My Goal of Becoming a Shot Put Champion (Seriously)

My goal for tomorrow: a medal in the shot put.

U.S. Olympic hammer thrower Loree Smith recently wrote a detailed post on goal setting for hammer throwers. She provided, better than any sport psychologist I have ever heard, the best explanation of how useful goals can be.

To summarize, athletes need long term goals, short terms goals, and flexibility. I believe the long term goals are the most important for a hammer throw since shortcuts and quick success are hard to come by in such a technical discipline. It takes a certain type of athlete to train year after year towards a goal that may be a decade away. But those as the type of athletes that succeed in the hammer throw. I’ve seen many talented throwers give up the hammer after one day since they were not able to throw further than their shot put best. That was probably the right move because they didn’t the mental prerequisites to be a good hammer thrower.

Short terms goals are also important, but I tend to have focus these goals on my technique and training rather than distance. As Loree puts it, short term goals mean you have a focus for each training session. I almost never put a distance as my goal for an upcoming meet. I have an idea of what I should throw, but I know that if I keep to my technical game plan, the results should follow. The results don’t always follow, but if you were in shape and had good technique, there is not much more you can do to change the result.

One topic Loree did not touch on was setting goals outside of the hammer. For me, these goals are also important to my hammer throw success since they give me peace of mind. I have been thinking about this because tomorrow I have a chance to achieve one of my biggest non-hammer goals: winning a shot put medal at a Swiss Championship. The Swiss Indoor Championships will start at 5:00pm tomorrow in St. Gallen.

Normally people think I am joking when I state this goal, but the shot put was my first event, my first love in track and field. In the back of my mind, I have always wanted to succeed at it. On the one hand, throwing the shot put should have no effect on my ability to throw the hammer. The events use different muscles, different technique, and favors a different body type (think NFL lineman). But on the other hand, it is this type of goal that makes the months of often solitary winter training pass by with a little more fun. Since I do not compete in the weight throw, I would otherwise have no competitions from August until April. The shot put spices up the cold winters. During college, I would always throw the shot put at our dual meet, which would break up the grind of the week-in week-out long college season.

With these types of goals, it is important not go out of my way to accomplish them. They are just for fun after all. My personal best is 15.18 meters and a throw of 16 meters should win a medal and could even win. I have trained with the shot put just twice in the last seven months (but that shouldn’t prevent me from doing well since I’ve threw my personal best last year after nearly a year without shot put training). So the goal is achievable and if I reach it I will treat it as a little bonus boost to my confidence. If I don’t succeed, I don’t have to worry about all the time the goal took away from my real goal of throwing the hammer further. And no one expects me to win (the Swiss federation’s preview does not list me among five medal contenders even though my best is similar). It’s a win-win situation. But throughout the process you cannot take your eye off the ultimate long term goal of the hammer throw.