Periodization for throwing and my next cycle (Part 1 of 2)

We all know exactly how to apply this to weightlifting, but why don't we apply it to throwing?

There's a stereotype that American throwers spend too much time in the weight room, think too much about

maximal strength, or don't throw any farther than their international counterparts despite being much stronger. There is some truth to this, I think. It is definitely NOT true, however, that Americans by and large are any stronger than other throwers out there. Spend a few minutes on youtube and you'll see videos of Tomasz Majewski, Gerd Kanter, Joachim Olsen, Manuel Martinez, and Tibor Gescek either lifting incredible weights, or talking about how they lifted incredible weights in their prime. I also don't need to reiterate to anyone who knows how amazingly strong Jacko Gill is for his age.

Regardless of nationality, some throwers and their coaches might be stronger than they need to be or incorporate too much general strength into their program but not enough throwing. I was talking to a coach at one university this year who had their throwers take 12 throws in a practice, then head into the weight room. Yes, TWELVE throws. They weren't tapering for a big championship or resting for a special mid-season meet, thats just all that the athletes took in most practices. This same coached talked a lot with me about what days they lift, what exercises they do, the exact percentages of max they lift at, exactly how they were going to work into the next weight room cycle, etc. Whereas throwing practice consisted of a general warm-up, 12 throws with only a little general coaching, then practice was done.  Is 12 throws a day really enough to teach your body how to use that added strength/speed?  I don't think so. What good is all that work in the weight room going to be if you're barely applying any of it to your throwing?

The more into coaching I get, the more this way of thinking blows my mind. The majority of throwers/coaches are so very specific and so meticulous when it comes to their weightlifting, but are very general and unstructured when it comes to the circle. How many athletes/coaches have you met that can tell you exactly how much they bench, squat, and clean, but if you ask what their personal bests are, they say "Um, I don't know, like, 50 feet..."? How many have you met that can tell you the exact volume-load of this month's lifting cycle, but can't tell you how many throws they take in a practice?  How many practices have you seen where there is no plan from the coach, but instead, "Ok, take some more throws...well, that wasn't great, maybe take one with the 6k...ok, back to the 16...wait, that didn't look good, try this drill..."?  If an athlete is weak in a lift, then you prescribe a certain amount of sets and reps at a certain intensity to raise that lift.  If an athlete has a consistent technical flaw, why wouldn't you prescribe an exact plan of drills/throws to try to correct it, and do it consistently until they improve?

Martin Bingisser has written extensively about how Dr. Anitoliy Bondarchuck trains his athletes.  The more I read about Dr. B's methods, the more I realize I have to learn, because they are that intricate.  The main idea behind his methods, though, seems to be that everything must be based off of throwing first.  Determine your workout in the circle first; number of throws, with what implement, intensity of throws and frequency of sessions. Then you decide what assistance/general exercises you'll do in the weight room, their intensity, frequency, etc.  Plenty of other coaches and athletes have started training like this, I only mentioned Dr. B because he's obviously the most prominent.

So the next time you're planning a training cycle think about things like: How many throws will you take? What implements (different weights)? What will the intensity of the throws be (what distance that corresponds to a certain % of your "max"?) What order will the throws/drills be? Most importantly, all the general athletic work you do needs to be channeled into your technique so the implement goes further - so how are you going to accomplish that?

I will go into how I plan to accomplish that in my next post...

Health Tip of the Week: Whole Grain Buns

So for my inaugural health tip of the week, here's something you can do over Memorial Day Weekend and beyond. I'm not going to tell you to only eat turkey/chicken/salmon/veggie burgers or dogs. Though I am big on those, if you can't have ground beef on Memorial Day, whats the point of being American?

However, it will definitely be worth having your beef burgers and hot dogs on whole grain buns. Processed, "white" bread has almost exclusively fast-digesting carbohydrates. If you don't use these carbs immediately for energy, they get digested quickly and stored in your fat cells. Overconsumption of these low quality carbohydrates, day after day, year after year, can contribute to increased fat gain and all the health problems associated with that (higher bad cholesterols, weight gain, obesity, heart disease, etc.) as well as leaving you feeling "un-full", leading to wanting more food shortly after eating.

Instead, throw your burgers and dogs onto whole grain buns. Whole grain breads have much denser carbohydrates, meaning it takes a longer time to digest them. This means you'll feel fuller longer, and won't want as much dessert! In addition, because they digest so gradually, they will get stored in your muscles first, where they'll be easier for your body to utilize for energy down the road.

