One nice thing about covering the throwing events is that the day after someone turns in a fantastic performance, say Tom Walsh breaking the Indoor World Championship shot put record in Birmingham last weekend (with a throw of 22.31m thank you very much) you can call up  his coach and have a really interesting chat with him while he’s sitting around an airport waiting for a flight to New Zealand.

And that’s exactly what I did last Sunday.

I called up Tom’s coach, Dale Stevenson, and shot the breeze with him for a while about how things have been going for Tom.

Have you ever had a conversation with someone who is so pleasant to talk to that it seems like you’re having a beer together even though you aren’t? That’s what it’s like talking to Dale. Actually, the first time I called him–last summer after Tom had won the outdoor World Championships in London–he was having a beer, in a London pub while celebrating Tom’s big win.  That did not prevent him, though, from taking the time to answer a bunch of questions about Tom’s career and training.

(You can read that interview here.)

This past Sunday, he was equally generous with his time. I’d actually caught him in a bit of a reflective mood.

He mentioned that they had to head straight back to New Zealand because the national championships were just a few days away, and I complimented him on his and Tom’s ability to manage the huge travel demands faced by someone living and training half a world away from most international competitions.

He replied that for athletes from “our sleepy little corner of the world” being away from home is “just part of the territory,” and pointed out the dichotomy faced by many coaches that “being away from loved ones sometimes makes you question whether this is something you really want to do,” but at the same time “steels your resolve” to do it well.

Right now, nobody is doing shot putting as well as Tom Walsh, and as a throws geek writing for the benefit of fellow throws geeks, I opened with some questions regarding Tom’s technique.

If you’ve seen Tom throw, you’ve likely noticed that his setup at the back of the ring is pretty unusual–his left foot on the center line and his right foot staggered back quite a bit. You can see it clearly in this still from a training session that Tom posted a couple of days before Worlds.

I asked Dale how Tom ended up adopting this method of setting up the throw.

“It was just a natural evolution,” he told me. “People learn to straddle the back of the ring initially just because of symmetry. You go from there, and as things evolve you see most throwers working their left foot back to the top of the ring, whether you call that the twelve o’clock or six o’clock position. We kept playing with it until we found the sweet spot, and as Tom gets stronger and can maintain his posture and rhythm, year upon year it is probably going to change and he will end up coming more around trying to maximize the rotation out of the back of the ring and the drive across the middle.”

Like other highly successful throws coaches I’ve spoken to over the years, Dale was careful to point out that just because something works for Tom doesn’t mean that it would work for most throwers.  

“We are not trying to copy anyone or change the game. It’s just playing around and finding what works. Tom also likes to start back away from the ring and not jammed up against it so he feels like he can have a nice, clean, flying entry to the throw.”

Another notable aspect of Tom’s technique is the way he throws open his left side when initiating the throw. As a high school coach, I am intrigued by this because I find myself constantly trying to get my athletes to slow down their left side out of the back. But, according to Dale, the active left side allows Tom to create energy that eventually enhances the drive across the ring into the power position.  (These photos of Tom’s entry phase should help illustrate Dale’s comments.)

“We see it as a coupling between the left hand or arm and the right leg. We want to create a diagonal sling. That creates more power than trying to push the right leg. It’s about timing that sling, keeping it on stretch and timing it so that you can couple that initial tension with the drive across the ring.”

I then asked Dale what, for me, is the vital question regarding the rotational throws: When should the right foot leave the ground when coming out of the back of the ring?

“For Tom, the right foot comes off sort of as a symptom. We don’t think about picking it up or kicking hard. It is kind of like the cracking of a whip–you crack the handle of the whip and eventually the end of the whip will come through faster as a result. If you crack the end of the whip, it’s not going to be as fast as if you let the chain of events play out. We never talk about it. We never train it. We see it as a symptom, not as a cause.”

With no outdoor World Championships or Olympics this summer, I asked Dale what would be the focus of their efforts the rest of the year.

He pointed to the Commonwealth Games in April (to be held in Australia). “Along with the Olympics, it is the one thing missing from Tom’s record. In 2014, he was beaten on the last round on a great throw from O’Dayne Richards. It burns a bit.”

Tom’s agent is also negotiating a couple of possible appearances in the United States, perhaps at the Kansas or Drake Relays.

Any thoughts of taking things a bit easy in this non-Worlds, non-Olympic year?

Nope.

According to Dale, “Each year leads into the following, and the way men’s shot is going you can’t afford to sit back and assume 22 meters is going to be enough to win a major championships. There is a chance that you will have to be around there just to make the finals.”

Alright then, since there will be no slacking off this summer, how about taking a whack at the world record?

“There are enough guys out there that can do it. Tom wasn’t throwing phenomenal at a young age. He’s been told a number of times that he’s not big enough or strong enough to throw 20 meters, then 21, then 22. Eventually, you run out of reasons to believe that you can’t do something. There are enough guys around that are pushing big numbers. We want to be in the mix.”

I told Dale that, in my humble opinion, if Tom stays healthy for the next couple of years he is one of three guys (along with Ryan Crouser and Joe Kovacs) who have a chance to establish a new world record. Did he agree?

My question brought out his inner diplomat.  

“I don’t know how to answer that question. How about this: I hope I’m there.”

Fair enough. And one thing is for sure, Dale. The day after it happens, I’ll be giving you a call.

Stanford’s Valarie Allman just completed a fantastic 2017 season. Not only did she drill a PR of 64.69m that announced her as a world class thrower, but she gained valuable international experience by qualifying to represent the US at the World Championships in London and the World University Games in Taiwan where she earned a silver medal.

All this came while adjusting to a new coach, Zeb Sion, who arrived at Stanford after five seasons at Wake Forest.

Coach Sion was kind enough to recount his experiences with Val this past season. I think you’ll find it very interesting!

First of all, thank you very much for asking me to do this interview about Valarie and her 2017 season. She is an absolute joy to work with each day, and it was a lot of fun traversing through a season of changes, ups and downs, and exciting results with her.  Hopefully, I can give everyone a feel for what Val and I worked on this year as well as what we need to improve moving forward. We will openly admit that we have a lot to work on in the future, but we view this as an exciting challenge.

