Posts by ShaunP

@Dirk Walsh Rumourmongering is dangerous and some more care should be employed before publishing some rumours as it can discredit the source of that publication if it has not been thought through and perhaps researched a little bit, rather like criticism.

@José Sanchez It was not the IAAF that came up with the format of the Diamond League but the meeting promoters themselves, and they were following the precedent that the IAAF had given them in excluding the Hammer from the Grand Prix Final in Monaco which was on the basis of facility limitations, but the door was open. The main problem here is that the Meeting Promoters do not like the Hammer event and are in general uneducated about the Throws events, They do not like big Hammer (or Discus) cages getting in the way of the viewing public, and most will choose to exclude the events rather than look at solutions such as Berlin has done where they have made a special white netting material; which does not restrict the viewing, but unfortunately is not strong enough for the Hammer, or the use of great design of Cages such as the Lance Deal designed "Thunderdome" Discus cage that folds flat in 1 minute so can be taken down immediately after the event. This is the reason they give and choose to have the Javelin and Shot events.
Of course Koji and Adam have raised their opinions about the lack of Hammer in particular at the highest levels within the IAAF, but it is still down to the meeting promoters as to which events they include so the public has to make their feelings known to them. Is there the demand within the "General Public" for these events....this is always a concern, and this and a general lack of understanding is also why we generally only see highlights of the top 3 throws in the TV coverage.

There are a number of issues with this thread, and frankly I think that it is not a good move on the part of Throwholics to put this in the public domain without any factual evidence to back it up, and I find it irresponsible. Throwholics has lost a lot of credibility by putting this rumour on this forum.

Firstly the IOC cannot ban Hammer Throwing from the Olympic Games, they can only make a decision regarding the Sports included and not the events, that is up to the Governing Body, in this case the IAAF. The IOC did vote to remove certain sports such as Wrestling and Baseball in the past, and has also introduced certain other, perhaps more modern sports with great participation and following such as Triathlon. Often these decisions are based on total numbers of competitors (limited to 10,000) and costs. I know they would like to get rid of Equestrian events based on costs of shipping and housing Horses!

The IOC does not have any control as to what events are held within the various sports, so any rumour would have to be related to the IAAF, and as Garry Hill has said, he would have heard about it if there were any solid basis to this rumour, as I am sure would Koji Murofushi and Adam Nelson who sit on the IAAF Athletes Commission.

The hammer is an event that is practiced widely around the World, and while there might be an issue regarding safety at some venues, the IAAF would be better placed to look at redesigning the cage to make it safer, as the last attempt to do this was not good, and proved very costly to many stadiums who had to replace cages.

The other issue regarding the Hammer and the Diamond League, was not that the event was removed from the Diamond League, but rather that it was never in the Diamond League. This went back even further to the IAAF Grand Prix Final event that was traditionally held in Monaco. The issue was specific to Monaco where the stadium actually has the Track surface on the 6th floor of the stadium, and there is a car park beneath it and the grass landing area is not deep enough to take hammers as they would damage the roof of the Car Park below! This also affected the shot put, but they chose to put indoor landing mats on the surface of the grass so that they could go ahead with the event. Unfortunately the Hammer event took place at a separate competition in Szombathely in Hungary.

This unfortunately gave the organisers of the Diamond League the in that they needed to not include the Hammer in their events, mainly because of the size of the Cage and the restricted viewing of the other events...at least this is what they said, and the separate Hammer Grand Prix was organised! This is a great shame and I hope that this will be changed at some point, but this is largely a Meeting Organiser decision, and for the large part they are not big fans of the Throws in General. All events (other than the Hammer) were supposed to be included in equal numbers in the Diamond League in their original format, but this was removed after a couple of years, so there will always be sprints and distance races but very few Throws included.

What we need is more personalities and superstars within the Throws, so that they have to include the events. When Thorkildsen was throwing well there was always a Javelin!

