Triskaidekaphobia - Joshua's Training

[Joshua]

I'm throwing hammer thursday evening btw. A local who happens to be a damn fine masters competitor, has offered to give me pointers on hammer (he throws the light hammer 100+ and threw the heavy over 100 before he was a master) as long as I give him pointers on olympic lifting. Cross-pollenation of disciplines and all.

Tonight, did powersnatches up to 80kg, front squats up to a 140kg triple.

[Joshua]

22# Hammer - 5-wind throws not going for distance as much as familiarity, I seriously did about 15 of these with little-to-no rest. I measured the last three and all three were right in the low 50' range.

14# Stone, no approach - I did 3 throws with this, focusing on my hips "starting" the put. 25 - 26' averaged

14# Stone, glide - 9 throws - best throw 33', worst 29'

Training throws by yourself is a flipping bear, btw.

[Alan H]

I'm throwing hammer thursday evening btw. A local who happens to be a damn fine masters competitor, has offered to give me pointers on hammer (he throws the light hammer 100+ and threw the heavy over 100 before he was a master) as long as I give him pointers on olympic lifting. Cross-pollenation of disciplines and all.

Tonight, did powersnatches up to 80kg, front squats up to a 140kg triple.

Anybody who can put the 22 pounder out past 100 feet is a seriously fine hammer thrower. I would take advantage of this immediately!!! Sweet deal!

Just an aside...about moving up to the A's. First of all, here in CA it's really up to the individual athlete. For example, I know one guy who threw in the B's for 3 years. A lot of the time his hammer numbers were easily A class numbers but everything else was really B class. He just got sick of throwing in the B's and he's started registering for the A's. Nobody has stopped him, yet and sometimes he doesn't finish DFL in the A class. His logic was, if he wanted to get better, then he should move on and throw with guys who are better.

I coach a lad who moved up from the B's to the A's this past season. I told him to hang in there with the B class until he'd won three solid Games. That means a class with at least 8-9 athletes in it. Some of the guys were starting to grumble "sandbagger"...and when you hear that, you know the time is approaching to move up.

His numbers, at the transition point..

HWFD - 28-29 feet, sometimes 30 in practice
LWFD - 52-56 feet.
Open stone - 38-39 feet. This is about where he finished off last season.
Braemar stone - usually just a bit over 30. Best of about 32.
Light hammer - mid to high 90's sometimes 100-105.
Heavy Hammer - 75-78
WOB - 14, every time. Never 15.
Caber. he eats our practice cabers for lunch; 16 feet, 87 pounds, 17 feet, 70 pounds. He's been stumped by a lot of the really big A class sticks, though...18' and 110 pounds, stuff like that.

He won the Woodland B class...and that's a HUGE class, like 14-15 guys with these numbers.

B stone ... 29' 8"
O stone ... 38' 7"
HWFD - 29' 2"
LWFD - 49' 7"
Heavy Hammer - 76' 9"
Light hammer - 94- 2"
WOB- 13


His first Games as an A were the Pleasanton Championships...pretty good gig for your first outing as an A and he wasn't dead last! LOL

B stone ... 27' 3" (26 pound monster stone)
O stone ... 36' even"
HWFD - 32' 8"
LWFD - 60' 6"
Heavy Hammer - 82' 5"
Light hammer - 96' 6"
WOB- 14


Now, that's out here in California, and I don't know how things are where you live. But I would suggest that you hang in there with the B's until the majority of your numbers start to look like this, at least...

B stone ... 22 pounds consistent at 30 or more
O stone .... consistantly at 38+
HWFD ... consistently 29+, the magic number is 30.
LWFD .... consistently 55+
Heavy hammer ... consistently high 70's
Light hammer .... consistently 90+
WOB ... 13+ pretty often.

This is just my two cents...something to think about, maybe.

[Joshua]

I would stick with B's but for one thing. I'm one of the best B's we have in our class. Our B games get 20 applicants, but only 15 make it to throw. We only have about 8 solid A's in practice as our best guys have just turned masters.

I've been told by the AD's that we NEED to have some of the B's move up. My old games training partner and drinking buddy Travis, won 2 B competitions with very similar numbers to my own and now throws in the B's.

And the athletes who are the LSC (Long Suffering Crew) who have been B's for a long time, are giving me **** for being a sandbagger as I consistently beat them. Maybe your level of B is higher than ours, but we normally have no space for C athletes so our B's are a combo of sub-A's, as well as novices.

Either way, I'm throwing in competition as an A on Saturday... but back to the B's for Dunedin in April. I have 5 weeks to get my **** together and that means I'll be throwing twice a week. I know for a fact that I am stronger than every A on our field, I just need to put in the time with the implements and become a better thrower.

[Alan H]

Hey, every location is different, and if you need to move up, then you should move up. No worries!

[Joshua]

Learning to throw with spikes was a whole new world. I had to really think long and hard about foot placement because once you're spiked, you have no room for adjustment. Too narrow and you aren't stable... too wide and your hammer bottoms out. I might skip using my spikes in competition tomorrow until I've been able to perfect throwing in them, or at the very least I'll just wear one spike on my right foot.

[Alan H]

Learning to throw with spikes was a whole new world. I had to really think long and hard about foot placement because once you're spiked, you have no room for adjustment. Too narrow and you aren't stable... too wide and your hammer bottoms out. I might skip using my spikes in competition tomorrow until I've been able to perfect throwing in them, or at the very least I'll just wear one spike on my right foot.

I've been so worried about knees and ankles that I've shied away from blades. I finally made a decent one, and bolted it to my right boot and tried that. It was OK, but it didn't create any miracles of distance, and I will still worried about my knees after a few serious cranks.

I'd say...and this is repeating the common wisdom, that you won't see any change in distance until you've practiced with them for about 6 weeks, so I'd agree....no point in wearing them tomorrow.

[o1d_dude]

If anything, you will probably lose distance when you first switch over to blades because you will feel confined.

Once you figure out that the blades take the foot position out of the throwing equation and start throwing HARD, the distances will come. Before you long you won't be able to throw hammers without them.

[Joshua]

The good news: I made a small PR in heavy hammer today, throwing with one spike. I don't remember my stone throws but I made some progress in *how* I threw as I have been drilling stone lately a lot (stone and hammer are my only real implements)

The bad news: I threw WELL below even my averages on the stuff I'm good at.

There were two variables that shook me up, but the other guys had the same variables, and were just better prepared for them. I'm not blaming them, but myself for not being prepared.

One, the ground was sand... and that sucked with my new cleats that I was all stoked to get. By the time we went to caber I was wearing my sneakers because my new metal cleats were literally digging ankle-deep holes in the field.

Two, going in traditional order is not what B's do on our fields, B's go reverse order so we start with WOB, Sheaf, etc... because of this I was just plain winded by the time we got to my favorite, WOB. I didn't even clear 11 feet.

I need to improve my conditioning, which was doing well until recently when I'd backed off due to some back strains at the Brandon games two weeks ago.

So...

More throwing (coincidentally the only events that weren't useless for me were the ones I'd trained thursday)

More implements (I've got a ring handle, going to build one of O1d Dude's DIY 56lbers)

More conditioning (I need to stop sitting on my ****)

When my scores are up on NASGA I'll post them. I am pretty sure I hit 61' and change on the heavy hammer though.