The very nature of coaching and teaching is rooted in the idea of helping people improve. How can you help them improve if you don’t have plans to change their technique and training? So yes, I definitely had ideas of how to help Val improve in my first year working with her. I also find it interesting that “everyone and their mother” seems to have an opinion about how Val should throw or what they would do to change her technique. She had a good amount of success in high school and through her first three years of college, so I’m not a huge fan of being too aggressive with those statements. So while I had intentions to help her improve by making changes to her technique and training, I wanted to work with her and make the changes in a thoughtful way. I wanted her to understand what we were doing and why we were doing it as I knew, based on her personality, that she would improve much quicker that way.

I think putting her first three years of college in perspective before discussing this past season and how we approached it is important. As we know, Val was a very good high school thrower, and she competed at a high level during her first three years in college. The 2016 NCAA Championships, however, was when she had a major breakthrough throwing over 60m for the first time and increasing her personal best by almost ten feet. She followed that meet up with a solid performance at the 2016 Olympic Trials, throwing a distance of 59.02/193-8 which would have been a PB before NCAAs. The natural view and perception became that she was a 201’/61m thrower, even though the average of her top five meets, including the marks I just mentioned, was only 58.86m/193-1. Talk about pressure for her new coach!! Regardless of Val’s PR and top-five meet average, we had goals of improving as much as we could. We focused on the process of making changes with the notion that the results would follow.

Back to when I arrived on campus last fall… I felt fortunate in that I recruited Val to Wake Forest four years prior, and therefore already had established a relationship with her. I think it made it easier to have open dialogue about the plan and how we would move forward. In the first serious chat we had about training and technique, she mentioned that she was worried about me totally changing her technique. I reassured her that this wouldn’t happen, and definitely not too fast, even though that wasn’t necessarily my intention. I joke about it by saying that I told her I wouldn’t change anything and then ended up changing everything. Of course, that’s not close to reality, but it’s fun to say.

It’s important to note that I didn’t analyze a ton of old video of Val prior to working with her. I didn’t want to go into our sessions with a set perspective on what needed to change, but instead wanted to actually work with her and talk through things to get a feel for what needed to change.

I realized that the overarching theme for the changes we needed to make, which was applicable in each phase of her throw, was the idea of taking more energy into the direction of the throw. I often call it “directional energy.”

The back of the throw…

Overall, I liked the back of the ring concepts that Val had worked on previously in terms of her wind, how she loaded the left leg, the stretch she created between her legs, etc… I wanted Val to focus on driving/sprinting across the ring earlier and with more intention. We focused on stopping the left foot earlier and driving across the ring more. The intent of driving/sprinting with more energy naturally lowered her high point because the energy was more linear than vertical out of the back. More importantly, it also lined up her high and low point with the middle of the sector as opposed to being late and down the left side.

During March, April, and May, this part of her throw was very dialed in. I’ll be the first to say that we didn’t totally fix this issue and unfortunately saw it come back at the end of the season. Val had very high throws at USAs, and she was definitely getting off of the back late and not driving at Worlds. Val’s second throw in London was between 61m and 63m according to two different sources, but she fouled “at the front” and by that I mean on the left side of the circle because her energy was so late and left.

The middle and front of the throw…

Now that we had the right concept of how and when to drive out of the back creating better energy across the ring, the second priority I had was to better connect the middle of her throw into a more powerful finish. After landing in the middle of the ring and as Val would rotate into her power position, her left arm would shorten/bend dramatically and begin to rise. When her left foot would get down, she would pull her left arm/shoulder back and away to the left. This put her in an imbalanced and relatively weaker position and was a big reason why she couldn’t transition energy into the direction of the throw and would throw high. Specifically, (1) she wouldn’t have her shoulders back and closed upon left foot touch down so she had less separation, (2) her radius would shorten as she pulled away (left) which made it impossible to keep the correct shoulder plane, and (3) because her left arm/side wasn’t leading the energy out into the direction of the throw, the right side/arm couldn’t be as long as possible working around the hip and OUT.

Our focus was to keep the left arm longer and closed in the middle of the ring and at left foot contact (power position). If her left arm was long and opposite her right arm in a straight line, we felt good about the position. When she hit this balanced/centered position, it was so much easier for her to turn the right hip/side into the throw. As we got her shoulder plane to be more consistent and her left arm to be longer, it put her in a better position to properly lead the left arm out into the sector, so her right arm could then follow it and take the discus out. Ideally, I would want to keep her left arm longer for a longer amount of time (think Dani Samuels). We found that as long as the left arm led out and into the sector, whether it was led by her elbow, forearm, or hand, the resulting throw would be better because it had the right energy.

Results…

While I used various cues and drills throughout the year to help Val make these changes, it was pretty obvious when her “directional energy” was better. One quick way to tell if the “directional energy” was better, other than how far she threw, was to look at her reverse. On Val’s far throws, she would be in a good position and had the ability to turn the right side into the direction of the throw resulting in a nice displacement of her energy into the throw on her reverse. When we first started working together, her right foot would barely travel forward when landing at the end of the reverse. This was an easy way to see that the directional energy was wrong (vertical). Compare that to her two 64m throws [Links to those throw can be found below] and you’ll see a significant difference.

It’s clear that we need to refine these technical concepts and make them much more consistent. While we worked on keeping the left arm longer and on the correct plane this year, we are going to add more of a wrap in the middle, which should help with separation and her ability to then accelerate her left arm into the direction of the throw adding more stretch and energy.

As I look back on Val’s 2017 outdoor season, I’m incredibly proud of the changes she made and the things she accomplished. I think it’s fair to say that it’s pretty awesome to go from throwing over 60m at one meet prior to the 2017 season to having competitions at 64.69m, 64.26m, 62.64m, and 61.65m with additional 60m throws in those meets at 62.46m, 61.98m, 60.31m, and 60.10m. Val’s five-meet average for 2017 was 62.36m. We’re both happy with the changes and progress that Val made this year, but are excited to get back to work and make changes for the 2018 season and beyond.

