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My
Dinner with Klaus
by Jeff Gorski
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Gorski
does not inhale air, but the javelin. He breathes this event.
He has
the true passion of the fanatic, in a positive sense. His
observations on
the training and technique emphases of these world class
throwers from
Germany are instructive and thought-provoking.
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This spring I was fortunate to have been able to spend time
with Tom Pukstys as well as four of the world's
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Figure
1: Raymond Hecht and Peter Blank represent
the level of fitness of the elite javelin thrower.
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best javelin
throwers from Germany: Boris Henry, Raymond Hecht, Andreas Linden
and Peter Blank. These athletes and their coaches
spent four to seven weeks training in Baton Rouge
with Tom. This gave me a great opportunity to watch their training
and discuss javelin throwing philosophy with them and their
coaches, especially Klaus Bartonietz,
one of the top sport scientists and biomechanical researchers
in the world. In the time that I spent with them I had the chance
to compare the German and American attitudes on sport in general
and the javelin specifically and was surprised by some things
and amazed by many others. I would like to share some of these
with you in the hope that it will add to your understanding
of what it takes to become a world class thrower. I found the
German athletes to be well conditioned, explosive individuals
who are intelligently trained in a very systematic manner,
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Figure
2: Author, Ray Hecht, Peter Blank, Bernd Bierwisch,
Andreas Linden and Peter Wentt in Baton Rouge, LA. April
1998.
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with an excellent
grasp of what you need to do to throw the javelin very far.
They have trained over many years to reach a fitness level that
gives them the capacity to train at high intensity and to recover
quickly. They
have incorporated the basic movements needed to throw far into
their own particular throwing styles, taking advantage of their
individual physical abilities. This is not very different from
what the top Americans are doing except for one important fact:
there is only one U.S. thrower over 280 feet, while the Germans
have five, from a population base of about one third of ours.
This obviously has something to do with differences in the two
societies and what is important to each,
which is something that I will discuss later. There also is
a difference in the coaching of athletes,
especially since there is a higher percentage of knowledgeable
coaches in Germany who have a "feel" for the javelin than there
are in the U.S. While many American coaches have a general idea
of javelin technique, after a period of time the throwers reach
a level that exceeds the knowledge of their coaches, and the
athlete's progress is limited because of it. |
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Figure
3 & 4: General athletic activity (left) for younger
atheletes is followed by more specialized training for
the older (right).
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EUROPEAN APPROACHES
To improve
both consistency and distance year after year requires direction
from someone who has the ability to see not only what the athlete
is doing now, but also can "see" what they will throw like years
down the road and can guide
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Figure
5: Athletes 16 and older benefit from more intense and
specific event training; Brian Kollar (70.94 with the
international javelin at 18) is an example.
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them to
that goal. Many American throwers are not associated with this
type of coach or do not have the "fire" to continue to reach
such lofty goals as a world ranking, or both. Every year we
produce a number of throwers who reach 70 meters or more, and
yet they seem to vanish almost as quickly as they appear. For
every Tom Pukstys there seem to be a dozen Eric Smiths. A big
part of this is our country's obsession with equating success
with money; a great athlete should make a lot of money like
Carl Lewis or Michael Jordan, and being a great javelin thrower
in the U.S. just doesn't attract that kind of attention or cash.
There are avenues that can allow a thrower to continue a career
and still make a decent living, but you need to pursue them
as aggressively as you would your training goals or an entry
level job situation. This brings up the heart and desire of
the athlete-the willingness to sacrifice. In today's society
of sound bites and short attention spans, few people have the
internal discipline to make that effort. Those who make that
commitment and effort have a much better chance of reaching
their athletic potential than those who wait for the magic fairy
to do it for them. While there are a few programs or grants
that can help for a short time, don't count on someone to dump
money or equipment on you because you have some potential. I've
been told by Nike, adidas and others that they're giving equipment
to distance runners because it sells more shoes for them since
there are more joggers than throwers. As with most things in
life, if it's worth having you probably will have to sacrifice
to get it. Basically, if you want to be a thrower for fame and
fortune, move to Europe. In Europe, if you are a track and field
athlete with promise and drive, you will get some support that
makes it easier to reach your
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Figure
6: Boris Henry throws a 1200-gram javelin in training
off a short runup.
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goals. A
big part of this is how the major sports compare to the U.S.:
here it's football, basketball and baseball, the traditional
big three. Across the pond it's soccer, basketball and athletics,
so the big-framed athlete who would be a linebacker or tackle
here is drawn to the throws or multi-events in the rest of the
world. There is also a difference in how each society lives.
