During many years as a Senior Strength and Conditioning Coach for the USOPC, Jamie Myers has worked with Olympic and World medalists from a variety of events, but in his meathead heart the throws are number one. This is the first in what will be a monthly series of chats with Jamie on matters of strength.
McThrows: Is there an issue that you’ve dealt with more often than others when it comes to training throwers?
JM: The idea of the weight room becoming no longer a means to an end, but an end in itself. That might sound weird, because if you want to throw 22 meters in the shot, you are going to be hard pressed to do it if you can’t bench 500lbs and squat 700lbs.
So strength is important, but there
are times when you have to
make a decision on what is going to
help you throw farther.
If you are short on time, for example, and can’t do both throwing and lifting on a particular day I’d say nine times out of ten you ought to go throw.
McThrows: That’s a hard sell for a lot of throwers, especially high school boys!
JM: Definitely. Looking back on how I used to be at that age, I spent a lot more time in the weight room than was necessary. I got everything I needed in there to help me throw far, but then I still had to do flys and curls and everything else I saw guys in Flex Magazine doing. This was before Instagram.
And some guys can throw far in high school just by getting cock strong, but if a kid wants to throw in college and beyond, they should take a longer view and work more on technique.
If you can throw far in high school without benching 400lbs, that’s great because you can always put strength on later.
McThrows: Do elite throwers struggle with the throwing v. lifting balance as well?
JM: Yes, but maybe in a different way. Athletes in Chula Vista sometimes convinced themselves that they had to hit specific lifting numbers so they could throw a certain distance. That in order to throw 65 meters in the discus, for example, they first had to be able to clean 180 kilos. But I question whether or not it’s a one-to-one ratio. Maybe if they are in shape to throw 65 meters, then they are also in shape to clean 180k.
Also, it’s important to keep in mind
that once you reach a certain level of strength, you don’t have to keep proving it year after year.
If you can cruise through triples at 450lbs on bench press, the odds are that you can bench 500lbs, so do we need to actually put 500lbs on the bar and bench it? I would argue no.
Sometimes training is such that you might not get to the point of doing singles in a given year for whatever reason. Does that mean the season is a bust? I don’t think so, and if that’s how you judge your season, you’ve got problems.
McThrows: What would you say to folks like me who love to watch Instagram vids of Joe Kovacs squatting huge weights?
JM: I’d say that Joe is one of one, and there are things he can do because he is Joe. People should not see that and think they need to do what Joe does because that ain’t happening.
It makes me happy to see him squat huge weight, but people should not see Joe squatting 700 for ten in his basement and think ‘Oh, I need to do that same number.’ If you take something from it, just look at the idea of what he is doing. Try to understand what the percentage is rather than what the number is. How does this squat workout fit into his overall plan?
Because everything you do in training has a cost, and we can’t just continue to add things even if they look really cool on Instagram. If you add one thing, you must subtract another. And that’s true of any athlete in any event.
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