A HUGE practice

[Alan H]

I'm just back from tonights practice and I'm jazzed. You know how you go through the motions for weeks on end and the improvement is hardly noticeable....and then sometime, you do something right and the AHA! light goes off?

Well, the AHA! happened in two events tonight.

I've always heard..."go slow in the first turn" for the HWFD, and I never really figured that out. Tonight I did that. I got the rotation started and then didn't push the weight at all. In fact I didn't "push" much at ALL through the whole throw, just sort of guided it along a little bit with some "encouragement" and dang, but if I didn't add almost THREE FEET to my distance from Sunday at Woodland.

Ohhhhh! So THAT is what it's supposed to be like! I then, basically went and did it again about four more times. YEEHAW!!

We then moved to the LWFD and I applied some of the lessons learned and dang but if I wasn't throwing ALL 39-40's with some out into almost 42 feet. 42 feet is HUGE for me.

HMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMM...............

I'm an OK caber tosser, not great. Well, tonight with our intermediate stick I had one toss where the timing was just right. I had a good run up, "set up", but didn't "plant"...stayed deep and drove up, hard with my quads. I've never felt a throw like that before and the stick just launched! It was a 12:00 easy and **bounced** off the ground.

Oh. So THAT is how you do it! AHA!

Now I just need to do these things over again about 50 more times to internalize them, right?

[SFCRick]

Congrats. Sometimes things just click in place.

[medic78]

practice practice practice and suddenly the light bulb comes on good work Alan

[Cynthia]

That's awesome, Alan! It's wonderful when things really start clicking Keep up the great work!

[jgorley]

Way to go! Those are the best practices. Wednesday was one for me, heavy hammer average of 70 feet and the 56# for distance 28 feet. The heavy weight is 2 feet shorter than last years games Pr (which came out of nowhere!) but it is my best average practice distance. I am using every hour of daylight and sun I can! Sun is hard to come by in Washington!

James

[Alan H]

I must have done something right, 'cause todays LWFD throws...the first couple were 39-40's and then I focused on staying low, and slow in the first turn and I put 5-6-7 throws well out over 40 feet, probably 42-43.

YEEEAAHHHHHH.....

[Detroitpete]

Great job Alan! I'm still working on getting back to spins with the bum knee--would be VERY cool to find a video of what you describe.

[jgorley]

Alan,

Great job on the practice! I did the same this weekend!

LWFD 62'
56#WFD 30'
Braemar 32'
Open 39'
22# hammer 73'
16# hammer 88'
56# WOB 12' (only took one toss, practice ran late)

Every throw was a PR except for the WOB, 12'6" is my PR. I promised the wifey lunch so no caber that day. I just hope the numbers carry over to Bellingham in June.

James

[Alan H]

Alan,

Great job on the practice! I did the same this weekend!

LWFD 62'
56#WFD 30'
Braemar 32'
Open 39'
22# hammer 73'
16# hammer 88'
56# WOB 12' (only took one toss, practice ran late)

Every throw was a PR except for the WOB, 12'6" is my PR. I promised the wifey lunch so no caber that day. I just hope the numbers carry over to Bellingham in June.

James

Those are solid A marks, for sure. I just looked at your marks from Enumclaw last year and you've improved a lot. I guess a lot of it was from June to Sept last year, but you're right, all those marks are a notch up!

[Alan H]

Well, despite not-so-great showing at Livermore, some stuff is clearly coming together.

Today I went out and tossed LWFD, lots of 39 - 41 foot throws, the usual. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but...

So then I went and did WOB for a while, got kind of tired since I haven't been in the gym for a while. So I knocked that off and I took the 42'er over for some HWFD and that went pretty well... 3-4 27 foot tosses, which is good for me. The rhythm felt good and I was starting to actually put some power into the throws during the second turn. So on a whim, I swapped handles back to the 28 pounder..

.....concentrated on staying low and slow in the first turn
..........started applying power in the second turn earlier that I usually do and WHOOOAAAAH...

3-4, 45 foot tosses in a row, and probably two out to 47 feet! I paced them off, didn't have a tape so it wasn't very accurate, but the distance was significantly beyond 15 long steps. At that point I was getting seriously tired and I knocked off before I did something stupid to my knee, but

47 feet? 47 feet?

I NEVER thought I'd see 47 feet! WOOOHOOO!

The scary thing is that 46 - 47 foot tosses will win the event in my local 50 - 59's, and the only event I've ever outright won is light hammer. I think the other guys would flip out if I showed up and delivered a 47 foot toss..