While Europeans have a high standard of living, they generally
live in smaller homes, eat less meat, pay more for gas and pay
higher taxes than we do. They also have more support from their
employers in benefits and vacation time and fitness/wellness
programs or sport teams that allow time off to train and compete.
Sport is more along the lines of club and AAU teams here rather
than the school or university-run programs that we are familiar
with. The effort in these early sport programs in Europe is
more geared towards all-round athletic experience and identifying
talent for future specific event training. All of us have seen
the youth league coach with the Woody Hayes/Bobby Knight "must
win" attitude, instead of teaching sport skills. You have a
greater chance of developing good future athletes if you have
a feeder program that stresses skill improvement and understanding
the needs of your sport for continued success, rather than winning
games. There's not a lot of glory in being a mentor in the past
of some athlete, but all the great ones will remember the individual
who got them started on the path to their success. The individual
nature of track & field makes it difficult in this country for
talented youngsters to come across that person who will stimulate
them to pursue greatness in the circle or on the runway. Instead
they are steered towards jump shots or home runs. If they are
lucky enough to have a good track coach in high school they
have probably made the decision of which athletic path to travel
before they give throwing a fair try.
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Figure
7: Raymond Hecht and Peter Blank develop power doing
crossovers with a bungee cord.
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This is the
major difference why other countries with smaller populalions
and fewer resources can consistently turn out great track athletes
while Americans seem to run in cycles in some events that are
not "natural" events for us. We always have had lots of great
sprinters and horizontal jumpers and fewer athletes in the shot
and discus. But success in these events have a high relationship
to success in football. Just look at the lists of college football
recruits and then compare that with the high school lists of
top 25 track athletes. But in more technical events that require
an "apprenticeship" to learn the skill before success is reached
we have more peaks and valleys than the other countries where
there are better coaches to teach young athletes the correct
basics of their events. In my discussions with the German athletes
they told me that early on they were exposed to a variety of
events but that there was a "specialist" around, someone with
more than just general knowledge of an event, who could help
advance any of the more promising youths. A very general impression
of European sport development is varied activity from 8 to 11
years, more specialized physical and event training from 12
to IS, with advanced technical and physical development geared
towards their event from 16 to 19. We can learn a big lesson
from this program by trying to develop a feeder system that
finds talent and keeps the athlete interested and motivated
in his/her event.
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THE TRAINING
In
terms of the training that I observed, the general impression
I got was that there were two schools of thought being
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Figure
11: A solid blocking action of the left side is essential
to make use of the "elastic reflex."
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used by the
two coaches. Klaus Bartonietz, who works with Boris Henry (90.44m)
and Andreas Linden (86+m) had his athletes throw a great deal
during the times I saw them train, as many as 50 throws in a
session off a runup at estimated intensities of 70 to 80%. When
I saw them in mid-April, Boris was just ending a cycle of throwing
that had him doing this type of session every other day for
two weeks and included heavy (up to 1200 grams) and light j
avelins (600 grams) as well as the regular implements (Fig.
6) While he commented on how much he had thrown and felt tired
and flat, on his last throw of the last workout he threw a 600g
javelin that hit a fence that was over 102 meters away! This
gives an indication of the type of concentration an athlete
of this level has: to be able to ignore fatigue and allow the
body to go on "auto-pilot" and be correct in technique so you
can throw an 600g javelin cleanly and with speed to fly over
100 meters. This was still early in the year for this intensity
of throwing training, and there was still quite a volume of
weight training and special power development exercises being
done in these two-a-day training sessions. A great deal of attention
was also given to nutrition and diet, good food with low fat
levels, and massage therapy to help recovery from the high levels
of training. The other group of athletes that I saw train under
Bernd Bierwisch and includes Raymond Hecht (92.60m) and Peter
Blank (88+m). They were spending their sessions doing a great
deal of power development work, both general and specific. While
I only saw three training sessions with them, they did no javelin
throwing, but did a great amount of jumping, weight lifting
and crossover work,
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Figure
12: Boris Henry actively moves his right leg out of
the way to set up the bracing of the plant leg-the "soft
step."
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both pulling
and being pulled with bungee cords (Fig. 7). But I'll never
forget the nearly three-hour session of measured throws with
a 16-lb. kettleball (a shot with a handle welded on) featuring
a dozen different throws. Some were the traditional
throws: backward over head or forward from a squat, while others
I have never seen before, like reverse discus style with each
hand, and even slinging it with your foot hooked in the handle!
Words can't do some of these throws justice (Figs. 8, 9 &10).
