Volume V, Issue 4
Some great stuff in this
issue
You know, every so often, you read
something that stops you in your tracks.
Here at Get Up, we know who are
friends areand we dont toss them
aside with the whims of booze, money or
the tides.
Enough of me
Lets remember the mission here:
Our mission? To teach everyone:
1. The Body is One Piece
2. There are three kinds of strength training:
Putting weight overhead
Picking it off the ground
Carrying it for time or distance
3. All training is complementary.
An Email from a Friend of
Get Up!
Dan,
I initially checked out the velocity diet
after reading your results on T-nation
and then hearing your interview with
Kevin Larrabee on The FitCast. I have
since listened to all of his recordings and
interviews of you and found them to be
very inspirational. So I thought of you
after I posted a reply on the FitCast
Get Up! The Official Newsletter of the Lifting and Throwing Page
November 2006
forums. Kevin has a thread where some
of us are recording our results while on
the diet. I am currently finishing up day
10 right now but today was a heck of a
day. My thread can be found here (
http://www.thefitcast.com/forum/viewto
pic.php?t=88) but I want to copy and
paste an excerpt from my last entry in
hopes that I can relate a little of how I
was inspired today.
I am a Captain in the US Army and was
tasked today with an unfortunate but
very important and honorable duty. My
post is as follows:
Ok, now let me tell you about my day. If
I was going to quit, today would've been
the day.
About 45 minutes after making my post
this morning I received a phone call. I
was told that I had the unfortunate task
of notifying a mother that her son had
been killed in Iraq earlier that morning. I
have been in the Army for 20 years and
have 3 kids of my own so it was hard not
to imagine what that lady was going to
feel. I knew that at that very moment she
was living her life as normal while I had
news that would completely and totally
devastate her and change her life
forever.
So I had to go home and get my dress
uniform and make some shakes for the
1
trip as I would probably be gone the
entire day (it was a 2-hour drive to the
mother's house). It would have been very
easy, and in a lot of ways, desirable, to
just go ahead and eat normal food for
this one day. I knew that nobody on the
forums would think any less of me
because it was an extraordinary
circumstance. But ten days ago I made a
commitment and I was going to stick
with it.
We got to the house at about 2:00pm but
nobody answered the door (a chaplain
accompanies you for casualty
notifications for support). We went to
get something to drink (and I drank
water) then went back to wait for the
mother to get home. Then at 3:45 she
came out of the house (turns out she had
been in there the whole time) and asked
if she could help us. And man, this was
the hardest thing I've had to do in a long
time. Once we got closer and she saw
that we were in uniform she knew why
we were there but was still hoping for
some stroke of luck. The look on her
face damn near broke my heart as I
began telling her my message:
"Ma'am, the Secretary of the Army
wants me to express his deepest regrets
that your son, PFC Daniel xxxxxx was
killed in Baghdad, Iraq at 10:25am on 13
November."
And at that point I was too broken up to
continue as she was crying hysterically.
Her son was supposed to be home in 6
days and she had just talked to him last
night. Nobody else knew about this as it
was going to be a surprise. I couldn't do
anything else but stand there and hold
her as she sobbed in my arms. We ended
up there for about an hour to help her
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2
deal with this as family arrived.
So I guess my whole point of typing this
is just to let everyone know that no
matter how bad you think your day was,
someone out there had it even worse as
she lost her precious son forever. Things
like this really put things in perspective
and make you realize what is important
in life.
So Newman, don't give up. Do whatever
you have to do to lose the weight and
live a long and healthy life because
without knowing you, I know someone
out there cares about you. And I only say
Newman because he is also posting
along with me. To everyone else doing
this diet, remember why you are doing
it. Get fit, get healthy and pass along
your knowledge. And Kevin, thanks for
providing a vehicle to get this fitness
knowledge out to the masses. I, for one,
appreciate it.
Sorry if I got kind of sappy but days like
this just make you step back and think a
little bit.
Anyway, I got home at 8:00pm, changed
my clothes and went to the gym. After a
day like this I really needed to hear that
metal banging together and push myself.