ShaunP

Coach @Bill Pendleton , @Rutger Smith is correct in the fact that arm length and therefore distance travelled plays an important role in Power output. Remember Power is Work (Force x Distance) divided by time taken to perform the movement.
What I said in my previous post was that training with the highest load with which you can achieve 5 reps in 6 seconds is a good way of training for power, which is not what you did with your athletes, as they were all inside the six seconds comfortably. Again this is a method of training that applies similar principles to the MuscleLab.
What you did with your athletes was take the 50% 1RM value as a training load, which is approximately what an athlete will find their peak power output in the Bench Press, although this could vary from 40-60% depending on their particular characteristics, which is why we used the machine to measure to determine the "optimum" load. This is then the best load to train with in order to develop power and to move the Force/Power curve to the right.
This is also a training methodology, and so you would need to train like this and see what results come after a certain period of training. Typically we would do as many reps as you could while maintaining speed, as when you drop below 90% max power you are no longer developing fast twitch.
I might combine these two methods and train your athletes at this 50% 1RM for a while, but do not set the Reps, but rather look for the speed to drop and quit at that point. For some this may be 4 reps and other 7 reps. Then I would look at the other "test" methodology after say a 4 week period of this training and then look for the highest load that the athlete could complete 5 reps in 6 seconds, and see if this load moves up significantly as I think it will.
Interestingly 1RM also seems to improve significantly with this type of training because you have developed the ability to accelerate a load, so you are able to overcome the dead weight of a 1RM easier.
The most important thing however is to see how the throwing distance responds to this type of training.

Hi Coach @Bill Pendleton . I have that picture already on my iPad as @Tony Ciarelli pointed me towards it the other day, so I saved a copy! Nice times probably around 1996 ahead of Atlanta Olympic Games. Mark Parlin was a talent! Maybe see you when I am in the US in Spring...will be at Mt SAC as usual!

For Coach Pendleton, the MuscleLab was developed in Norway by a company called Ergotest and I think the website is Home - MUSCLELAB – Ergotest Innovation or perhaps .no
the MicroMuscleLab was a handheld version of the big system which could measure all kinds of sensors including force plates, electrogoiniometers and emg activity, but we only used about 5% of its capabilities so I worked with the developer to come up with the handheld unit that worked with a linear encoder attached to the bar to measure the speed and distance of the bar movement! and therefore the acceleration and power output. The biggest advantage of this unit was that it was very portable as it fitted into a small camera bag. The power+ system could also be linked to a contact mat or infra red sensor to measure jumps and reaction time so was very useful.
the test that we developed which Rutger spoke about was a simple test of 5reps with a certain weight, typically 100kg, that allowed us to compare athletes. The 1632watts that he spoke about was an average power output over these 5 reps and was pretty accurate to compare as the training year developed. Justin Rhode spoke earlier about a similar system, the Tendo Analyser, which measures peak power but we found not to be too accurate when compared to the MucleLab.
the MuscleLab also allowed us to predict the optimum load, and also the theoretical max load which was a useful predictor of 1RM without any potential risks for injury and to see progression. The full machine also allowed us to plot the force/power curves of athletes under a range of loads so we could see the curve move to the right under more effective training, and also how power was seen at specific loads such as the weight of the shot. We could compare athletes this way which was very interesting.
i am not sure if they still produce the microMucleLab, but they made a version where the linear encoder plugged directly into a laptop via USB and the software gave the information which was very practical. They have been developing a new MuscleLab which is now released but is all singing and dancing but probably much more than anyone other than a performance lab would need, and it is very expensive.
what I found from working with the MuscleLab over a number of years was that you can apply the principles that it teaches you without the need for the technology. In general a useful rule of thumb is the highest load you can move 5 reps in 6 seconds is a pretty good indicator of power, and this holds true for bench and squats. Olympic lifts you are pretty much performing at hight power any way if you are performing them right. I did change more towards hang snatch as my main source of power as this generated highest relative outputs, and then hang cleans.
The other over-riding principle that came out of this is to always have the intent to move the bar as fast as possible in all lifts and all sets. This way you will develop fast twitch fibres at all stages of the programme. This has been applied with great effect by Vesteinn Hafsteinsson and his athletes over the past 6-8 years, and you can see the examples of this in the lifting films on the Home | Global Throwing website. Kim Christensen performing 215kg x6 reps fast in Bench is very impressive. Vesteinn does not use the machine, only the principles that he has got from my use of the machine, and this has been the biggest change in his training methods in recent years.
I hope this helps with this discussion. It is not about how much you Bench but in how you do it as Speed is King here always. If you want to throw 20m you have to have a release speed approaching 13m/s so this is the most important factor. It is much more important to have people move reasonable loads fast (peak of power curve for Bench Press is around 50% 1RM) than just a big slow maximum bench. As Dr Bondarchuk notes in his book, the correlation between 1RM Bench Press and max distance thrown in Shot Putt is 0.39 so you should not spend a great deal of time worrying about it. Once you have reasonable strength levels you can throw far.
ShaunP

Another one:

Rutger Smith in a Dutch Chewing Gum promotion: