Discus 101

[Grace Upshaw]

Track season has begun again at the middle school where I throw after work. This is fine with me because after all, I am using their field, and also they are usually wrapping things up at just about the time I’m able to arrive anyway. I must admit though, that I really enjoy getting there a little early to watch the kids try to figure things out.

Up until this year the school housed 7th and 8th graders so there were always one or two of the kids who were able to throw fairly well. Last year for example, there was one boy who was throwing the discus in the 130’ (39.60 m) range. They had a young first-year coach who admitted that he knew nothing about throwing, but that he had been downloading material off the internet to try to learn more. I loaned him my John Powell discus video and he showed it to the kids one day. I especially wanted the young girls on his squad to see the women in the video, such as Carol Cady, who could really throw far. I’m not sure any of them had ever imagined that girls could do such things.

This year the school is comprised of nothing but 7th graders, so the skill level has fallen off quite a bit, and the “coach” looks so young that she appears to be one of the students. I use the term coach loosely here, because she isn’t really a coach. She’s more like a volunteer helper of a coach, who not surprisingly knows nothing about throwing. The real coach spends most of his time with the jumpers, and leaves the throwers to sort things out with the helper. The only coaching I heard out of the helper-coach the other day was when she once called out to a girl who was obviously struggling, “try to not make it wobble so much”. It’s kind of sad to watch, so I’ve been trying to get out there early and give some pointers. The helper-coach seemed very appreciative and welcomed my meddling.

To say that her practices are disorganized would be putting it mildly. Yesterday when I arrived I saw kids standing out in the landing area with their backs to the ring. They were probably safe, but only because no one knew how to throw far enough to put them in any danger. Three more boys were kneeling in an area that was not safe from thrown implements however, and they had their heads down trying to figure out a wonderful new toy – a 300’ measuring tape. I looked at them and immediately had a number of questions: 1.) Why were they measuring practice throws in the first place, especially when all it does is slow everything down and result in everyone getting fewer practice throws? 2.) Why were they measuring a 50’ throw, when there were chalk lines on the ground that could give them a good estimate of its distance? 3.) Why did it require three people? And most importantly, 4.) Why, why, why weren’t they THROWING? I just shook my head. I think the practices would look a little different if I were the coach.

Helper-coach came up to me and asked if I would give some pointers to a new kid on the team who was pretty good. (After all, he had thrown one 60’!) I asked him to show me his technique, and of course just about everything he did was wrong. We walked way out into the landing area, safely away from everyone else, and I gave him some of the basics:

- Learn the standing throw before you start worrying about the spin (this is very hard for kids).
- The throw begins with the legs, not the arm.
- Maintain good separation between the hips and the shoulders.
- Finish with the weight on the front leg and with the chest high and aimed in the direction of the throw.
- And finally, we talked about the four parts of the full throw – turn out of the back, hop across the creek, reach the left leg to the front, and finish from a good standing throw position.

It was all great fun for me. Maybe I should become a youth throws coach when I retire.

Rain, Rain, Go Away

[Thorey Edda Elisdottir, Icelandic Pole Vaulter]

I’m starting to get a little depressed about the recent weather around here. I’ve only thrown something like three times in the last 3 weeks, and I’m afraid that this layoff is really going to affect my performance at the meet in 3 weeks. My technique in several events is in need of serious improvement, which requires lots of training reps – reps that I’m just not getting. Just as worrisome – these are reps that I fear my age group competition, none of whom live within 200 miles of me and my weather, are getting. Unfortunately for me, not only do I need rain-free weather, but I need several rain-free days in a row so that the throwing area can dry out. Lately, it has started raining again every time I reach the point at which I would have thought the throwing field was just about dry enough to resume my practices. The only positive thing I can see about all this is that the layoff is probably exactly what my shoulder tendonitis needed.