Whole Grain Breads > White Breads!

The Slosh Bar

Also known as the slosh pipe, slosh tube, water bar/tube/pipe, and probably a couple other names.  There are lots of videos/ideas on them out there, so I'm adding mine into the mix.

The concept is simple...fill a pipe about 1/2 to 2/3 of the way with water and do exercises with it.  There needs to be enough room in the pipe for the water to "slosh" around, creating an unstable resistance.  Thus, you have to constantly have your shoulders, trunk muscles(sometimes referred to as the "core") and hip stabilizers active in order to stay balanced, no matter what exercise you're doing!

Many strength coaches and personal trainers tout bosu balls, stability balls, balance boards, etc as a great way to build "core strength", "core stability", or prevent injuries in other ways.  There is some research out there on these things, though it is actually very inconclusive.  These things may have some merit for injury prevention, but the point is, the research showing that these things definitely works is just not there.

Why might this be?  Think about it - bosus, stability balls, and balance boards create an unstable surface, forcing the body to correct the position of the surface in order to balance.  Now ask yourself...what sports, or activities of daily living (ADLs) for that matter, EVER take place on something other than solid ground?  Surfing and kayaking maybe?  Almost all our sports and ADLs take place on a solid surface.  Almost all sports and ADLs require our muscles and skeletons to transmit forces to a solid surface in order to balance ourselves.  Using your body to stabilize a surface vs. using a surface to stabilize your body are two different things!

These both require some skill, and may be fun, but how do they teach your body to apply force to a stable surface?

Now imagine this scenario flipped around.  Imagine standing still on solid ground, holding some kind of weight that is unstable.  The slightest deviation in your posture, and this weight continues to pull you in that direction.  Instead of correcting the plane of the surface you're on, you have to push against a solid surface to change your body position in order to stabilize the unstable resistance.  This is what happens in sport and everyday life, and this is exactly what the slosh pipe does!

This video may help you understand better what I'm talking about.  I start off by explaining how I made it. The exercises start at 2:50. Keep in mind the bar weighs only 49 lbs, barely any more than a standard barbell...



See how the pipe moves around by itself?  See how I have to constantly correct what it's doing in order to maintain my balance on a solid surface? 

I'm not saying that unstable surface training/devices are useless, but I think they're overused, and they don't do all they claim to do.  I AM saying, however, I think a slosh bar is better than all those things for a lot of different purposes!

Earlier I said there isn't a lot of scientific research on the efficacy of unstable surface training.  Well, there isn't a lot on the slosh bar either.  Everything you just read is simply my theory on the matter.  It all makes sense to me though, which is why I plan on researching it myself.  In addition to seeing whether or not these things can enhance athletic performance, I think it would be worth looking into physical therapy applications, as well as balance/fall prevention training in the elderly.  The possibilities are endless really.

One final thing to consider.  The cheapest Bosu trainer I could find on amazon.com was $70.  The cheapest stability ball I could find was $16 (though admittedly, these can be even cheaper).  The cheapest balance board was $10.  I won't say what the max prices I found for these things were!  As I said in the video, I bought the materials for and made those two pipes for $35.  If you get creative with the exercises, you can use a slosh pipe for everything a bosu, stability ball, or balance board can be used for.  Why spend extra $$ on tons of extra stuff that will take up extra space when you can just get a few slosh bars?

If you still aren't convinced, take about 2 hours and make your own.  After a few minutes of exercising with it, you'll see what a difference it can make.

Day 7, World Championships in Berlin

I found this left over in my draft of entries.  It is originally from September 2009 but is just getting published now.  One of these days I'll put up all my Berlin pictures, which was the original purpose of this blog...

On Day 7 of the World Championships, there were no qualifying events at the stadium. The only morning event was the Men's 50k racewalk, which was on a course then went all throughout Berlin. So, with a morning free to do what I wanted, I went to Alexanderplatz (I guess you might compare it to a borough of NYC), a region of Berlin, where a tour company gave guided bike tours of the city in English.

Standing right below the TV tower, where the tour met. As you can see it was a much cloudier day than any other day I had in Germany up to that point. As I found out, you can count on it raining 300-350 days out of the year in Germany, so I got very lucky with the weather...this day was the only day that it rained out of the 11 days I was in Germany!

First stop on the tour. The guy sitting atop the fountain is Neptune.

