Question: I understand throwing 8- and 9-kilogram hammers, but why do you throw full length 10-kilogram hammers in training? -Robert

Many people are surprised when I tell them we throw the 10-kilogram hammer in training. Their jaw then starts to drop when I tell them we throw it on a full-length wire. For some, deviating too far from the competition weight hammer is a big no-no. But for us, it is just another tool to use in our arsenal. The more tools you have, the better chance that one of them will help you improve. Heavy hamemrs play an essential role in developing special strength, which is more useful and important than general strength for hammer throwers.

Of course, there is always the worry that costs outweigh the benefits. The potential gained strength, some argue, is outweighed by bad technical habits picked up by throwing the heavy hammer. This does not have to be the case. When throwing heavy hammers, it is important to focus first on technique. While the hammer is heavy, it is not impossible to throw with good technique. Take a look at the video comparison below of Kibwé’s throws with the 6- and 12-kilogram hammer. Despite being twice the weight of the lighter implement, Kibwé maintains his form while throwing the 12-kilogram hammer. A thank you goes to Kevin Becker for producing the video.

Question: What puzzles me is why no one ever gives a definitive statement about how to achieve hammer acceleration. If it is pushing with the right hand, driving with the right foot, dropping onto the right foot early, lowering the left shoulder on the entry, etc. Why not just say so plainly!! It seems to me that someone needs to step-up to the plate and say: this is how you make the hammer go faster, and this is how you best counter the forces that you produce. -Ray

I know you were hoping for a response from Dr. B, but my answer will have to suffice. The reason it is so hard to describe how to accelerate the hammer is because accelerating the hammer isn’t just something that you do. If it were just a few simple steps, then it would be easy to write down and pass along to others. Instead, it is something that you do with the hammer. In this way, accelerating the hammer is very similar to a dance. And you can read as much as you want about dancing, but you will never truly be able to do it until you hear and feel the music (and like dancing, sometimes not even then either). To make matters worse, the hammer actually plays the lead during most of the throw, so it is hard to know what to do until you feel what it is giving you. When we are training, Dr. B will tell us when we are pushing the hammer and when we aren’t. This way we learn the feeling of pushing the hammer and our coach reinforces that feeling by letting us know when we are doing things right.

Question: I was looking online and asking other throwers where they get their equipment. Because most of us are bargain-looking buyers when it comes to training I was wondering if you could start a thread somewhere where we could all share how/where we get our hammers from. -Freddie Hannie

It’s been a while since I’ve bought a hammer. Hammer prices have gone up so much lately that I usually avoid buying them unless absolutely necessary. Thankfully both the Kamloops Track Club and the University of Washington have had plenty of hammers for me to throw. I’ve also accumulated 20 or so hammers over the past decade through donations, lost and found, and purchases.  If I were to buy a hammer, however, I would definitely recommend Jump Start Athletics for two reasons: they have great Polanik equipment and they are owned by a hammer thrower. You might be able to save a few pennies elsewhere, but everything they sell is of great quality and will last longer than the cheap hammers imported from India. Plus, if they don’t have something you need, they will special order it and can get hammers in any imaginable weight.

But if you are really on a budget, there may be a better solution than buying a new hammer.

Not working much in the offseason gave me a chance to spend more time on this site and also work on a few projects that I’ve had on the shelf for years. One of those projects was to write a primer on Bondarchuk’s training. I originally wrote an article along those lines in 2004 after doing years of research, reading, and talking with other coaches about Bondarchuk’s ideas on training. However, as I was about to publish that article, I actually met Bondarchuk and it made me realize I still had a bit more to learn. Then I began law school and my free time vanished..

I still posted the original article on Hal’s Hammerthrow.com site, but I’ve wanted to update it with some new insight and finally had the time to do so this past winter. Thanks to some great feedback by my training partner Ryan Jensen, Zach Hazen, my girlfriend, and others, I was able to get the article published in the April edition of Modern Athlete and Coach. Modern Athlete and Coach is published by the Australian Track and Field Coaches Association. Their organization has done a lot for Bondarchuk (they published his first book in English) and I think they are perhaps the best athletics coaching magazine in the world. They are also very nice to work with and have been kind enough to let me republish the article here.

Training has been going poorly this week, so instead of talking about that I’ll answer a few more questions I’ve received this month.

Question: What are some of the more important things that need to be done at the beginning of the throw in order to stay on balance during the throw?

The start of the throw is the most important part and I could talk about it for a long time. Instead, I’ll just focus my comments on one big issue that I’ve been working on: when to pick up the right foot on the first turn. This is also a pretty common problem among hammer throwers and one that has generated a lot of discussion throughout the years.

Normally, people fall into two camps in this debate. On one side there are those that emulate world record holder Yuri Sedych and try to lift the right foot off early. Biomechanist Ralph Otto showed us that on Sedych’s world record throw his right foot left the round on average at 63º (where 0º is the back of the circle and 90º is the left side of the circle). On the other side are those that follow Stuart Togher’s mantra “push to 180º.” My coach takes the middle road: he says that you shouldn’t try to pick the foot up early or late. Instead, the foot will come off the ground on its own when the body is balanced and you push the ball properly to the left side.