Light and Heavy Hammers

As I mentioned recently, much of the time hammer throwers spend training is spent throwing a variety of hammers. While this may seem less than revolutionary, it surprises many people when I tell them that. They often think that the key to success is in the weight room, but it isn’t. Results are first obtained with technique and, consequently, throwing consumes a vast majority of my training group’s time at practice.

We do mix things up though. We don’t just throw the competition 7.26-kilogram (16-pound) hammer. Instead, we throw an assortment of hammers ranging from 5-kilograms up to 10-kilograms. Coach Bondarchuk even gave my training partner Kibwe Johnson a full length 12-kilogram hammer to throw once. We vary things up like this for a variety of reasons. First, by occasionally changing the weight of the hammer we throw, the body is forced to continually adapt and grow. Second, the variation in weight allows us to focus on different aspects of our training. Lighter hammers help us improve our speed and technique. Heavier hammers help us improve our special strength. Each hammer has its role in training. Finally, we spend time throwing light and heavy hammers because our results with those weights correlates better to success than any weight room exercise does.

Coach Bondarchuk has coached thousands of hammer throwers in his long and successful coaching career. During that time, he has kept meticulous notes and records concerning of his athletes. From his time as Soviet national coach to the present, he has tested his athletes to measures their strength levels then correlates those results with each athlete’s personal best in the hammer. With such a large sample size, his analysis is something that should not be overlooked by throwers. For someone of my level, the correlation between training hammers and the competition hammer is very high, ranging from a correlation of 0.542 with the 5-kilogram hammer to a correlation of 0.805 with the 8-kilogram hammer (a correlation of 1.0 means that two things are perfectly correlated). In contrast, the back squat only has a 0.225 correlation, meaning that their is only a statistically insignificant relationship between a thrower’s best in the squat and his result in the hammer. This can be demonstrated by the fact that athletes at a competition have strength levels that range all across the board. Some lifting exercises, such as the clean, have a better correlation (0.356), but none are very high. For this reason, more of our time is spent in the ring than in the weight room.

In addition to calculating the all the correlations, Coach Bondarchuk has also compiled what he feels are model characteristics for hammer throwers at different levels. For instance, according to the table below, a 70 meter hammer throw should aim for a training best of 54 meters with the 10-kilogram hammer and 83 meters with the 5-kilogram hammer. In my training I am doing just that; aiming for these benchmarks as I progress towards my goals for next season.

I would like to throw at least 70 meters this season, and am getting close to the benchmarks for that distance. For instance, just before Thanksgiving I threw a near best of 52.25m with the 10-kilogram hammer. That isn’t very far off the benchmark of 54 meters Coach Bondarchuk has set for a 70 meter thrower. I also mentioned in my last post that I recently threw a personal best of 76 meters with the 5-kilogram hammer. If you look at the table above, you will notice that this result is way off the benchmark for a 70 meter thrower. When I brought this up with Coach Bondarchuk, he told me not to worry. While throwers at my level are pretty uniform in their results with the 6-kilogram hammer, they can be all over the place with the 5-kilogram hammer. Some throwers, like myself, don’t have as much feeling with such a light hammer and only have a few meters difference between the two implements. Other throwers have an extremely large difference. It is not a big concern to him since I am still on target with every other implement. He reiterated to me that, as I said earlier, the 5-kilogram hammer correlates the lowest of any hammer (0.542) while the 10-kilogram hammer has a higher correlation for someone of my level (0.745). Once again, he has subsided my worries.

Update (10 Dec 2009): I’ve posted a follow up and a few clarifications on this post here.