Here is a vid of Val throwing 64.26m this  season:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPc1hAWeLfc&list=PLhTP-j1O8QwFZm6L_ovA1xrMLqD6oHsGO

Here is a vid of her PR toss of 64.69m:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t80UVRJadss&list=PLhTP-j1O8QwFZm6L_ovA1xrMLqD6oHsGO&index=2

I first met Grand Valley State throws coach Sean Denard when he was a heavily-bearded freshman thrower at Naperville North High School in the suburbs of Chicago. I was (and still am) the throws coach at a rival school, and was less than thrilled to see a guy who appeared to be in his late ’20’s show up to compete for the NN Huskies. 

Like dry white wine and certain types of mold, however, we grew on each other over the years, and when Sean went off to Mount Union College and came back an unrepentant throws obsessive, our bond was sealed.

Recently,  Sean was kind enough to tell me about his program, the magnificent facilities at Grand Valley, and the growing corps of elite throwers that have relocated to GVSU for their training.

 When did you start at Grand Valley State?

I started at GVSU in October of 2014, so while I’m starting my fourth season here, I’ve only been here for about three calendar years.

 What are some of the  highlights of your time there?

My first year here, our men’s team came in unranked at the NCAA DII Championships and finished as National runners-up. We had three men’s weight throwers earn All-American honors, including second place. It was the best finish in our men’s program’s history. The next year, Darien Thornton, who had finished second the year before, threw the NCAA Championship record in the hammer and ranks only behind Olympian Kibwe Johnson on the All-Time NCAA DII list. I also tell him it is impressive because Kibwe was twenty-eight at the time he set the record, and I think Darien hadn’t yet turned twenty-one as a true fourth-year senior. The Throwers Page ranked our men’s squad as one of the top five programs in all of college that season. Also, last year our women’s team finished as NCAA runners-up indoors and outdoors. Indoors, Dajsha Avery broke the fifty-foot barrier in the shot and earned All-American honors after having  thrown thirty feet and gotten second-to-last two years ago at the conference championships. At the outdoor meet, Mary Hecksel, a freshmen, threw thirty-six feet farther than her high school PR in the discus to finish third with a 172’ mark.

 Can you describe the facilities at Grand Valley. From what I’ve heard, they are pretty awesome.

We have probably one of the best track facilities in the country.

We have two full-sized weight rooms with eighteen combined racks/pads on them, and another two ‘pod’ style weight rooms with fours racks combined at both the indoor and outdoor track, and a rec center for weight training.

We have four athletic training stations and a chiro/physio who comes twice a week.

Our indoor facility is a 300m turf building with a ceiling high enough that Andrew Evans can non-reverse 65m with plenty of room to spare, although Sam Mattis did hit a light in warm ups, I think. [Note: GVSU holds an elite indoor discus competition each winter. More on that later.]

Indoors, we have a wooden discus circle that I just repainted this year, two additional wood shot/weight rings, and a cement shot/weight circle as well.

We throw discus for distance several times during a given week during the indoor season, and other times we lower the curtains and throw discus/hammer/javelin into them.

Our outdoor fields are used just for throwing and are not drainage areas, so they stay pretty dry throughout the year. We have two shot rings, a hammer/discus cage, and a two-way jav runway. There has to be 5-8,000 square feet of cement too, for drills/spectators.

The wind comes in a pretty perfect 10-20mph right corner cross for the discus. If we have to adjust at times because of weird weather, I will usually just get the wood ring from inside and place it out on the other end of the field so we can still have the desired wind that we need (we use the weight cage as a substitute barrier).

Probably the most important thing about the facilities is the amount of time we get to use them. We can use the outdoor areas 24/7. There are lights out there, so we can even throw at night if we ever really need to.

Indoors in the fall we get the turf building from 12:00-2:00 and during the winter 2:00-4:00. We get the weight rooms for ten hours a week, too.

Everything is also very conveniently located, so you can get from anywhere on campus to practice in ten minutes walking or five minutes by bike.

 Can you  tell me about your annual Big Throws Clinic?

This is our third year doing our Big Throws Clinic. It started out as a one-day camp for Michigan-area high school throwers and has turned into a two- day meet and clinic.

On Saturday, December 16, we’ll have a weight lifting seminar with Garage Strength’s Dane Miller, Olympic shot putter Justin Rodhe, and USA hammer thrower Sean Donnelly. Each will be disseminating twelve-week training programs and breaking down how to properly execute them. They each utilize three pretty unique training styles. Dane does a four-day upper/lower split with emphasis on snatch, bench and mobility work, while Donnelly uses a three-day triphasic model that utilizes no Olympic lifts and almost exclusively uses single-leg squat variations, and Rodhe uses the “Bondarchuk” system with his athletes. It’ll be good information for college and high school athlete/coaches alike and I don’t think anybody has given out training programs like this since John Smith did at the ITCCCA (Illinois Track and Cross Country Coaches Association) clinic in 2007.

After the weight lifting seminar, we’ll have a dinner before the “wammer” competition. A “wammer” is a 35/25/20lb weight on half a hammer wire. I’ve had a lot of interest from elites about this, but I’m hoping more high school/college athletes sign up.

The purpose of the weight training seminar was to give more time during the weekend to go further into parts of throwing that we couldn’t get done previously in one day, and the point of the wammer competition is to give the hammer throwers another championship stage for their careers and help promote the sport. While there’s been plenty of indoor discus competitions around the world the last twenty years, not many people even use the wammer as a training tool. This will be the first ever competition for it, and I think that if people use them the right way they will throw everything further so I’m hoping to influence the sport and help younger throwers improve their training with this tool. Men will throw 35lbs, high school boys 25lbs, and women 20lbs. John Smith told me he thinks he will send his women up, but wants them to compete with the 25lbs ball as they already throw it over 30m in training. I don’t know if the rest of the field will be ready for that yet…

The next day, on Sunday morning, we’ll have three learn-by-doing segments intermittent with three classroom sessions by Rodhe, Miller, and Donnelly on various issues from technique to lifestyle. I think we may also do a panel discussion on Facebook live and let people write in questions. Halfway through the day we’ll have lunch (Brittany Smith made 150 bomb sandwiches last year for the clinic) and a multi-weight shot put competition using Rodhe’s glove.  [Note: Sean informs me that “bomb” sandwiches are what old people like me would call “really good” sandwiches.] Last year, Big 10 Champion Rachel Fatherly beat Olympian Taryn Suttie by just a few centimeters. Throwers will get three throws each with a light and heavy shot, furthest total distance wins.