I’ve been very good at staying with my weight lifting program during this lull in throwing activity, and I continue to see improvement in the amount of weight I’m lifting. If it weren’t for this bright spot I’m sure I would be very discouraged about my prospects in 3 weeks. Other than weight lifting, my training has been limited to slow hammer turns in my garage. Those sessions will help me also, but there’s no substitute for actual throwing.

On a side note – I may have lost my mind, but in addition to the 5 throwing events that I normally participate in I have also entered a SuperWeight Throw for the first time. This will undoubtedly be a very interesting experience, as the first time I will have ever even held a 56 pound SuperWeight will be when I step in the ring to throw it in competition. (Something tells me that this is not an event in which you want to waste a lot of energy on practice throws.) What made me decide to do this? Who knows! Maybe it’s because I looked at the 2005 rankings and noticed that a throw of only 20’ (~6 m) would have ranked 4th best for the year. I guess I figured I could probably throw anything 20’, but I may learn that I was seriously mistaken about that. Oh well, it might be fun and hopefully it will not result in any trips to the chiropractor.

The Big Chill

[Russian High Jumper Yelena Slesarenko.]

As promised the temperatures were in the high 30's, low 40 degree range (3-5 C) this weekend, with constant drizzle. Needless to say, I did not go out and throw. Rick Bruch I am not. For those of you who don't know, Ricky Bruch was a champion Swedish discus thrower and world record holder. The first 30 minutes of his practices would consist of shovelling and scraping snow and ice off of the ring. He would then proceed to throw. After each throw he would have to search for the discus under the snow. A ver tough, dedicated man with very good performance enhancing drugs.

I'm feeling very much in need of improvement, and with time running out, I went into my garage and practiced hammer turns. I have a ring taped off on the floor, and I must say that whoever poured the concrete on my garage needs to go into the discus/shot put ring business, because it is really fast. I feel as if I got a lot out of this practice, but it's just not the same when you can't actually release the implement and let it fly. It's like sex without the climax.

Afterward, I went to the gym and lifted weights. I had a really good session, and I think that my normal routine of lifting weights after working all day, and of spending a good portion of my life in a sleep-deprived state, are big detriments. Oh well, there's not many options to avoid this.

I learned of a new meet since my last post. It's early in April and it includes a Weight Pentathlon, which is cool beause there are not that many opportunities to post a WP score during the year. The meet is in Texas, so one would think that it was "local", but a quick check of MapQuest reveals that it is an 8 hour, 25 minute drive from my house...This would definitely be a fly-to meet. I might go though. We'll see.

Less is More

[American Long Jumper, Grace Upshaw.]

I was able to get out and throw again today, which makes only 2 throwing sessions in something like the last 2-1/2 weeks. That's not good, and the weather forecast calls for rain and cold again this weekend. But, with discus at least, it appears that the less I practice the better I do. (Not so true with the other events.)

I was able to launch a standing discus throw of 119' 7" (36.45m) today, which tells me that I'm getting stronger. And I had several good full throws including one of 137' 0" (41.75m), or a gain of 14.5%, which tells me that my technique is holding together. My goal of 135' for the first meet appears to be pretty reasonable, so now I'm thinking 140' (42.67m).

Shot put is still a challenge although I did better today than I have done so far this year. My standing throws were around 32' 8" (9.95m), and full throws were around 34' 5" (10.49m). I still think my goal of 35' (10.67m) in 4 weeks is acheivable, but I'm going to really have to work at it.

Ditto for hammer and javelin. The glimpses of hope I had for these events after the last throwing session have faded badly, and today I was back to where I was last year - about 105' (32.00m) for both. I read the other day that there are only 4 levels of throwing - Sh_t, suck, good, and excellent. There's no doubt where my hammer and javlein throwing rate.

To Slack, or Not to Slack?