Karl
In my weight training classes, we
continue to keep Daniel, his mother, his
family, his friends and you, Karl, in our
prayers. There is little more that can be
said except Thank you.
Volume V, Issue 3
Dan Johns 13
Lessons
Rob Shaul
Im no strength athlete, power
lifter or oly lifting stud. Im a 150-pound
weakling, who can barely bench 200,
squat 250, and dead lift 300. But despite
my performance, Im a lifelong gym rat,
who worships at the alter of Iron and
Sweat.
Im also a rookie strength and
conditioning coach. Ive been training
weekend-warrior athletes part time for a
year and have a couple national
certifications. Im considering opening
my own gym but I know enough to
realize I dont know enough to do it
right.
I met Coach John last fall at a
CrossFit certification, and there learned
he lived in Salt Lake City, just four
hours from my home. I planned to visit a
relative in Salt Lake in mid-October, and
while there visit several gyms and talked
to strength coaches. Prior to leaving I
also e-mailed Coach John and asked if I
could also meet with him. He was
incredibly gracious, and I met with him
for an hour and a half at his home that
Saturday. I asked to spend a few days
observing and learning in his weight
room. He said yes.
Last week I spent four days
observing Coach John work at this
weightroom in Juan Diego Catholic
Get Up! The Official Newsletter of the Lifting and Throwing Page
October 2006
High School. These are the lessons
Coach John imparted on me.
1. Be Generous.
Coach John was incredibly
generous with not only his time but his
knowledge. Every morning I came into
the coaches office he had another article
or book for me to read. And every night
I had homework. I constantly peppered
him with questions, most of them
obvious and inane. He was incredibly
patient, and as a man who loves his
work, colleagues and athletes, very
excited to banter back and forth with
even a novice like me.
I followed him into the
weightroom for every class, did the
workouts with his athletes, and asked
more stupid questions.
He even had me over to his own
home where we worked out together at
the infamous Murray Institute for
Lifelong Fitness, then talked strength
and conditioning for another two ours
over steak and whiskey.
Coach John volunteered copies
of his athletes workouts, told me the
practical evolution of his weightroom
design, equipment and layout, and
described in detail why he had chosen
the exercises being performed.
Ive never experienced
generosity like this and I found it simply
inspiring.
2. Never stop learning.
3
 Coaching is an craft and a master
craftsman will tell you he is always
learning. Coach John embraces this idea
completely. He is a walking
encyclopedia of theories on program
design, results of scientific studies and
hands on coaching lessons. His
professional library is bottomless. He is
always reading.
Every morning and throughout
the day he spent time reading the daily
blogs and articles written by the top
strength and conditioning coaches in the
industry. Often when Id come in to the
coaches' office hed already have one or
two articles printed our for me to read
and discuss with him.
Instead of being jealous and
suspicious of his peers, Coach John
seeks other S&C coaches out, fosters
relationships, readily shares information.
He is open to new ideas wants and
criticism and feedback of his own
programs.
4. Dont be a slave to any program,
routine, or tradition.
Coach John is constantly
tweaking his workouts, questioning
exercises and trying new exercises,
programs and equipment. Hes not afraid
to change. He doesnt care where the
idea comes from. If it works, he
graciously gives credit, and implements
it.
Dan doesnt worry that his
program isnt being followed, but that
its been followed too long.
5. Everything starts at the table.
Coach John pounds nutrition into
his athletes. Every class included some
comments on what to eat and what not to
eat. And he leads by example. His
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4
lunches were salad mixed with tuna or
chicken breast.
6. Keep it simple, but hard.
Coach Johns athletes lift the
major lifts: bench, front squat, dead lift,
the olympic lifts. Their warm up
involves walks and basic exercises with
kettlebells, plus push ups and pull ups.
There are no exercise balls or machines
in his weightroom. The workouts are
killer.
Coach John will use tricks to
keep things simple. All off the bench and
squat barbells in Coach Johns
weightroom have chains.
Chains, Coach John explains,
force the athlete to use perfect lifting
tempo. Lower the weight slowly, lift it
fast. The less the athlete has to think
about, the better, he explains.