Last year on the men’s side, Lucas Warning won the men’s event and went on to place 10^th at the DI Meet as a glider. With our new volunteer coaches at GVSU I think we might have a deeper field than last year…[more on this below].

After the last learn-by-doing segment (we do three stations at once, shot/disc/hammer, campers choice each time) we’ll have the Elite Indoor Discus National Championships, Alex Rose has won the last two meetings.  Jason Young won the first ever meet in 2010. Last year we also had Olympian Andrew Evans and American College Record holder Sam Mattis compete along with World University Games Champion Reggie Jagers. They should all be back this year, and I’ve also got confirmations from NACAC U23 Champion Brian Williams and Olympian Jason Morgan. On the women’s side, NACAC Champion Beckie Famurewa won last year, and I’m hoping we can get more women to come and compete this season. I’ve concluded that being a female professional discus thrower might have the smallest market of all the track events, and so there are not many professionals and the ones that are usually live out west. Either way, I’ve contacted 300 college coaches to send their athletes to this meet and a number of professionals, but time will tell if they feel confident enough to come out here in December.

One of the ways I’m trying to help the women (and men) with this weekend is by working with USATF to make this part of their development programs for the throws. Each event group gets three to five mini-camps at the OTC each year to train, work with the biomedical people and get good weather. Right now, there is a proposition being considered to take one of the discus camps and move it to this weekend in Grand Rapids. They would fly out and house and feed all their men’s and women’s discus throwers for the weekend, and have them go through several training sessions in throwing, lifting,  Functional Movement and other evaluations, and finally the discus competition.  One of the ideas is to use it as a half way measuring point before and after USAs and to also help decide how and who to fund for the future. We will find out in a month or two if that will happen. Everyone I talk to seems really positive about the change, and I’m hoping it will allow us to get someone like Mason Finley out here so we can honor him before the competition for his performance at Worlds this past year.

 I understand you’ve got quite an interesting group of elite athletes set to train at GVSU this year.

This year I have five volunteer throws coaches on staff. There are no limits in DII on this situation, and with our facilities and location a lot of athletes have converged to train here this year.

GVSU alumni and NCAA Champion Darien Thornton is working on his masters degree and training here for the hammer throw. He finished 7^th at USA’s last year.

Sporadically throughout the year, but probably not until December (he just got an invite to train full time at the OTC) my hammer thrower Sean Donnelly will get a training session or two in here. He finished third indoors in the weight and outdoors in the hammer this season.  Last year, Donnelly and I collaborated with Cal Dietz on weight room stuff, while I did the throwing side. This year we are going to move towards a little bit of a different approach to training, with a shorter indoor season due to the Worlds being held the first week of March (this has pushed the USA’s up to the second week of February rather than second week of march) and with Sean being able to throw outside in California.

My girlfriend, Brittany Smith, is a nineteen-meter shot putter for Nike and has been training here on and off since 2014. She was coached the last two years out in Kansas, but made a change this year and will be working with Ryan Whiting starting in October. She’ll move out to Phoenix at some point, but we’ll see each other every couple weeks. I help her out with whatever her coaches are having her do when they are not around.

New this year, Olympian Alex Rose will be training at GVSU. He spent the last two years as a graduate assistant at Aurora University (in Aurora, Illinois) but he and his wife are originally from this area. She got a job in Grand Rapids, so things kind of fell into place there. He works online with Dane Miller on technique and lifting, so I will act as a mediator to help Dane and Alex have the highest level training and communication possible.

Also new this year is World Championship competitor Dani Bunch. She has been coming here since 2014 on the weekends as she’s been dating and now married to one of my former athlete’s brothers who lives in the area. After getting married this fall, they’re getting a home together in town and things worked out with all of our infrastructure to give her a good training environment and group. She’s still working with her coach at Purdue, it will just be more satellite than before. Dani’s Husband, Zach Hill, is the Michigan state high school record holder in the shot put and has a similar role that I have with Brittany. I’ll facilitate their training to the best of my ability.

The last member of the group came together just this past weekend as Tia Brooks contacted me to train at GVSU. She is a local kid from Grand Rapids, and she is just coming back from taking a year off from competing and will use this year to get ready for Worlds/Olympics in 2019/2020. We’re still working out the details of her stay, but like the others I’m just going to provide whatever service she needs to help her throw far and train well.

Each one has a little different of a situation. I’m not everybody’s coach, but I’ll be an important resource to make sure they train and live at a high level. This is all kind of new to us, so we’re not sure how the group is going to work. I’m sure the dynamics will change over time, but I think it’s a pretty high level training group of professionals akin to what you might find at the Olympic Training Center or Oxford or Phoenix. I hope that each of this group of Laker Elite throwers can throw farther than they would on their own, and that it also encourages other athletes to form long-term training groups to improve our sport.

As a result of the “foul or no foul” scandal in the men’s shot at the recent World Championships, throws obsessives are a lot more familiar with Joe Kovacs’ feet today than they were a couple of weeks ago.

That’s Joe above. Those are his feet below.

And if you took a moment from trying to figure out if that really was a foul to ask yourself “What in the heck brand of shoes is that man wearing?” I can provide an answer to the second of those two mysteries.

Joe is wearing a prototype of a shoe that he is developing under the auspices of a company called Velaasa, which was founded by former University of Minnesota throws coach Lynden Reder.

Lynden started working at Minnesota in the fall of 2008, and stepped down after the 2016 outdoor season tired of  the travel demands of DI coaching.

After taking a month off to ponder his future, Coach Reder decided to start a business. His love for the sport of track and field dictated the direction of that business. A desire to solve a series of problems he had run into as a coach dictated the focus.

The first problem he decided to take on was, as he put it, “a lack of attractive, highly-functional, Olympic lifting shoes on the market.”

Having once considered a career in graphic design, he decided to use his long dormant artistic skills to design “the most athletic-looking lifting shoe of all time.”

