Heading to Europe

I’ve been both looking forward to and dreading this week for a few months. I’ve spent the first few days of the week packing up my apartment in Kamloops. This afternoon I’ll be heading back to Seattle, where I will spend tomorrow packing my bags for Europe before leaving on Friday morning for three months in Zürich. It feels exhausting just writing that sentence. While it will be rough to be away from my family, girlfriend, coach, and training partners, it will be nice to once again have an income and have a good training base for the European part of my season.

Training has been going very well. And by “well” I mean both my technique and strength are near their all-time bests and I’m still in the middle of hard training. Or, as Dr. B puts it: “Good result, bad state.” On Monday I actually threw further in training than I did right before I threw my personal best (you can see a video below). I’m don’t ever throw far in training, so my results have been very encouraging. I can’t wait to compete against some of the world’s best in the coming months. In the meantime, my posts on this site and my other sites (CollegeHammer.com and HSHammer.com) may be intermittent until I get accustomed to my new surroundings. I will, however, always keep you up to date on my meet results and will also have a great post up very soon providing a one-month training log showing exactly what my training looks like every day.

Check out Pain Free Back, a new iPhone application from my physical therapist.

I’m also not the only one that has been busy lately. My physical therapist just released a new iPhone application that is an innovative and convenient tool for those suffering from back pain. I’ve had lingering lower back pain for the past few years. After trying massage, chiropractic, and other avenues, Neil Chasan and the folks at Sports Reaction Center have helped me out a lot. His new iPhone application aims to do the same for you and gives you a specific treatment program based on your symptoms and then continues to adjust the program based on your feedback and progress. I got to play around with the demo and it is a great tool, complete with video and other bells and whistles.  For only $4.99 it is well worth checking out. You can view more info about it in the iTunes store or on its website.

To end with, here’s the training video I promised above. I’ve still got plenty of things to iron out with my technique, but the flaws are slowly disappearing. What also makes me happy is that the flaws are disappearing consistently. In October, I would do things correctly on perhaps 10% of my throws, but now I am making the right corrections on a majority of my throws. When a competition comes around, the body tends to go back to what it is used to, so it is great that my body is getting used to the improved technique. The only other thing I need to work on is my tan, and since summer arrived in Kamloops this week you can see me working on that in the video too.