A shot of the TV tower from far away. Funny story behind it. It's in East Berlin. When Germany divided and the wall first went up, the East Germans realized that all their best and brightest, like the architects and engineers, were defecting or just leaving. So by the late 60's, when they wanted to build a large symbol of East German engineering/architectural prowess, they had nobody to design and build it! So the East Germans actually hired a staff of Swedish engineers to design and oversee the construction of thier tower...and this was all done in secret, to make sure nobody knew that it was non-communist westerners that were designing this supposed "East German" tower.

So they snuck in the Swedes, had them design and build the tower, then snuck the Swedes out. When it was done, the East German government marvelled at "their" new symbol of East German power and intelligence. As I mentioned before, its often rainy and cloudy in Germany. So the East Germans were in for a surprise on the first sunny day they looked at their tower...the way the sun reflected off the big ball at the top shown a very distinct vertical line and horizontal line that apparently looks very much like a christian cross! This, of course, left the aetheistic East Germans very frustrated. Despite many attempts to renovate the dome, they never succeeded in getting rid of the cross that the sun reflected off of it. So, it was a tower built by Swedes that reflected a religious symbol off of itself. A great testament to East German engineering indeed.

Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels, and myself. The guy on the left and guy in the middle were the founding fathers of modern Socialism and the authors of The Communist Manifesto. The guy on the right has yet to get into politics. This monument to those two is obviously in the East.

This big empty lot is actually a very historic site. This entire big empty lot used to be covered in one building...the Kaiser's palace. It eventually was abandoned and destroyed during/after WWI. Being in the East, the lot where the palace once stood became the grounds for East Germany's Parliament. After the wall fell, that building too, was destroyed. Now, there are plans to re-build the outside of the palace exactly as it once stood, but it will only be a facade...the inside will be a shopping mall.

Its hard to give you an idea of how big this lot was, and how big the palace used to be. It was HUGE. To give you a better idea...

THIS building used to be the horse stable to the palace!! If thats where the horses lived, imagine what the King's house was like!

This seemingly insignificant square was where a very sad moment in history happened. That building is a library, and in front of that library is where the Nazi book burnings took place. It is where German citizens were encouraged to burn books - burn any aspect of their own history - that didn't promote the Nazi agenda.

Its hard to see in this picture, but if you look close you can see some white lines through that glass. This glass covers a big hole in the middle of the sqare from the last picture. The white lines are actually empty shelves in a big room under the square. The shelves are supposed to be empty bookshelves, memorializing the books that were burned during the mass book burnings.

The Berlin Opera house. No exciting story behind this one.

Checkpoint Charlie. Originally a US military controlled checkpoint from when the Allies divided up Germany after WWII, it eventually became a border crossing between East and West Berlin once the wall went up.

A close-up of what once was the gate stand.

There is an open-air exhibition at Checkpoint Charlie explaining its history, as well as the history of the wall and German communism. These are pictures of what Checkpoint Charlie used to look like, and another East-West gate.

This, if you haven't guessed, is one of the last remaining sections of the Berlin Wall. I took a video because I wanted to show the entire thing, which I couldn't fit into a picture. It was interesting in that West Berlin was actually entirely encompassed deep within East Germany...so the wall was actually designed to keep the West Berliners in, on top of keeping East Germans from getting into West Berlin and once there, being able to travel to the west.

The wall really went up overnight - in the course of one night, the East German military surround the entire city of West Berlin with high barb wire fences, guards, and attack dogs. People went to bed on a Saturday night, seeing nothing but a city out their window, and woke up on Sunday morning to see a wall being built. It was only a matter of time before the concrete wall was up, and West Berlin was completely surrounded for 28 years.

This is the last remaining guard tower. It used to be along the wall, but the section it guarded has been torn down, and it now sits on a city street, just another part of the landscape like a bus stop or fire hydrant.

Imagine being a 20 year old German soldier, and being told "Go up into the guard tower. If you see someone trying to escape, shoot them. If you don't, we'll shoot you." This is while you spend hours at a time being able to see into the West. They put guards up there two at a time, so they could make sure the other guy wasn't planning to escape himself. In addition, you would never work with the same partner twice, so that you couldn't conspire with someone else to try to escape.