7. Use positive reinforcement to create a
culture of hard work and achievement.
Coach Johns warm up includes
an entire mini-workout of kettlebell
exercises and walks, and the athletes
consistently strove to increase the size of
the bells they were using. During
compound lift circuits, athletes diligently
added plates to bars, and quickly moved
from station to station.
Coach Johns athletes are all
high-school kids taking elective weight
lifting courses - these are hardly self-
motivated professionals. Despite their
ages, there was surprisingly little lolly
gagging and talking. All these kids
wanted to get stronger.
Coach John has created an
atmosphere of hard work and
achievement in his weightroom without
using fear or hoopla. Not once did I see
Coach John or another of his coaches
Volume V, Issue 3
yell at an athlete. Nor were there any
fiery psyc-up speeches.
Coach Johns weight room has
few mirrors, no inspirational quotes and
no posters of body builders. With the
exception of a few informational articles
on nutrition and anatomy, the
weightrooms walls are bare white. The
floor is covered with industrial-looking
black rubber mats.
The lifting equipment is
decidedly blue-collar. Coach Johns
lifting platforms are not shiny,
commercially made platforms with the
schools logo in the center. They are
handmade, screwed-together sheets of
plywood and horse stall mats. Many of
the heavy bumper plates are split. All the
bars are worn.
Yet I saw 7th graders do sets of
5-rep, 100 pound bench presses, 15 year
old girls do front squats with chains, and
freshmen boys perform perfect-form
dead lifts.
The athletes at Juan Diego worked
extremely hard.
It took a while for me to
understand how Coach John motivates
his athletes to work like this. He doesnt
encourage or scold his athletes to use
more weight. Instead, when they do, he
quietly compliments them. This sparing,
positive reinforcement is eaten up by the
athletes.
Also, Coach John doesnt correct
every lifting form mistake he sees. Just
as he uses positive reinforcement
Get Up! The Official Newsletter of the Lifting and Throwing Page
October 2006
sparingly, he corrects sparingly too,
careful not to over coach.
Finally, Coach John has arranged
his weightroom so the lifting stations are
around the perimeter, and the center is
big and open. He explains that unlike
many other weightrooms where athletes
can hide, in his weightroom, the coach
can see everyone at the same time.
Hence, his athletes know they are not
going to get away with anything.
8. Sincerely care about your athletes and
the organization.
In the week I spent in Coach
Johns weightroom, he never said no to
an athlete's request to discuss lifting or
exercise programs.
He kept the weightroom open
after school and gave on -the-spot
workouts to off season athletes and
faculty members. He attended sporting
events - on his own time - and shared
comments with athletes about their
performance in class.
Coach Johns concern for his
athletes goes beyond sport. He seemed
to know all of them personally and every
member of their families. He knew when
kids were having trouble at home, and
reached out to them.
He is generous with his time. He
regularly attends school functions and
sporting events. He donates to his own
school. He organized a weightroom
canned food drive for needy families and
provided cash prizes for a nutritional
cereal bowl contest.
5
 Coach Johns generosity is
greatly respected by other faculty
members. I witnessed them praise him
and saw how they interacted with him.
He took me on tours through the rest of
the facility. He showed me the library,
art on the walls, statues. He went out of
his way to introduce me to other staff
members. His pride glowed.
9. Let the athlete figure it out.
Dont over coach, Dan insists -
youll just confuse the athlete. Be
patient, dont correct every mistake, and
eventually the athlete will figure out the
proper form or movement. The key,
Coach John says, is repetition. Just do it
again and again and again.
Part of Dans training regimen at
Juan Diego includes tumbling days
spent in the school wrestling room. He
noted how several of the athletes had
initial trouble performing basic moves
like shoulder rolls and cartwheels. But
after several weeks of practice and little
coaching, most of the kids had these
basic rolls down cold. Repetition was
key.
This was also evident in squat
form. Of the dozens of kids I saw train in
Dans weightroom, just a handful didnt
have nearly perfect, straight back, ass to
the grass squat form.