Record were kept on the best of three efforts, so this was obviously
a regular part of their training. This shows me that power development
is a big part of their training, but I can't give an honest
insight as to how much throwing they did at this time of year
as both Peter and Raymond were recently recovered from injuries
or surgery. |
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Figure
13: Landing from the crossover should be over the crossover
leg to avoid losing any forward speed that should go
into the block.
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MAJOR POINTS OF TECHNIQUE
Talking with both Bernd and Klaus I did get a clear idea
of what they feel is important in technique so as to throw far.
The most
important aspect is to generate an "elastic reflex" as a result
of the braking action of the plant leg. A technique that gets
the biggest number of muscles under stretch at impact is what
is most desirable. The goal is to get "on" the left leg as soon
as possible with a big blocking action (Fig. 11), that is, stick
the plant and let the throw happen from the stretch. A good
idea is to think about sliding into the block and let the energy
"flow" into the release without wasting any. An interesting
point that Klaus mentioned was that as runup speed increased,
the power needed to block correctly increased four times that
speed increase. That is, if there was a 10% increase in speed,
the power to stop would need to increase 40%. To them, stopping
correctly has more to do with throwing far than a faster runup.
Another point that we discussed was the action of the right
leg as it lands from the crossover. While we agreed that the
action is not a push or thrust, they stressed that it is active
in getting out of the way so the body moves into the block for
the "elastic reflex." This is the action that I have called
a "soft-step" (Fig. 12) or a flopping action. They also spoke
of the need to use the left leg to "paw" at the ground to aggressively
jump into the crossover and plant and the need for an overall
good rhythm in the runup. This means that there must be equal
use of the legs in the throwing technique, which may sound elementary,
but many of us have seen javelin throwers who stress the action
of the right leg so much in the crossover that they never get
into a good plant and delivery action. The effect is equally
aggressive with the jump or takeoff of the left leg and the
swing or crossover of the right. Janis Lusis told me years ago
that javelin technique was "long jumping with a stick in your
hand," which gives a good idea of the importance of rhythm and
where the effort should be in this phase of the throwing technique.
Upon landing from the crossover the right foot should be under
the center of gravity of the body so there is no slowing down
of forward motion (Fig. 13) that would take away from the blocking
action and a resulting elastic reflex of the left leg plant.
For many years athletes in an effort to get a long pull on the
javelin tried to land with the right foot well in front of the
body to get a big backward lean, which they did, but at the
expense of a quick plant and an explosive delivery. Landing
on the right foot in this manner made the right leg do what
they wanted the left to do-jolt the body into a quick forward
rotation. Klaus talked about optimal use of body position in
the throw once you get to the plant and are actually beginning
the throw. You have essentially a 1 80-degree path of pull on
the javelin at most, so you should use a throwing technique
that makes the best use of your physical abilities. For example,
Jan Zelezny, throwing with 12 o'clock at the middle of the sector,
begins his pull at about 7:30 and ends it at about 2:00. This
year Klaus was working with Boris Henry to start his pull further
back, at 7:00 and finish at 1:00 to make better use of his great
trunk power. In previous years Boris was more of a 6:00 to 12:00
thrower. The more twisted the trunk is, the greater the potential
is for big throws, but the tradeoff is that the technique is
more difficult to time correctly and carry all your speed into
the block. At the other extreme are Steve Backley and Mick Hill,
who keep a very straight line with the hips and shoulders and
have deliveries in the 5:00 to 1 1:00 range. The danger here
is that with so much speed and so little torque you can easily
"dump" to the left and fall away from the delivery if the technique
rhythm is off. You need to develop a style of throwing technique
that takes advantage of the athlete's best physical ability
and not make him copy someone else! Klaus and Bernd also spoke
of the need to channel energy effectively in the throwing technique.
The total look of the runup and throw should be clean and economical,
with no wasted or unneeded actions in the effort. Energy generated
must be directed totally into the throw, not wasted on trying
to maintain balance because of poor mechanics or worthless movements.
What the German coaches and athletes are doing to throw far
is not radically different from what good coaches and athletes
in the U.S. are doing. The big difference is in how they are
able to do it. We need a better and consistent commitment at
all levels to make this a stronger event for us-with more exposure
at the grass roots and youth level to find prospects. We need
education so people don't fear the event and will include it
in more meets, and a better network of support and clinics to
keep coaches and athletes motivated to stay with the event longer
which will lead to more success and continue to feed the system
from the ground up. We have a wealth of talent in this country
to draw from and it is up to us as coaches to go out and educate
and motivate these athletes to gravitate toward the best sport
in the world! |
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