I hope this will help you, as I remember having the same difficulty in the beginning; here is what I do and I almost never loose a man on the springs unless I get sloppy.
I come up the ladder and move a tad left, wait for a short and immediately run to the right side of ladder and pause for it to go over ur head then run to second safe spot. (You know if springs are short or long by watching were they land in relation to the yellow girder mark on the floor where the elevators come out. A short will land on the far left of the yellow platform mark. The second safe spot is defined by being in the yellow with at least one foot in the yellow, and you won’t be hit.)
Once in the second safe spot stand at the very right edge of the yellow, keeping a foot in the yellow, wait for a long. It will be a long if the right bottom portion of the spring touched the right portion of the elevator shaft/yellow marking. As soon as I see a spring hit that mark I IMMEDIATELY run to the ladder and pause a minute second when my body is just touching the ladder; this quick pause is necessary to let the spring go over u as you have beat it to the ladder since you ran as soon as u saw it hit the correct yellow mark. I find it more difficult to wait in the safe zone for that long to go completely over my head to begin the run, instead I’m already now at the left of the ladder when it arrives. During this very quick pause, look back at the next spring and see what’s coming, at the same time the long spring has cleared you so by muscle memory I hit the joystick right and up as fast as possible and Mario will “round up†the ladder making the accent faster.... and my eyes are still looking back left to see where that spring hits. If the following spring is short to medium I just keep my ascent going, if it’s long, I pull down then left to get off the ladder and run back left to safety. Then the process starts over until successful.
Once your more advanced at this instead of retreating on a second long spring back down the ladder and back to the yellow safe areas you will learn that u only need to retreat just to the left of the pailine ladder where you had paused before in your initial ascent, immediately go back up the ladder when that second long clears your head and begin the ending cycle to be sure the next spring is short as your are now already on the ladder. This way you never retreat all the way back to the yellow, you instead keep just inside the ladder while long springs clear u and u run on the first short to medium. Again this part of it is advanced; at first just run back to the yellow and start the process again. Dealing with 2 or 3 long springs while not being in the yellow safe area takes advanced skills and lots of practice.
Hope that helps.
Lastly, you may want to download the donkey Kong training/practice rom where you can slow down the springs and see there numbered lengths displayed above each spring from 1 to 16; you can find that rom on the forums.
Good luck
Tim