Dans athletes begins performing
front squats with barbells and chains in
7th grade. And every workout,
regardless of the athletes age, includes
dozens of squats in the warm up.
Repetition, repetition, repetition.
10. Strength is king.
The best thing you can do to
improve an athletes performance on the
field, Coach John argues, is get him
stronger. Coach John has just three
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6
measurements for his athletes
performance: bench press, dead lift and
standing long jump. In terms of football,
Coach John works to have Juan Diegos
football players deadlift 400 pounds, and
bench press 200 pounds. Strength is the
greatest predictor of athletic
performance, he says.
He dismisses time spent on
agility drills. When I ask about foot
work-focused speed development
programs he scoffed, Get em stronger
and theyll be faster.
He also isnt sold on energy
system conditioning. When I question
him about fatigue in the fourth quarter
he tells me a story from his own high
school football playing days. His team
was so strong and so good that they were
usually up 35-0 by the end of the first
half. The starters never played in the
fourth quarter. Players on other teams
would tell Dan that they knew their team
was better conditioned, but they never
had a chance to prove it. They were
overwhelmed by skill and strength.
11. Progression is more than weight
increases.
It also includes skills, Coach
John explains. Constantly expose your
athlete to what they cant do, then fix it.
This mental side of strength
coaching includes program design.
Coach John strives to keep the edge on
his program. He used to use PVC pipe in
the weightroom to train the olympic lifts
and to use in the warm up - that was
until he saw the circuit training class
using the pipes in their class. If the
football players saw the circuit training
class using PVC theyd lose respect for
it, he explains. So he cut back on using
it in his weightroom.
Volume V, Issue 3
Another way he does this is to
throw out all the weight lifting records
and achievements from the year before.
His weightroom includes a huge white
board where athletes get to put down
their names for reaching weight lifting
benchmarks, but early in the year it was
mostly blank. Even the senior class
athletes have to start over.
You have to keep the edge on
you program, Coach John says, or
your athletes will lose interest.
12. Movements, not muscles.
I think squats are important. I
think presses are important. I think pulls
are important, Coach John says. Not
thighs, pecs or biceps.
Along those lines, Coach John
practices what he preaches - If its
important, do it every day. Every
workout included functional, full body
movements, lots of squats, push ups and
bench presses.
Auxiliary lifts? Forget it. Coach
Johns athletes pound away at the basics.
The warm up alone lasts 40 minutes,
which is followed by the workout -
consisting mostly of the major lifts.
13. Athletes dont do well with
medium.
You cant tell an athlete to take a
month off by doing 4 weeks of light
workouts, Coach John says. He/she will
get resentful, frustrated, and will end up
being discouraged.
Get Up! The Official Newsletter of the Lifting and Throwing Page
October 2006
Rather, make them take a whole
month off, do nothing at all (eat out, go
to every movie, watch lots of bad TV).
After a while the athletes body will start
missing working out and being in
condition, and when the athlete does get
back into the gym, theyll hit it hard,
with renewed vigor and enjoyment.
Rob, the door is always open for you!
Great review
Go hang yourself
Sean is one of Canada's premier HGers.
Fronzenkilt is a helpful insightful intelligent
new writer for Get Up. Our quote is from Gary
John who went the extra mile getting us this
biography
Theres always a little bit of debate that
happens on THE INTERNETS about the
Olympic lifts and their worth as an
athlete. Ill kind of give my opinion on
that right now: you dont NEED them.
Really. Just like you dont NEED money
to pick up women. But it sure doesnt
hurt, does it?
Allow me to give a little background and
get a couple things out of the way right
away: Im not a coach. Of anything. Im
not an earth-shattering athlete. I havent
trained a champion and I seriously doubt
that situation will ever come up. Im just
a guy who has been training now for
long enough to develop his own opinions
about some things training related.
7
A little on the background: Many moons
ago, I fell in love with a highland dancer.
Being a dutiful boyfriend, I went to
many highland dancing competitions and
highland games to offer my support and
because hanging out with the older
dancers is not hard on a mans eyes or
ego. But, eventually, there is a top out
limit of how many flings a man can
watch and so I went to wandering
around. To make a long story short, I
found the heavy events and got called
out and fell in love with my first real
sport. 10 years later, Im still into it
heavily.