Just a parking lot, right? Actually, its where Hitler's bunker was. Desperate to erase any painful memories of WWII, the Germans caved in and paved over Hitler's bunker, and simply put a parking lot over it, with no indication of what had once been there. Imagine parking your car before work every day, having no idea that your car was parked right above where Hitler killed himself before the Soviets conquered Berlin. It wasn't until the Soccer world cup in 2006 when Berlin officials, realizing they were going to get a huge influx of foreign visitors curious about WWII history, put up that sign in the picture, recognizing that this was the site of Hitler's bunker.

The Siegessaule, or Victory Tower, a memorial to the Franco-Prussian wars of the 1800's. The Prussians (who eventually became the Germans) were ultimately the victors of all their wars...thus, the statue on top of the tower is facing France, reminding the French that Germany won!

Berlin Hauptbanhauf, the main train station in Berlin. As you can see, Germans take their trains seriously, and train is a very significant way of travel in Germany and all throughout Europe. Inside this massive train station is everything you'd find in an American airport - restaurants, information booths, currency exchange stations, everything. Some of them even have little supermarkets where you can buy groceries!

Look familiar? It should. The tour took us back past the Reichstag. Now I can say I've been there twice.

One of the coolest parts of Berlin is Museum Island, which is literally just that...an island on a river that runs through Berlin which has 5 different museums on it. I didn't get to go into any of the museums, but this is a picture of the "Old Museum", a national history museum of sorts.

I don't remember what museum this was, but I know its the one that has something from Babylon in it...give me a break, I had a ton of information to try to absorb in one day. Someday I'll go back to Berlin and if you're still reading my blog by then, you'll find out all about all the museums on Museum Island.
My tour now done, I grabbed a Doner Kebap before heading over to the stadium. Its got all the same stuff thats in turkish pizza except its on a pita type thing, as you can see. Now guess what I'm incredibly hungry for. These things and turkish pizza were so good, I'd live in Berlin just so I could have them every day.

Evening Session

A group of Japanese fans outside the stadium that travelled to support their athletes!
Terrance Trammell and David Payne went 2-3 for the US in the Men's 110m hurdles!

Graduation (kind of) and the USAW certification workshop

Three Fridays ago (May 6th for those who are counting) was my commencement for my graduate degree. It was actually a "hooding ceremony" - so technically, it wasn't a graduation. I guess its just easier for the school to have us all walk at the same time, since we'll all be finishing our theses and internships at different times. It was still a nice ceremony though, conducted like any standard graduation. One more summer class, an internship, and a thesis defense, (all of which I'm hoping to have done by the end of July) and I'll officially be done with my master's!


In more recent news, last weekend I completed the USAW Sports Performance Coach certification. For those of you who don't know, USA Weightlifting is the national governing body for the sport of Olympic Weightlifting. They offer a few different levels of certification, most of which deal with coaching competitive weightlifters. The SPC certification is more about learning the finer technical points of the main Olympic lifts (the snatch and clean & jerk), variations on the exercises, and how to teach them. I went in thinking it would mainly be stuff I alread knew, but I was wrong. It turns out that in both the snatch and the clean, my shoulders were never far enough in front of the bar...which is why my snatches and cleans from the floor have always sucked!
In addition, the teaching progressions that USAW present for teaching the lifts are certainly useful. While they do involve a decent amount of steps, it covers the basics of every portion of the lifts, and are simple enough to teach to almost anybody. I also met some new people and networked. One of the coaches there teaching had even been a hammer thrower in college. He certainly knew his stuff when it came to lifting, and was pretty strong (repping 190kg/418lbs in the front squat); however, a lot of the things he had to say about how lifting relates to throwing, I didn't really agree with. THAT is a topic for another time, though. Needless to say, I learned a lot, especially pertaining to how to execute and teach the lifts. Its a good feeling knowing that the USAW-SPC gives me things I'll be applying to my own and other people's training, and not just more letters to put after my name!

Been a while...

Hard to believe its been so long since I've put up a post on this thing...about a year and a half, in fact. Well, in that time, I began and ended working as a personal trainer. A season of coaching high school track and field (the throws, specifically) came and went. A trip to Boston the day after christmas 2010 is about the most exciting thing thats happened since then. That, and I also began grad school to pursue my MS of Exercise Science last July. If all goes well, I'll be finishing my MS this July. More updates on that, as well as my thesis, upcoming internship, and trip to the USATF National Championships will be coming soon. In addition, I hope to be posting weekly throwing/strength/general fitness tips, starting soon.





And believe it or not, you can now follow me on twitter @TommySutor


In the past 3 months I've gotten twitter and an iPod, I must be growing up or something...