Most young athletes and a number of ”coaches” seem to be in a hurry to go to the gym and start lifting more and more heavy weights . This is probably the ”easy” way to achieve early impressive performances and everybody is happy and talking about the bright future of the young prodige  . Getting ”stronger” will certainly improve the throwing performances faster than the rather complexe and laborious technical work . In fact , you can throw bad and hard …and far..and then believe that you just need to get stronger and stronger and it will keep going… Training is so simple no ? why care about all the fancy exercises when you just need to pump a few kilogs more on the bar for the same result !

It is true that athletes and especially the young ones need to get stronger , but before rushing under the  bars with the classic big 5 exercises (Clean – Bench press – Squat – Snatch – Dead lift)  inherited from the weightlifting historic role in sport performance , it could be a good idea to think twice and a bit more ahead than just starting to climb the pyramide to maximal strength !!!

Weight lifters are supposed to be the strongest people in the sporting world ….but are poor throwers. Then something must go wrong somewhere !  And too often it has gone wrong in the early stages of a young athlete career .

When starting conditioning , the good attitude is to follow the different stages

1-Knowledge of the demands of the event

2-Knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the would be athlete in relation with age and development

3-Initial stage of capacity to move and control your body in different situations -General conditioning

4-Introduction of light additional loads (Med balls – light and diverses implements) -General conditioning with specific orientation

5-Learning of the right techniques and postures to manage more and more loads and more and more speeds – Specific conditioning toward maximal strength

6-Progressive increase of the maximal performances in the search of the optimal rate between load and speed – Development of the specific strength and speed out of the optimal maximal strength

Always keep in mind : A thrower can lift weights but is not a weight lifter

LIFTING is not the same thing like THROWING  !!!

Available documents :  Visitors  Vid 2  Training circuit with light load , extract.

1. Members only :  Vid 1  Training circuit with light loads (Bar 20kg) for a young (15y) and ”small” hammer thrower   (Stage 4)  Simple well known exercises which cover all the main muscular groups of the body and the specific requirements of the hammer throw.

More documents to come