But lets fast forward from that first
fateful day about 3 years when I finally
married that highland dancer and one of
my highland games buddies got me a
subscription to Milo as a wedding gift.
Something for ME. The married men in
the crowd will understand the sentiment.
In any case, that little magazine opened
my eyes to a whole new world of
training and strength. Powerlifting, arm-
wrestling, strongmanand Olympic
lifting.
In another fortuitous event, I ended up
seeing a guy doing front squats,
correctly!, at the Golds I then trained at.
We got to talking and I found out there
was an Olympic lifting club in town. I
made the trip down to that dingy little
basement about 3 days later and talked
with the coach. A week later, I was
training there. And over the next several
years I learned, competed, played, tooled
and retooled, relearned, recovered and
refined my training more and more to
suit my original sport. Ive gone from
182# on that first games to about 242#
on average and added a pile of distance
and weight to my bests in the past 10
8 Get Up! The Official Newsletter of the Lifting and Throwing Page
8
years. So like I said, I might not be a
coach but Ive seen firsthand what I
think works and what doesnt work as
well.
Back to my original statement, you dont
need the olifts to be a faster, stronger
and more explosive athlete. But they
have more than a little value. Inside the
debate about the olifts is a number of
side arguments about the full lifts vs the
power versions vs just pulls, etc. Add in
rep schemes, weights, claims that its all
technique or too difficult to learn,
pendants claiming that rep work is all
you need to get better and other
ridiculousness and you end up with a
giant fog and thats why I figure most
people just dont bother. Much less
bother to actually make them decent.
As a recommendation, look around your
area for Olympic lifting gyms with
decent coaches. Not always available but
if its there; it is very much worth
whatever time you can make for it. Even
if only once or twice a month for a little
tweaking.
But here are my thoughts on the olifts in
general: your average athlete or trainer
doesnt need to learn the full squat
versions or even to take the weight from
the floor. Hang work will give you the
majority of the benefits youll get from
the olifts, theyre easier to learn and they
train you in that power position that
pretty much every individual sport
known to man uses.
First off, what IS hang work? Taking an
olift from the hang is simply taking
the bar from a position above the floor.
The bar hangs in your hands as
opposed to sitting dead on the floor.
Volume V, Issue 3
Now thats a pretty wide range as you
can be hovering the weight just off the
floor or be almost entirely upright and
its still from the hang. What Im
talking about specifically is taking it
from about the middle of your thighs or
the final pull. This is all power position.
Even more specifically than that, Im
talking about the power clean. Why the
clean as opposed to the snatch? Simply,
its easier and you can use more weight.
The Start Position
The best way to describe the start
position of the hang power clean is to
first deadlift the weight up to full
lockout. At this point, you just want the
weight to be dragging your arms down,
nice and loose.
A quick word about grip: hook. Thats
the word. Dont tell me it hurts or you
cant do it. Unless youre a dwarf or
something, your fingers are long enough.
If it hurts, I recommend you stop going
to the beach because we all know where
the sand is going to get caught. Just
butch up, toss a wind or two of tape
around your thumbs and get on it. Now I
know someone out there is thinking My
grip is strong enough to hold onto
anything I could clean. Good on you.
But the extra grip isnt the point. The
bonus about the hook is that you can
hold onto the bar and still keep your
arms relaxed. If youre gripping the bar,
Get Up! The Official Newsletter of the Lifting and Throwing Page
October 2006
the tendency for an early arm pull
increases. And that wont help at all.
Anyway, back to the start position. Now
youre standing there with the bar. What
youre going to want to do is keep your
arms relaxed, tighten your back, jut your
chin forward and push your hips back to
lower the bar. If the bar is brushing your
thighs on the way down, this is a good
thing. On top of that, your shoulders
should be forward of the bar. Ideally,
your weight should feel pretty centered
on your feet, so not on the toes or too far
back toward the heel. Those of you who
are savvier can also think of this as more
or less the start of a Romanian deadlift.