The result was a product that Lynden dubbed the “Strake.”

Besides being a sharp-looking shoe, this product will come with three different heights of wooden heel that can easily be interchanged, and which can be decorated with a school logo.

The next problem Coach Reder decided to tackle was the inconsistency in diameter among shots and hammers of varying weights. He explained that “at Minnesota, we did a lot of training with light and heavy implements, but it could be awkward for the thrower as a sixteen-pound shot might be 129mm in diameter but a six-kilo shot might have a diameter of 110mm.”

Lynden’s favorite implements at Minnesota were those manufactured by Polanik, so he flew to Poland for a meeting and came home with an agreement to be a dealer for Polanik products including a newly designed line of training implements with consistent diameters.

For example, they will offer women’s shots in the 3k to 5k range in 0.25k increments, with all implements from 3k to 4.5k having the same 113mm diameter.

On the men’s side, they will offer shots from 14 to 18 pounds in 1lb increments, all with a diameter of 135mm.  Additionally, they will produce a 125mm 6k shot and a 9k at both 135mm and 154mm.

A similar variety of training implements for the weight, discus, and hammer will also be available.

A final problem that Coach Reder hopes to address through Velaasa is the difficulty that post-collegiate throwers in this country face in supporting themselves while continuing their careers.

He thinks he has a solution that will help grow his business while offering post-collegians a chance to make some money.

That solution is the Velaasa Track Club.

Club members, such as the aforementioned Joe Kovacs, will  use their contacts (social media and otherwise) to promote Velaasa products. When a customer purchases an item from Velaasa, they can designate Joe to receive a commission.

As mentioned above, Joe has been working with Velaasa to develop a rotational shot put shoe, and may collaborate with them on other products as well.

According to Lynden,  “One of the biggest things that differentiates us is that if you sign with the Velaasa Track Club, you will own your personal brand, we will partner with you to design a shoe or other products, and it will lead to a long term commitment with our company,”

And, rather than being at the mercy of a certain behemoth athletic wear company which has been known to giveth and taketh away sponsorship deals with little regard for the well being of the athlete, Lynden wants to give Velaasa reps “the opportunity to leverage their network to bring in revenue. And, since we are a small company, we can give lots of support and personal attention.”

For more information, visit https://velaasa.com/

You know how when someone loses an election or an Academy Award they always say they’re happy for the winner, but you know in their head they’re really thinking, “I hope that blankety-blank falls into an empty well or gets dengue fever”?

Well, there were for sure some bitterly disappointed competitors at last weekend’s men’s shot put competition at the London World Championships, but none of that bitterness was directed towards gold medalist Tom Walsh of New Zealand, one of the true gentlemen of the sport.

And it turns out that Tom’s coach, Dale Stevenson, is a great guy as well. The day after Tom’s win, he took a few minutes off from a celebratory visit to a London pub to talk about Tom’s career, his unusual off-season pursuit, and the challenges of grinding out a win at a major championship.

McQ: Congratulations, Coach. That was a huge win for Tom.

DS: Thanks. Tom is a great athlete and more importantly, a great human being. It is a fun journey to work with someone like that. We are both aspiring to be good at our craft, and it’s an exciting time for Tom and for the throws in New Zealand in general.

McQ: How long have you been Tom’s coach?

DS:  Officially since 2014. Prior to that we were competitors. I stopped competing in 2012, and was sort of mate/mentor to Tom for a couple of years. We officially formalized it in 2014 when I moved to New Zealand and started working there, and the rest is history.

McQ: Are you employed by the New Zealand federation?

DS: Yes, I’m the head throws coach for Athletics New Zealand.

McQ: You said you moved to New Zealand. Where did you move from?

DS: I’m originally Australian. Born and raised in Melbourne and competed for Australia. My wife and I moved to New Zealand in 2014. It was a major checkpoint for our lives, and here we are three years later and loving it.

McQ: What does your wife do?

DS: My wife was originally in real estate. Now she works in recruitment. She is incredibly supportive. They say behind every good man is an even better woman. I want to thank her…she supported me right through my throwing career and now as a coach in a job that requires extended time on the road and is not a nine-to-five job. I love her with all my heart, and she is a huge part of this result here in London, as are the other members of our team.

McQ: How does Tom maintain such a high level of performance over the long season from indoors to the end of the outdoor season? Last year, for example, he was World Indoor Champion then still threw great at the Olympics five months later. How do you keep him at that level for such an extended time?

DS: It is a bit of a different philosophy than in the US model. We don’t have the collegiate system, so there is not a huge amount of pressure on our athletes to be at their peak when they are seventeen/eighteen/nineteen years of age. Tom is twenty-four now, and we’ve had a long term plan with incremental improvement. We don’t take crazy risks to make fast gains. I guess it’s a bit more measured from other philosophies out there. There are guys who are super strong five, six, seven years younger than Tom just blowing crazy numbers up, but they tend to have more erratic series in meets like major championships. I was fortunate to have spent a lot of time under the mentorship of Don Babbitt (longtime throws coach at the University of Georgia) and spent a lot of time training with Reese Hoffa. And that’s probably something that Reese did well across his career, and as a result he’s one of the greatest shot putters of all time. Improve by small increments over time, and brick by brick you end up building an impressive career. We’ve got the luxury of taking that kind of approach in New Zealand because we don’t have the rigor of the hard selection trial like the US Championships every year. And we get support from the federation. We are trying to leverage our advantages, and as a result it has been a long, steady road, and we are now at the point with Tom that his bad days are still enough to get him through qualifying rounds.

McQ: Is his good health partly due to the slow progress in training that he’s made over the years. To the fact that he wasn’t rushed?

DS: Absolutely. Tom was incredibly fortunate. His first coach when he was a young boy was a really wise man who lives in a small, rural town in New Zealand. He taught Tom that no one competition was worth sacrificing your health and well-being. He planted the seed at a young age, but it requires a certain kind of demeanor and Tom has it. Some guys like to get really fired up and go out and chase that one huge throw, whereas Tom is more prepared to say “What am I going to do to get one percent better today?” Eventually, that adds up. That incremental improvement is something that we are looking for.