[I don't care that she's not a thrower. Yelena Isinbayeva is simply the best women's pole vaulter in the world...and she's very hot. Try this out for size: Reigning World and Olympic Champion, twice World Athlete of the Year, and she has broken the World Record an amazing 19 times! (Think about that last one for a minute.) ]

Cold weather (for Houston), high winds, and feeling a little down have resulted in no throwing for me this weekend. I don't know if I was just feeling bad because the cold front blew in some foreign pollen that my allergies weren't accustomed to, or if I've been fighting off the flu that 2 of the 4 out-of-town house guests I currently have staying with me are trying to recover from.

I was able to complete my Thursday weight lifting session, but I have to admit that it took me 2 days to do it. I had to leave the gym half-way through my Thursday routine because it felt like there was a pretty good chance that I was going to pass out. I felt a little better on Friday, and was able to do a little cardio, and also finish the leg work that I couldn't find the strength to finish on Thursday. Tomorrow the plan is to resume as normal, and to move up in weight on a couple of lifts. I'll resume throwing again mid-week.

I'm feeling a little like a "puss" for not throwing this weekend, but if all I could do would be relatively low-quality work, and if it resulted in slowing my recovery or in making me feel even sicker, then I'm not sure that throwing would have been a positive thing.

When to push, and when to slack? It's always a critical decision, but is probably even more critical for the masters athlete. If not more critical, at least it's more frequent.

My Form is So Bad it Hurts!

[Carolina Kluft, Sweden’s “golden girl” in the Women’s Heptathlon displays the form that has earned her the title of world’s greatest female athlete.]

I’ve been experiencing a lot of pain in my throwing shoulder over the last several weeks. At first I tried to ignore it, but when it didn’t subside my imagination ran wild and I began speculating that it was the beginning stages of arthritis. I was already starting to think about how hard it would be to join the rest of the world and turn into a “righty” thrower. Yesterday while throwing however, I think I stumbled across some technical flaws in 3 of my events which might be the cause.

In discus, the flaw is “scooping”, or not keeping my arm up at a right angle to my body during the throw. In shot put, again it’s not having the elbow out at a right angle to, and behind my body. And in javelin, the pain is aggravated by not throwing over the top, i.e. slinging the javelin from the side like a football throw. All these flaws put excessive strain on the shoulder and just as importantly, they result in a loss of power. I guess there’s some truth in the old joke about the man who went to the doctor and said, “Doc, it hurts when I do this.” And the doctor’s reply was, “Well, don’t do that.”

So I will not be “doing that” anymore. The pain is to the point now that it will be a good motivator to break these bad habits, and hopefully the changes in technique will not only prevent further injury, but will permit some healing. I certainly don’t want to have to lay-off for any extended amount of time at this point in order to recover from an injury.

It was good to get out and throw yesterday. It was the first time I’ve had enough daylight after work to do so since last November. The skies were clear and the temperature was about 70 degrees. It’s a good thing that I did it too, because the weather report calls for rain on Friday, and high temperatures around 50 degrees on Saturday and Sunday.

I saw some hints at improvement in all events while practicing. These “hints” ranged from being so small that maybe I’m just fooling myself (in shot put), to yes definitely, things are starting to come together (in hammer and javelin). Somewhere in between these two lies discus, which continues to improve in snail-like fashion. This is most probably because my discus technique is already pretty sound, and I’m having to slowly build up strength in specific muscle groups. (Why didn’t I start doing that a year ago!)

Only 36 days until the first meet. 10 more weight-lifting sessions. 5 more weekend practice sessions.

Eye Candy

Given that internet browsing is much more interesting when the material is visually appealing, I am going to begin posting some pictures along with many of my Blog entries. The pictures may or may not have anything what-so-ever to do with the text, but the idea here is to make things more appealing, not more coherent.

The pictures will likely have a sports focus to them, in keeping with the subject matter of the blog. And knowing me, quite a few of the pictures will likely be of attractive women, in keeping with the whole “visually appealing” objective.

