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.