Free Fallin'

Listen closely, and you will hear the sound of my name falling out of the top 25 rankings for Shot Put. Frankly I’m a little surprised that I’ve lasted this long, but my wimpy 36’ 5.5” throw back in April just couldn’t hang with the big boys. Anyway, I’m down to 23rd place and it just a matter of time now. I’ve got to admit that I was very pleased with that throw when it happened, but even if I somehow make my very optimistic goal for the season (39’ 4.5”) the odds are slim that I would be on the list at year end. Last year’s 25th place throw was 42’ 1” after all.

If you did the math you would have noticed that my goal for the year is 3 long feet beyond my best throw of the season to-date. (Emphasis on the word “long”!) Even though that throw was a personal record and a big improvement over last year, I’ve been really frustrated with my lack of progress recently. So after much soul searching I’ve decided that my apparent shortage of good old brute force strength just won’t allow any significant additional improvements using the glide throwing technique. Because of this I’m now ready to make the switch to the spin technique in competitions. I’ve been practicing it quite a bit and I’m now able to throw about the same distance using either method, so the time is right. Hopefully, the mechanical advantages of the spin and my semi-decent spin technique in Discus will produce the additional ball speed needed to get that extra 3 feet. It’s about as drastic a change as one can make, but desperate times require drastic action. (Last meet’s 31’ 8” effort is still fresh on my mind.)

Now if I just had a plan for improving in Javelin…