So youre standing there now with your
ass out, your chin forward and the bar
somewhere between just above the knees
and mid-thigh with your back tight and
hamstrings nicely pre-loaded. Welcome
to the power position.
The Big Bang
What happens now? Now its time to
explode. Avoid the tendency to start
pulling with the arms and just drive your
feet through the floor. Your hips should
push forward like they would if you
were jumping. At that point, you want
the traps to kick in with an explosive
shrug. As violent a shrug as you can
manage. Everyone kind of has a
different way to think about this whole
part of the movement. Some think
9
Jump!, others explode. I tend to think
about driving my shoulders up into the
roof.
Heres where decent coaching kicks in.
Or at least some decent mental imagery.
You want to pull with your arms but
avoid dropping your elbows and doing a
power reverse curl. Which is what
youll see most poorly coached athletes
doing. Picture holding onto a fixed bar.
Now just think about pulling yourself
down to that bar. You dont imagine
yourself reverse curling down to it, do
you? Chances are you think about
keeping your elbows up, softening
your legs and pulling straight down.
Same thing youre trying to do here.
Only the bar will still have some upward
movement, making your life even easier.
Contact, contact, contact. Keep pulling
on that bar at all times so you never lose
the feel of where it is. Thats whatll
make the bar and you meet in the
middle. Done right and you wont even
have to think about the catch portion.
Itll mostly happen out of necessity.
Still, for those who want to think about
it, you pull as hard as you can and when
the bar is at your shoulders (not chest!)
you literally whip your elbows around
and out. Bam. Its yours.
Yeah, I know. Its slightly more complex
than that, but not as complex as most
think. In terms of little things, try to
avoid the tendency to jump your feet out
into a wide stance to catch. Just bend the
knees and catch it flexed in a partial
front squat position. Much easier to
recover from. Oh, and just to let you
know, a power clean is anything above
parallel. Chances are youll be catching
the bar a lot higher than that.
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10
Heres a little video I put together to
hopefully illustrate all the points I just
mentioned:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSm
8XMlo198
As I mentioned previously, Im far from
perfect and way far from explosive but if
I can pull this stuff off anyone can.
Minutia
Invariably, when something like this gets
posted, the questions come out about
sets, reps, frequency, weight and the
like. Everyone differs in what they
respond to but Ill happily share my
experiences and opinions about some of
it.
One, I dont believe in high rep olifts. At
all. Basically, I figure most stuff over 5
reps is a complete waste of time and
even higher than triples is suspect. These
are high skill moves you are trying to
accomplish and fatigue does set in and
that makes it sloppy. Practice,
remember, doesnt make perfect. It
makes permanent. So perfect practice
makes perfect. As long as youre always
getting into that same start position,
thinking of whatever keys you need to
(chest out, back tight, chin out, weight
on center of foot), youre drilling
yourself into a better position.
Once fatigue starts to loom, youre going
to start pulling with your arms, not
finishing the hip extensions and
otherwise turning into a sloppy cheat
reverse curl. There are legions of trainers
doing this for fitness. Whatever. If you
want to rail your heart rate with high rep
exercises, grab a kettlebell and go nuts.
Volume V, Issue 3
If you want to get better at something,
strive for better reps not just more of
them.
As I get more experience (read as
older), I find that singles work better
for me than anything else for the olifts.
However, what Id recommend to people
starting out would be doubles. 6 to 10 of
them. Ladders would also work well for
this work.
And because doing more reps really does
make you better, Id increase the
frequency so youre doing them 2 or 3
times a week. Once a week will still
work, but more often will work faster.
Same as with any other high skill
movement.
The biggest mistake I usually see is
people either using too little weight for
too long. This goes back to those folks
doing high rep sets. If you can do sets of
10 with a weight, its worthless.
Honestly. It isnt going to teach you
anything. It isnt going to ingrain the
pattern or anything else because weight
that light moves radically different than
heavy weight. It could be compared to
doing sets of 10 at 135# for squats and
telling people youre training to do 4
plates. You need to feel the weight. . Itll
take a little playing to get it right and
starting off light is erring properly on the
side of caution. Just dont stay there.