I’ve chosen Russian hammer thrower and new World Record holder, Tatyana Lysenko to kick off my athletic babe-of-the-day photo gallery.
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Christmas came early yesterday. I received an entry form for a track meet that I didn’t even know existed, so since it doesn’t conflict with any other meets, I can add it to my schedule. Even better is that it’s only about a 1-1/2 hour drive from my house. That should put me up around 10 meets this season, which is a pretty respectable number. After all, it’s not much fun training, training, training only to have very few meets to go to. Not only for the obvious reason that “more” is better when it comes to fun stuff, but the fewer meets one has the more pressure there is to perform well at any one of them. With 10 meets I should be nice and relaxed at all of them…except maybe the one or two that I may attend which require air fare, hotel expense, rental car, etc. I always feel a real need to perform well when I’ve shelled out a bunch of cash on a meet.

2005 Final Rankings

The 2005 Masters Track and Field rankings were finalized over the weekend, and I finished with rankings in 2 events. I slipped from 21st to 22nd in the Hammer Throw, and held on to 14th place in the Weight Pentathlon. It’s disappointing that I didn’t make the top 25 in Discus after finishing 20th in 2004, and given that my best throws for the 2 years were only 3cms (1 inch!) apart, but the competition was quite a bit tougher in 2005. Also, my best Weight Throw for the season would have ranked 21st, but I didn’t submit the performance because I felt that the landing area was sloped too severely. There’s not much to say about Javelin and Shot Put, except that I wasn’t even close to being ranked.

I hope to make the 2006 ranking list in 4 events, with Weight Throw and Discus being the 2 events additional to the 2005 rankings. I might have an outside chance at also making the list in Javelin, but that’s going to take quite a bit of improvement for me. Shot Put is going to have to wait until 2007 I’m afraid. Of course as this year’s Discus rankings proved, a lot of it depends on what the competition does.
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I was finally able to throw again on Saturday after a too-long layoff due to recent weekend rains. It felt good to get out again and watch things fly, but unfortunately, they didn’t fly as far as I would have liked.

I was surprised that all of my recent weight training has had very little effect (so far) on most events. The one possible exception was with the discus. My standing throws in discus were back up around 115’ again, with one of them just shy of 116’. Proper form on the rotation applied to these standing distances should produce throws just beyond 130’. On Saturday I was able to throw just short of 130’ (129’ 3” actually), which is indicative of rusty technique. Another month or so in the weight room doing straight-arm butterflies, and more frequent throwing should give me some confidence of going over 130’ in the first meet in March. That is my conservative goal for the meet, and would represent a personal best, but my optimistic goal remains 135’. There’s not much hope of reaching that distance unless I can get my standing throws up around 120’ feet, but I think that reaching standing throw distances near 120’ by March 18th is still within reason. We’ll just have to see how things progress.

So far, all of the other throws are remaining relatively unchanged from where they were at the end of last season. This is very frustrating because the feedback I’m getting in the weight room is that my strength levels are much improved. A lack of improvement in javelin and hammer is somewhat understandable because they are so technique oriented, rather than strength-based. But…the lack of improvement in shot put has me baffled.

It’s very difficult to understand how a 25% increase in my bench press and a 45% increase in my squat over last year have yet to produce any gains in the shot put. One of my favorite sayings is that only a fool continues doing the same thing while expecting different results, but I don’t know what else to do with my shot put other than to continue to work to get stronger and to improve my technique. Could it be that there is some critical minimum level of strength that one must attain before distances begin to lengthen, and that I just have not yet reached that level? I know I can now throw the 4kg shot put about as far as I would like to throw the 6kg, so maybe I just need to get strong enough so that I can handle the 6kg with the same ease that I can now handle the 4kg. That’s my theory anyway.

The six weeks that remain before the first meet is not much time to gain a lot of strength, but I need to remember that this six weeks only marks the start of the season. While I would like to get the season off to a good start, the big meets of the year and the ones I really want to do well in, are still seven months off.