McQ: Is it true that Tom does construction work in the off-season?

DS: Yes, he does. In October, November, and December he works three hard days a week depending on training and where he is at physically. He’s got a good relationship with his employer. They basically let him pick his own hours. And it is an important part of his development as a shot putter. We feel this is crucial for his development as a good human being and a good athlete.

McQ: Do you feel that it is mentally healthy for him to go back to being a “normal person” for a couple of months a year?

DS: Totally. We want our athletes to be balanced. We want them to be smart and to feel grateful for the opportunity of getting paid to do sports for a living. When you’re up at 5:30am and you’re laying bricks, you’re laying a foundation, or you’re digging holes or whatever you are doing on the construction site it gives you a really gracious mindset when you come into training. Training feels like a privilege. It is good for Tom to have something in his life other than throwing. For his development as a young man, it’s crucial.

McQ: Will he go back to working construction this October?

DS: Yes, We’ve got a short turnaround this year with World Indoors in March and then the Commonwealth Games, which is a reasonably big deal in New Zealand, in April. So, he may have a shorter time on the job, but we’ll have a conversation about that when the season in Europe ends.

McQ: Let’s talk about the Worlds. Tom had a perfect day in qualification. One throw. Killed it. (22.14m to be exact). That had to feel good.

DS: Absolutely. It doesn’t matter whether you throw 20.75m, the auto, or 24.75m as long as you get the qualifying out of the way. It gives you the peace of mind to go ahead and line it up the next day.

McQ: Watching the competition, it seemed like it took everybody several throws to find their timing.

DS: That’s not unusual for a major championship. Guys like Ryan Crouser and Joe Kovacs, they’ve been there and done it before and they still get challenged by that. It’s not unusual for them to take a couple of rounds to get into their work. You’ve just got to work through it and deal with it and bring your way into the competition. Get into the top eight to guarantee yourself six throws. And guys started to free up towards the end. But to be honest, those were funny results. But it is what it is. Championships do funny things to people.

McQ: Even with super-experienced throwers, do you feel like the atmosphere at a World Championships or Olympic Games can be hard to manage?

DS: It’s just so infrequent. The exposure to it three times every four seasons. And guys like David Storl, Ryan Crouser, Ryan Whiting, Joe Kovacs, Tom…they want to be regarded as among the handful of throwers who are the best who ever picked up a shot. They are vying for their legacy, essentially. The first things that people look at are the Olympic Games and World Championships, and you’ve got to perform well there if you want to be considered among the best. When it means something, it does funny things to us as human beings. It is strange that we pin our self-worth and our meaning as a human being on an arbitrary kind of competition where you pick up a metal ball and throw it, but hey, we all do it.

McQ: During competition, I know a  lot of throwers like to  check in with their coach between throws. Do you and Tom do that?

DS: No, we don’t. I’m there, but my end game is to make myself redundant, so we are working towards Tom becoming more and more independent and not needing me. I’m trying to work towards being more of a safety net. It’s probably going to take a little more time, but I’m pretty content Tom’s got a good feel for what he’s doing now. He knows what he has to do and when he has to do it. My role is kind of like the bumpers in ten pin bowling. If he goes too far one way, I sort of give him a nudge back the other way. He’s getting better and better at bowling strikes, so my role is probably becoming more and more redundant, which is fine with me.

McQ: Did you say anything to him during the final in London?

DS: Yes. There were a couple of technical things he needed to iron out. He was throwing early in the order in the first three rounds, then last in the order for the final three rounds, so that meant that he had twenty or twenty-five minutes between throws from the third to the fourth round, so I think more than anything just to break up that time he came over and we had a few words. It was mainly to get out of the heat of the battle, because you’ve got twelve guys pacing around in a fairly confined arena. Sometimes just getting out of that and going and seeing a different face helps you to reset.

McQ: Was your heart beating like crazy when some of those guys were taking cracks at twenty-two meters?

DS: Absolutely. It would have been foolish to think that the competition was sewn up at any point when you have guys that can throw well over twenty-two on any given day. We knew it would come down to the wire and we were prepared for that. I was probably more calm than I have been at any other major championship because I knew Tom was in good shape. We’d done all the work that could be done. But, the heart rate does go up. When it was all done and Tom came over, I found myself jumping the fence and running out on the track to give him a hug.

McQ: But you kept your clothes on, right? Unlike the guy on Saturday night?

DS: Say again?

McQ: You kept your clothes on, unlike the streaker on Saturday night?

DS: I did keep my clothes on. Security was keeping a close eye on me. I managed to shrug a few of them off I was so pumped for him. Tom’s an amazing athlete and he deserves everything that comes his way. I just wanted to affirm that for him, and it’s something I’ll remember for the rest of my life.

McQ: I know people in the sport really like Tom.

DS: I was talking to Art Venegas (coach of Joe Kovacs) last night about this. We talked about how important it is to mentor athletes into becoming good human beings. I’d rather coach a lesser athlete who is a good person than a medal winner who is an asshole. But you can have good athletes who are also good people, and certainly Tom is one of them as is Joe and Ryan and many of the other guys. As we speak, I’m out having a drink and Ryan Whiting has come to join us to help celebrate Tom’s victory. That speaks to the character of Ryan and to his selflessness. We are incredibly thankful to everyone who has helped us around the world. We’ve got great friends in the US and they continue to welcome us and have us back every year. I’d like to say thanks to everyone who has helped us along the way.

McQ: One last question. Were you surprised that Stipe Zunic (the bronze-medalist from Croatia) was able to put Tom on his shoulders during the victory lap?

DS: No. Stipe is probably the strongest guy throwing at the moment. He is a beast. Stipe could probably pick up three guys and put them on his shoulders. He’s a large man who can move. He competed in the martial arts and was a fine javelin thrower. I wouldn’t want to get in his way, but fortunately, he’s a great guy too. He seized his opportunity to get on the podium, and good on him.

In the  days leading up to the USA Championships, one’s thoughts turn to big throws and  those that produce them.

One of my favorite contenders to make the team for the World Championships in London is the American record holder in the women’s hammer, Gwen Berry.

