Mikes Toeboard Drills

[Alan H]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SD3zFC1M_Yo

[Dave Ogilbee]

Looks like a good set of drills Alan. Need to work the crank and hip leading more, myself. I'll give em a go next time I head out. Are you not worried so much about stepping over the trig when you're doing these drills?

[Alan H]

Looks like a good set of drills Alan. Need to work the crank and hip leading more, myself. I'll give em a go next time I head out. Are you not worried so much about stepping over the trig when you're doing these drills?

You can't do exclusively step-over drills, because you don't want to train yourself to step over. It's a balance. This is by NO means a sampling of all the stones drills and throwing that I do. The majority of it does not include step-overs.

[Dave Ogilbee]

You can't do exclusively step-over drills, because you don't want to train yourself to step over. It's a balance. This is by NO means a sampling of all the stones drills and throwing that I do. The majority of it does not include step-overs.

Ah, i've gotcha. Was just wondering because I always try my best not to overstep whenever I'm practicing.

[Alan H]

Ah, i've gotcha. Was just wondering because I always try my best not to overstep whenever I'm practicing.

See, the thing is that in Stones, you want to drive the stone out over, beyond the trig. If you cut yourself off, you lose a LOT of distance. You MUST hold on to the stone as long as you possibly can. So the way to internalize part of that motion is to do step-over drills. Make yourself hold on so long that you HAVE to step over. All the big shotputters do them, Brian Oldfield was famous for them.

Here's one of Ryan Viera's stone workouts...the front end of this video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=65cP4...eature=related

Notice that he does step-over drills.

I also do drop-and-pops, I do both step-over and non-step-over drills with my slowly developing glide/shuffle. My next weeks stones is going to be concentrating on actively, rather than passively clearing my upper body, and exaggerating the "stomp"-block of the left side to bring my hips around more quickly. All of these will be done without step-overs.

[Dave Ogilbee]

Ah, I see. Ya, i've watched all of Ryan's training vids, I remember that one now. When he was instructing me on my technique he was explaining that getting that weight put over your back foot is pretty critical, and then one powerful motion out, shooting through that back foot. My big problem was getting used to putting all that weight back there. Single leg strength has never been that great with me, so I've been working more single leg stuff into my strength training.
I also asked him about the shuffle, as i'm getting better distance using that rather than attempting a traditional spin, mostly because i'm still fairly novice at it and getting used to the motions. He said he thinks it's best to try to use a spin if possible just because that's supposed to be greatest means of power production for the throw. But I do know there are a few athletes out there, even at the Olympic caliber, that use a shuffle. Have any thoughts on it?

[Arizona Scot]

Great video Alan will deffinately incorporate this into my work outs. Oh by the way thanks for hooking me up with some SoCal throwers. I made facebook connection with them and am waiting for some e-mails.

[Detroitpete]

I really like his comment about trusting yourself once you've incorporated the movement. I think my latest proplem as far as form has been breaking things down too much creating a series of segmented moves--he's got great follow through here. "Happy place" weight balance then hips lead at 10:00. Good stuff.

However...

You KNOW you're a Highland Athlete when advice like "Throw right through your skull" makes PERFECT sense ;)