No 3 - How to be a better thrower? Lots of questions without answers!
After the last blog, I sat down with my coach Paul to have a think about strength, power and throwing in more detail. We ended up chatting for about 2 hours and both of us were left with far more questions than answers.
So, this week’s blog is going to be a long list of questions that hopefully, we will be able to answer in the coming weeks, months and years.
There are 3 kinds of athletes: the hobbiests; the amateurs and the professionals.
The hobbiests compete and train for fun. The amateurs train to win but with limited time and resources. The professionals are paid to win. The professionals should always win but is there a more efficient training method that an amateur could use to tip the scales in their favour?
This is has been the problem that I have been thinking about most for the last 9 months. As an amateur, who can only train for about 1 hour a day, just how high up the national rankings can you get?
I have interspersed the questions with some clips of me experimenting with different training techniques over the last few months.
1 The balance of strength/power and flexibility/ROM. We think we know that static stretching before exercise reduces your ability to produce the maximum power. So, does training for flexibility reduce your strength gains?
2 We know that training cardio and strength at the same time causes interference patterns where your hormones, your nervous system and your metabolic system get confused. If you want to be a strength athlete then cardio can slow down your gains. Does the same thing happen with flexibility training?
3 And yet, gymnasts are incredibly strong and flexible. So are dancers, skaters, cheerleaders and other similar athletes. So you can train for flexibility AND build very strong muscles and connective tissue. But is this a slower process?
4 What is the optimum flexibility of a thrower? Do you want or need a full range of motion (FROM) in every joint? Or if you wanted to be more efficient and short term would you aim to only have as much flexibility as is required for your event?
For example, a right handed discus thrower might want a full range of shoulder abduction and extension, as well as spinal rotation and right hip rotation, but might be less bothered about working the left side as much?
5 Muscles tend to be strongest in the middle to the end of their contraction. So with bicep curls for example, you can move far more weight through the top ROM while the bar is closer to your chest than you can with your elbows at 90 degrees. And most injuries occur when your muscles and soft tissues are at maximum length, the sprinter tearing their Achilles tendon for example. So with flexibility training, you want to practice improving the strength through the ROM that you are going to use, but you probably don’t want to length the tissues past the useful ROM?
Also, because a longer muscle takes more time to contract, and therefore, in theory reduces your power output.
Which supports the idea that your flexibility training should focus on the ROM you need for your event and no more?
6 Do you need to build your strength as a body-weight to strength ratio before you start working on power? Do you need to be strong before you work on getting quicker? Is there a minimum squat ratio you should be able to do before you work on depth jumps?
7 The traditional approach to S&C for throwers is to work on strength and bulk in the winter and then switch to power, plyometrics and Olympic lifts in the pre-season and summer. However, many shot putters throw a PB during the indoor season. Is doing heavy lifts before a competition actually a better idea for getting your best throw?
8 Should you do some plyometrics as part of your warm up before doing a throw? You want the pogo jumps or vertical jumps to teach your nervous system to explode quickly through the power phase. If you train this on separate days will they be as effective? Or should you do them before a throwing session and then as part of the warm up to the comp to teach your nerves to jump at the right time?
9 Should throwers of different heights and weights try to use the same technique? Is there a bio mechanically perfect throw technique for each event?
10 Does your coach or your training regime actually make a difference to your ability to throw a long way and be successful?
11 Most throws coaches will be lucky to find an athlete who is of national or international calibre. Very few will ever get 2 or 3 athletes who are capable of being international throwers. So, can we actually learn from that past? Were these coaches using the best training techniques? Or were they just lucky to find an athlete who had good genes and was willing to train hard enough for long enough to be successful?
12 The reason for asking the last 2 questions was to highlight the issue with trying to learn from the past. Almost every thrower is unique and their ability to work with their coach, their genetics, their time, their commitment, their facilities are all so unique that it makes it very difficult to produce universal rules for others to copy.
13 Are there any throws coaches or S&C coaches who have had above average success? Have they released their training methods that we can learn from?
14 Most “science” takes years to reproduce, analyse, write up and publish. Therefore, what most elite athletes and coaches are doing is unlikely to be based on “the science”. It’s likely to be based on experience and hunches. Then years later its copied and measured and analysed and found to be effective. So, if you want to create an efficient training plan should you be trying to copy what the current elite athletes are doing? Or should you be trying to work off “the science” that might be 10 years behind?
15 Which other events or sports can throwers learn from? - obviously sprinters and jumpers. But who else? Olympic lifters, power lifters, strongmen, pole vaulters?
16 Or ignore everything I have said above and is using the old fashioned, tried and tested methods, the “best way” to get an athlete from club level to international?
17 Should the Power of 10 rankings in the UK take “amateur/professional” into account? Does someone who works in a sport related industry, like gym owner, count as being more of a professional than someone who has an office job? The other way to phrase this would be, should people divided into the amount of weekly training they can do? Less than 10H a week V more than 10H a week?
18 Is the “secret” to being a better thrower, just someone who can spend more time practicing and lifting?
19 What is the ideal split of training? Should a thrower be looking to do technical practice for 3-7h a week plus 4-14h of weight lifting and 3h of flexibility work and 1h of sprints and 1h of plyometrics? Or can you still thrive on 2h of throwing, 4h of weights and 1h of plyo/sprints and stretching?
And now some technical questions from Paul:
20 Does having more flexibility or suppleness reduce the absolte maximal force production though muscle - ligament and bone?
21 Is all muscle capable of the same force production / per unit weight? Does a type 2b fibre in the calf have the same potential to produce force as a type 2b in the deltoid?
22 Is the fibre type constituent of the muscle relevant? We know everyone has a different mix of type 1, 2a and 2b fibres. We know that with specific training you can change the ratios a little, but are some athletes just naturally built with a greater potential to produce type 2b fibres and generate more force?
If you know the answers to any of these questions, then please do let me know! Also, if you can point me in the direction of videos, books, papers or podcasts then please post the links below.