lampela decided together with the coach Rauli Pudasen with to skip competition trips to Europe from this government.

“Cancelling the Games is not nice, but it had to be done.”

From Oulu Lampela’s previous indoor season (2025) was astonishingly good: the crown was his own record 470 and fourth place in the EC Indoor Championships in Apeldoorn.

The main goal of the outdoor track season was on the World Championship stage in Tokyo. There, however, Lampela was left out of the final, when 460 was too much in the morning qualifying.

There were difficult stages in the summer competition season. At the beginning of June, in the first Diamond League competition of his career in Stockholm, Lampela got a witch’s arrow, which stuck his back and hindered his training for two or three weeks.

After the training period in July, Lampela rehabilitated himself into competition form for August.

“The jump went well, but then there was another setback.”

Lampela surpassed his outdoor track record of 464 in Leuven, but returning from Belgium, his pole collection was damaged during transport.

He was leaving for Japan in a few days, so getting new fins was in a hurry.

“Fortunately, I found suitable sticks in Poland, and then I also got a couple of sticks straight to Tokyo,” says Lampela.

The episode was nerve-wracking, but luckily for the jumper, the airline compensated for the damage.

Autumn After the transition period, Lampela and Pudas drew up plans for 2026. Training was adjusted somewhat. In the previous season, Lampela did only one jump practice a week, but in the fall he returned to the old practice, i.e. twice a week.

“Now you don’t have to do so many jumps together, so the training is often of a higher quality,” says Lampela.

As the speed increases, everything happens much faster, giving the jumper less time to react.

In the Myllypuro hall, the development targets have been above all running speed and raising the grip height.

“Increasing the grip height involves a psychological aspect, because it requires confidence to jump.”

In jump training certainty is sought first with a shorter, eight-step pace, after which we move to 12 steps and finally to the competition measure, i.e. 16 steps. So the pace is picking up.

“As the speed increases, everything happens much faster, so the jumper has less time to react,” says Lampela.

He says that he has reached a state a few times where everything outside has disappeared from his mind.

“For example, in the EC halls in Apeldoorn, I felt like I didn’t even know how much the bar was, and I didn’t care about the ranking.”

Before the competition, Lampela does mental imagery exercises about the course of the competition: for example, which jump should be used to jump which height.

In everyday life, Lampela has used meditation as recommended by a sports psychologist.

“It helps the nervous system recover and relieve stress.”

Another relaxing hobby is open swimming.

Training as a counterweight, Lampela has completed courses at an open university. He has completed his bachelor of natural sciences degree in molecular biosciences at the Viikki campus in 2023, but has since focused on his sports career.

And the Helsinki native is in no rush for the master’s phase. After his teenage years, Lampela had a few gap years on the competition fields, so he is a young athlete in terms of net years. The 2030 European Championships are already in our eyes.

“If Helsinki can organize them, it would be great to be able to jump in the home competitions.”

Lampela took the podium at the Youth Olympic Festival 2013 in Utrecht. The competition was won by Switzerland Angelica Moserwho won the 2024 European Championship in Rome. Lampela was fourth at the time, which suitably left him hungry for the next races.

He says he will continue as long as the jumping is fun.

“It feels like I haven’t jumped over my maximum income yet.”

At the beginning of March, Lampela headed to the heat of Tenerife to train and recharge his batteries for the dawn of summer.

Last year, the hall season continued almost until spring. This year, Lampela hopes to have an intact training season from March to May, so that he is ready to aim for record heights.