Light and Heavy Hammers (Continued)

I received a lot of feedback on my last post about using heavy and light hammers in training.  Getting feedback is one of the reasons I love writing about the hammer on here and it’s also why I don’t write as much about my endeavors as an attorney.  I like learning more about the sport by sharing information and creating a discussion.  Hopefully you can take something away from it too.  Please feel free to comment on my posts or e-mail me if you ever want to discuss anything.

Back to the point, my last post brought in quite a few responses that touched on how other throwers use heavy hammers in their training and how much variation there is in their results with different implements.  I even received the following comment from American record holder Erin Gilreath in her most recent blog post:

I was just reading Martin Bingisser’s blog about how Dr. Bondarchuk found in his studies that back squat didn’t correlate to distance in the hammer throw.  In a study that Dr. Larry hasn’t even published yet, he told me that his statistics guy found that my back squat correlated to how long I spent in double support on my turns; the heavier my back squat, the longer my double support in my turns. Longer double support means more force applied to the ground and then the hammer.  Hmm….  Thus, I find that my squat being up to be a good thing, despite the little aches and pains I have today because of them.

American Record Holder Erin Gilreath

Before I defend Dr. Bondarchuk’s findings, I’d like to make a few clarifications about my earlier post and what Bondarchuk’s findings actually were.  First, I was not stating that the squat and hammer throw results have no correlation.  Instead, I was stating that they have a low correlation, much lower than the correlation that light or heavy hammers have with the competition implement.  This isn’t a revolutionary finding.  Bondarchuk still finds squats useful and we include them in our training.  However, they take a back seat to other exercises.

Second, the numbers I was using were for male hammer throwers, not females.  The numbers calculated for female throwers fall in line with what Erin has found.  The correlation between the squat and the hammer throw is nearly twice as high for female hammer throwers.  For an elite male hammer thrower (75-80 meters) the correlation calculated by Bondarchuk is only 0.196.  But for elite women (70-75 meters), it is 0.340.  It should also be noted that the correlations for most weight room exercises are even higher for beginning athletes.  For a female throwing 55-60 meters, the squat correlation is 0.524.  So, Erin is entirely correct that, at least for women, there is a significant correlation between the squat and throwing far.

With all that being said though, I still think that it is a fallacy to believe that the more you squat, the farther you will throw.  Bondarchuk has found that the squat only helps out to a certain point (i.e. there is a point of diminishing returns for the squat).  After an athlete reaches a certain level of strength, their time is better spent focusing on other exercises which have an even higher correlation to success.  While there is still a place for weight lifting in training, throwing a light or heavy hammer will have a higher rate of return than any weight room exercise.  This was precisely the point of my original post, where I explained that my training group spends most of our time throwing various hammers and doing special strength exercises that correlate better to throwing far.  Just because something correlates well doesn’t mean that it correlates the best.  Athletes only have limited time and energy, so it is essential to make sure an athlete is using the best combination of exercises to reach their goals.

As you have noticed, I base many of my opinions above on Dr. Bondarchuk’s research.  While he is my coach, I’m not reciting him for that reason alone and I want to reiterate that.  One the strengths of his work is the sheer number of hammer throwers he has coached.  Because of this, and not just his success, I feel that no one should be quick to disregard his research.  The study by Larry Judge that Erin referenced has yet to be published and therefore it is hard to directly comment on.  But I will say that it is hard to reach any definitive conclusions if sample size of his study is just one athlete.  Larry is likely right in his findings, but a small sample size makes it difficult to generalize since it can sometimes produce misleading results.  For instance, if an athlete does bicep curls during the season and sees that their hammer results grow along with it, there would be a high correlation between the two exercises for that athlete.  However, we all know that bicep strength does not affect results in the hammer; it is likely another highly correlated exercise that is causing the gain.  With a sample size of more athletes, you can begin to see that bicep strength has no real positive effect since many other athletes throw far with little bicep strength.  A larger sample size allows you to not only calculate the correlation of two exercises, but also get an idea about whether one is causing the other.  I put so much trust in Dr. Bondarchuk’s research because his sample includes the thousands of athletes he has coached and observed over his four decades as a world-class coach.