If you are a throws coach, the question, am I creating athletes or throwers, should be one of the first issues you tackle.  I pose that question without the attachment of one being better or worse than the other.  Creating athletes will result in good throwers but making throwers might not necessarily create a good athlete.

If you use a program that covers all the bases, medicine balls, ladder drills, hurdle drills, kettle bells, plyos, weight lifting and etc.  You'll have someone who is generally explosive, quick, can change directions quickly, dunk a basketball, you know, all that stuff we associate good athletes with.

The problem is after all of that stuff, you still need to make time for throwing.

People are starting to figure out some of these staples of training we use aren't as good as we thought they were.  Bill Hartman talks about how hurdle drills don't increase hip flexibility because depending on the height of the hurdle people have to tilt their hip to get over it, tilting the hips negates the need for flexibly.  Ladder drills are useless if you ask Mike Boyle.  He talks about how quick feet don't matter, it's about force production and moving your feet quickly doesn't allow for force to be developed.

Having a bunch of 250-300lb guys jumping too much raises the risk of injury, even with proper technique.  I read in one of my college science books that when we land from a jump the force is equaled to roughly 3 to 4 times our body weight.  (It was 4-5 years ago sorry I don't have the source, I will state for the record to avoid plagiarism, that was not an original idea).

No rookie athlete in any sport should be doing many jumps.  Dan John said in his DVD "Philosophy of Strength Training" that when plyos made it big everyone forgot that research was done on people who had 2.5x body weight dead lifts and 2x body weight squats.

Weight lifting and kettle bells need a strong technique base or risk of injury is through the roof.  Yes, both are good and so I don't get another dumby yelling at me, lifting is important and should be done but it's time consuming.

You can teach someone how to snatch in an hour and it will take them years to master it.  Sounds a bit like shot put huh?  Well, if you are training people to be shot putters why are we getting obsessed with them knowing how to do every lift in Arnold's weight lifting bible (and yes, I teach all my guys snatch, but I don't teach them a large number of lifts.  I always try to keep it simple).

There's absolutely nothing wrong with creating good athletes over good throwers.  Balancing out all of these activities really limits the amount of time for throwing, or creates long practices.  If you have a bunch of division 1 throwers, it is going to be easier to get them to practice 4-5 hours a day over a bunch of high school kids.

I lean more towards just creating throwers.  I put 2/3 of my time into throwing and the other 1/3 into lifting.

I've personally done all those exercises and the only things I ever felt actual improvements from was throwing, lifting and plyos.  My issue with plyos and heavy weight lifting was I always got hurt doing them.

Again I don't post this calling coaches who do all these different training methods stupid, because they are probably way better than I.  I post it because when I started I saw high level coaches with high level athletes doing a great deal of work and when I tried to have my high school kids do it I found practice was over before anything really got done and they were bored and annoyed with me.

coaching Conditioning throwing weight lifting