225# doesnt move the same as 135#.
Get Up! The Official Newsletter of the Lifting and Throwing Page
October 2006
So thats the hang power clean in a very
wordy nutshell. Its actually easier to do
than it is to explain, but I still
recommend finding your local friendly
Olympic lifting facility and asking the
guys about tips, tricks and technique.
Who knows? You may get sucked into
another sport altogether.
Changes
David Witt
David is by far Get Ups most popular writerwhich
ranks up there in compliments with being Rock
Sprints Best Opera Singerand continues to mine the
gold from his continuing journey in sports.
If youre going to be a thrower, you
have to be in it for the long haul.
Throwing is a skill that takes a long time
to learn and perfect if you want to
compete at high levels. It is not any
wonder that Olympic Medalists are
usually near or over their 30th birthday.
Throwing well takes years.
For the middle and high school athlete,
I can offer this. Work on learning the
technique of the event the first year, two
if you have time, and after you have a
foundation and understand what you are
trying to do, then start worrying about
adding strength. Every coach and
thrower around can tell you about the
massively strong kid in the weight room
that couldnt throw a shot over 40 feet.
Starting this way, learning the event
first and adding strength later, can also
help you avoid the pitfalls of learning
bad technique and then trying to unlearn
it later. A story to illustrate.
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 I started throwing discus my freshman
year in high school. My technique in
high school was basically a lot like Al
Oerter, me spinning out of the 2 position
and basically backing across the ring
because of over rotation. There was no
pivot in the back into a South African
position and sprinting across the ring.
John Powells video was years away
from production. So my senior year I
qualified for the state meet, and the week
before the state meet my coach suggests
that I should change my technique to a
more linear style. Coach, I dont have
time to relearn a new technique, Ive
been doing this for 4 years. I have to go
with what I have, I said to my coach,
and I did. Habits ingrained over 4 years
take more than a week to unlearn.
So I went off to college and started
working on a more linear sprint. After
my first year, I thought I had it, went
out, and taped some throws on video.
Much to my dismay, I was still backing
out of the back. One year wasnt
enough. It ended up taking me at least 3
years to change my technique. Actually,
I have a nice picture of myself taken 5
years after high school at our state
games sprinting out of the back nicely,
so it may have taken longer. The longer
you make a mistake, the longer it takes
to unlearn it. Neural pathways get
hardwired into the body and the body
wants to keep things the same. Just
think about how hard it would be to
learn to write with your opposite hand. I
would have loved to learn how to squat
snatch, but I never had any coaching and
so I taught myself the power
movements. So for the last twenty years
Ive been doing things wrong in the
weight room. If it took me an equal
amount of time to relearn the discus, it
would take me twenty years to relearn
12 Get Up! The Official Newsletter of the Lifting and Throwing Page
12
weightlifting. Then Ill be over 60.
Good thing Im just a thrower and not a
weightlifter. So Ill just stay the
challenge for anyone that can coach the
lifts, but I digress.
Find out what you want your style
to look like and learn it from the get-
go.
Now, everybody, masters included. I
believe that you can only work on at
most two things a year. Actually, I
usually pick one thing a year. Last year
for example, after throwing discus for
Dan and Brian at camp, they told me to
work on my left side. My left side was
collapsing as I crossed the ring. This
helped with my block at the front and
gave me a stable wall to push against.
This year Im working on concomitant
feet. More than one or two things just
creates static. You decide you need to
work on pinning your right foot at the
back, pivoting in the center, and raising
your orbit at the front. What happens is
you concentrate so much on the pin and
the pivot you forget the orbit. So next
throw, you try to remember the orbit,
and forget about the pivot in the middle.
Nothing gets worked on over a
consistent basis. But working on one
thing will get that problem ironed out
pretty quickly. After three or four years
I will have some great technique to
throw with. What would your technique
look like if you could go back in time
and work on one or two things starting 4
years ago? How much would it add to
your throwing?
Published by Daniel John
Daniel John, Editor
Copyright Daniel John, 2006
All Rights Reserved
Any unauthorized reproduction is strictly prohibited.