Gwen was nice enough to chat with me for a few minutes recently. Here are some things I learned from our conversation.

The woman can handle adversity.

In May 2016, Gwen broke the American record in the hammer with a toss of 76.31m at the Ole Miss Classic in Oxford, Mississippi. That throw earned her $30,000 in performance bonuses.

She got to keep none of it.

I wrote in detail about this situation last summer. You can find that article here: https://mcthrows.com/?p=1511

Basically what happened was that Gwen got suspended by USADA in the days following her American record throw because several weeks earlier she had self-reported her use of a common asthma medication called Breo. She never failed a drug test. There was never a question of why she took Breo. Simply put, she has asthma and like many people with asthma she needs medication once in while to be able to breathe.

Apparently, none of that mattered to USADA, and for a time last summer, it looked like the infraction would cost her a chance to compete in the Olympic Trials. Gwen was devastated.  According to her coach, John Smith, the stress of the controversy, of seeing her reputation tarnished “nearly killed her career. It took a lot to keep her going.”

In the end, Gwen was given a short suspension, which ended just in time for her to compete in the Trials. She was, however, stripped of her American record and the $30,000 she had earned in setting  it.

Then,  shortly after Gwen’s case was adjudicated, USADA published a decision in a case involving a swimmer who was charged with exactly the same violation…and let off with a “public warning.”

You can read about that case here: https://www.usada.org/sam-tierney-receives-public-warning/

I don’t know about you, but were I Gwen, I’d have been more than a little chapped. And I, for one, would not have blamed her if after breaking the American record again this  spring–this time with a toss of 76.77m–she’d have directed some choice words and perhaps a celebratory middle finger USADA’s way.

But, Gwen is not like that.

I asked her if she uses that whole controversy as motivation, if she enters the ring during competitions thinking “I’m going to kill this one to stick it to USADA.” Here was her reply:

“I don’t necessarily think of it like that. When I get in the ring, I want to kill one for everyone who doubted me early in my career. It took me a long time to figure out the hammer. The weight came easy for me, but not the hammer, so I guess when I get into the ring I think ‘this throw is for everyone who doubted me in the past.’ I don’t worry about USADA. I believe that everything happens for a reason. I know that life sucks sometimes, but the whole thing made me a stronger thrower and person.”

Indeed.

Gwen Berry and Morgan Spurlock have something in common.

Remember him? He’s the guy who made the Super Size Me documentary.  IMDB describes its premise this way:  “While examining the influence of the fast food industry, Morgan Spurlock personally explored the consequences on his health of a diet of solely McDonald’s food for one month.”

The main consequence was that subsisting on a McDonald’s-only diet made him feel like crap.

Gwen can relate.

After qualifying for the Olympics last summer,  she arrived in Rio two weeks before the women’s hammer competition. The plan was to get acclimated to her surroundings and develop a routine that would help her feel comfortable when it was time to compete.

But she could not stomach the food in the athlete’s village, and McDonald’s was her only alternative other than a two-week fast.

So, in the days leading up to the biggest meet of her life, Gwen took every meal under the golden arches.

Like Spurlock, her McDonald’s binge made her feel awful, and she did not qualify for the hammer final.

She is ready though, if she makes the squad for the World’s in London, to try a different tack.

“I will not go there early,” she vowed. “I will try to keep my normal regimen for as long as I can. If I qualify for London, I’ll go there a couple of days before my competition.”

According to Coach Smith, jet lag tends to hit athletes three days after arriving in a distant land, so Gwen will have to cut it pretty close and literally show up  two days before the hammer prelims.

She is confident she can make it work.

“That’s what I did in Japan,” she said (referring to her IAAF Hammer Challenge win in Kawasaki last May). “I’d never thrown 73 meters overseas before, and I threw 74.13m there.”

Gwen can throw great, even when her back is killing her.

When my back spazzes on me, I like to lie on the floor and whine so that  my wife will bring me snacks.

Gwen is made of sterner stuff.

This  past February, a month before the USA Indoor Championships where she was scheduled to compete in the 20-lb weight throw, Gwen strained her back so badly that she could barely throw or lift. According to Coach Smith, her workouts during the four weeks prior to the championships  consisted almost entirely of back rehab.

Two weeks out, she was convinced that she would not be able to compete.

Ten days out, she was able to throw a 25-lb training weight about 18 meters, and Smith convinced her to go to Albuquerque and take a whack at competing.

She did, and ended up throwing 25.60m to break the world record.

College kids these days are really soft.

Back in my day, if you stayed up late reading Goethe and got a craving for a freshly baked cookie you were out of luck. Even if you could convince a fraternity brother to take a break from his quantum mechanics homework and drive you to Seven Eleven, the freshest thing you could get was probably a pack of Chips Ahoy that had been on the shelf since the mid Phanerozoic Eon. It was balderdash, I tell you.

But times have changed, and now if you are a student at Ole Miss you can get freshly baked cookies delivered to your door any time between the hours of 9:00am and 3:00am.  And the person who delivers them to you might just be the American record holder in the women’s hammer.

Let her explain.

“I can’t work a real job,” Gwen told me when I asked how she was supporting herself. “So I deliver for Insomnia Cookies.  I practice every day at about 2:00pm, and then I go to work until 3:00am. I don’t mind it, though, and they are great about letting me take time off when I need it.”

One of those times is right now as she prepares for the US Championships. If she makes the team for London, her hiatus could be  extended for a couple of months.

Coach Smith says that she is ready not only to make the team but to extend the American record. His hammer throwers train with a wide variety of implements–heavy and light on both regular and shortened wires–and he keeps meticulous track of how  far each thrower throws each implement each practice.

Based on her training throws, he says that Gwen “is in much better shape now than when she broke the American record.”

So, if you happen to be in Oxford, Mississippi this fall and find yourself ordering up a late-night cookie, be ready. When you open your door you may well come face to face with a World Championships medalist.

And one of the nicest people you’ll ever meet.

Next January, the University of Michigan will inaugurate a new indoor and outdoor track facility. Currently under construction, it is  known as the “Stephen M. Ross Athletic Campus Athletics South Competition and Performance Project” but it won’t be long before it picks up a catchier name among throws aficionados, something along the lines of “The Stephen M. Ross Palace of Awesomeness.”

Ok, it won’t just be a throwing facility.

The field house will also contain a state-of-the-art, 200-meter, banked, hydraulic track surrounded by a three-lane, 300-meter practice track, a weight room with 42 platforms, training facilities for the rowing, soccer, tennis, wrestling, lacrosse, and  gymnastics teams, and enough locker room space for a good chunk of the civilized world.

But, the fact that you are reading this article on this site tells me that you are not terribly interested in banked tracks or gymnastics facilities, so let’s get to the good stuff.

Four years ago, Michigan hired this man…

…Jerry Clayton, as head coach of the men’s track team.  He brought with him thirty years of experience at the University of Illinois, Southwest Texas State, the University of Florida, and Auburn. During that time he coached…

• 2 World champions

• 2 Olympic Medalists (Silver, Bronze)

• 16 individual NCAA Champions

• 80+ All-Americans

He also accumulated quite a bit of expertise in the construction of track and field facilities, so when  the athletic department acquired two old warehouses on the edge of campus and decided that the land they occupied would be an ideal spot on which to build new indoor and outdoor track arenas, Jerry was the perfect guy to have on hand.

Fortunately, the  administration at Michigan realized that and gave Jerry lots of leeway in designing the new facility.

Those of you who have been involved in the construction of a track venue know that this is a rare and wondrous occurrence. When my school rebuilt our athletic facilities a few years ago, our principal called me into his office and demanded to know why we had to have a concrete pad from which to throw the discus. “Can’t they just spin around on the grass?” he fumed. We got our concrete, but I always felt like he resented it as an unnecessary expense.

Jerry’s experience at Michigan has been just the opposite.

“During the fall of my second year, they really started serious planning,” Jerry told me in a recent interview. “They knew that I had built facilities at three of my previous four jobs, and it was incredible how much the administration allowed my input.”

Jerry is one of those guys who could probably coach any event in track and field, so he was able to pitch in with advice on everything from the layout of the track to the ideal seating capacity (2,000 permanent seats, which can be expanded to 3,500 if he gets his wish to someday host the Big Ten and NCAA championships).

But his area of expertise is the throws, and three decades of coaching world class shot putters and discus throwers  such as Mike Lehmann, Gabor Mate,  Edis Elkasevic, and Cory Martin gave him a chance to visit a great variety of training and competition venues  across the United States and Europe. Jerry also encouraged his athletes to send him pictures of the facilities they came across on their travels overseas.

Given the opportunity to design the new facility at Michigan, he tried to combine the best features of all these places, some as close as Lincoln, Nebraska, others as far afield as Berlin, Germany.

A top priority was creating a space that would allow for year-round training of the long throws.

“At one end of the indoor facility (see the illustration above) we will be able to throw the hammer and discus into nets outside of the oval and also outside of the 300-meter track so athletes can still train on those tracks while we throw.”

The finished product will look something like this…

One trick to constructing an effective indoor training space is  to find the right material in which to throw the  hammer. It has to be flexible enough so that the implement does not rebound back at the thrower, but sturdy enough to withstand a lot of abuse.  Luckily, Jerry’s former putter Eric Werskey spent a lot of time in Germany over the past couple of years and was able to obtain the exact specs for the materials the Germans use in their indoor throwing facilities.  According to Jerry, “they  throw the hammer into strips of  PVC vinyl, one quarter inch thick (see photo below). You hang the strips so that they overlap and you can throw a hammer into it and it will only deflect maybe a foot and a half.”  The Michigan space will use that exact grade of PVC.

While many coaches working in a northern climate would be thrilled for their athletes to have the ability to launch hammers and discs into a net all winter, the new facility will allow Jerry to take cold weather training a step further.  If you are a true throws geek, you have likely seen this video of Robert Harting:

He is throwing from an indoor ring through a large open doorway onto an outdoor grass field. Here is another view of a similar facility:

Notice how misty/rainy/crappy the weather looks outside. Kind of like a typical day in the Midwest between November and March.  But with a setup like this, who cares? Your athletes can throw from a dry, covered ring and still know how far their attempts are traveling, which is a distinct advantage over throwing into a net.

Here is a closeup look at the end of the field house where Jerry’s rings will be located:

Two of those rings will be like the ones in those videos, where the athletes will be able to throw from inside the field house onto…

…these outdoor throwing fields.

What makes the Michigan facility potentially better than the German training centers will be the ability to throw the javelin from indoors to out as well. Notice on those blueprints that an extended straightaway from the practice track ends just short of the throwing rings. Jav throwers will be able to use that section of the track as a runway while launching the spear out onto the grass.

One more aspect of the Michigan facility bears mention, though it does not pertain strictly to the throws.

As much as I love the sport of track and field, I  think I can speak for most coaches, athletes and fans when I say that sometimes meets, especially indoor meets, can drag on a bit too long, A lot too long when you have a field of elite pole vaulters.

Jerry has sought to remedy that situation by setting up his new facility so that not only can the weight, shot, and  high jump be run concurrently, but so can two long jump and two (Thank you, Jesus!) pole vault runways.

The facility is set to open in January, 2018, with a quad featuring Michigan, Notre Dame, Ohio State and Michigan State. Jerry predicts that meet can be completed in two hours.

He is also trying to put together a Big 10 v. ACC challenge featuring at least nine teams, which he believes will take no more than five hours, start to finish.

And speaking of making track and field more fan-friendly, Jerry also designed the new facility to allow live streaming of practices and competitions.

“I made sure they put the conduit in, and also put in  locations for cameras, with a toggle switch in a control room so you can cover the meet live.  The parents will be able to sit at home and watch. That’s the direction that track needs to go. We need to get it out to more alumni, fans and parents. We will have to purchase the cameras later, but when we do the facility will be ready for it.”

Whatever they end up calling this new athletic complex, kudos to Jerry for envisioning a cutting-edge venue that will provide a great track and field experience for coaches, athletes, and spectators.

And kudos to the Michigan administration for hiring a coach with vast experience in his sport and then trusting his advice.

Maybe they should call it the Palace of Miracles.