Olympics track and field: Coaches explain how they train

“The third one is kind of, you either have it or you don’t have it, although you can work on controlling it,” says Greg, who just returned from Paris. luck. “Some pole vaulters are a bit daring, they push the limits and hurt themselves doing risky activities… Mondo is not like that. But he is very brave.”

He is also very strong without being hugely muscular, and agile—a body type that works well for pole vaulters, who must not only be lightning fast in their run, but also strong enough to absorb the intense shock of the pole hitting the so-called box, to launch, and the force of flying over the bar.

“Your body has to be very strong, every part of your body from top to bottom, so you can handle that without getting hurt — your hands, your wrists, your shoulders, your upper back, your lower back, your legs, your Achilles tendon, everything,” says Greg.

However, pole vault was just one of 48 athletics events at this year’s Olympics — each requiring its own superpowers, special training and, in some cases, body shapes and sizes.

“What makes track and field so great is the different body types that exist. There is an event for everyone.” “It’s a great way to get in shape,” says Tiffany Hogan, former Olympian, three-time national champion, and assistant track and field coach at Brigham Young University. luck.

Below, coaches explain how athletes prepare, the skills needed, and the myths and facts about body type.

Strength and core exercises are the basics.

When American shot putters Chase Jackson She stepped into the ring for the women’s semifinals at the Olympics this week, and she did so with an 8.8-pound metal jab and a whole lot of training under her belt.

“One of the big things I like to work on is cardio,” says Jackson trainer Paul Wilson. luck On the phone from Paris. “So the analogy I always use is: Imagine a tree. If the heart is weak, the tree will fall.”

Wilson, who coaches Jackson (who wasn’t expecting that) failed to qualify (Friday’s finals) and the British Olympic shot put Scott LincolnJohn Jordan, a coach in other throwing sports — discus, hammer, and javelin — all require a combination of rhythmic coordination, “explosive power,” and total body strength, says.

“It’s an explosive sport,” Wilson says of throwing, noting that the trajectory of movement is generally the same, using several cycles to generate speed before throwing. (The exception is javelin throwing, with a light javelin and a sprint before throwing—plus, it requires a genetic talent for so-called “fast-twitch fibers,” something sprinters also have.)

“You don’t go to the gym and lift weights six times a week and do bicep curls,” he says. “If you want to be a bodybuilder, you work specific muscles, whereas we work the entire body.”

It’s important not to build too much muscle mass, which can lead to a loss of flexibility. “You don’t want to end up like a bodybuilder with a hard, strong body… You need to be loose to get a long stretch when you actually hit the squat,” says Wilson.

This is also important for pole vaulters, who tend to build strength primarily through bodyweight exercises. “Lifting your body weight, pushing it, because your body adapts to the activity you’re trying to do, and you don’t gain a huge amount of muscle,” Greg explains.

“Throwing Your Feet” and Other Non-Instinctive Rules

“In throwing, it’s very difficult to try to coordinate everything with a certain rhythm, because you’re trying to go as fast as you can on the entry, then explosively out front while trying to keep your body back, working from the ground up,” Wilson says. To illustrate, he says you can think of wrapping a rubber band around and then letting go—that’s your upper body, facing one way while your legs are still facing the other, generating the force needed to launch the shot or discus.

“A lot of pitchers, when they start out, try to throw with just their upper body. But you throw with your legs, not your arms… You walk on your legs all day, so your legs are stronger than your arms,” he says.

“There’s a body part[that works]but most of what you do is generated by your legs,” Hogan says, noting that “your arms are just extensions.” That’s why strength training is a big part of multi-event training. When Hogan’s athletes go to the weight room, the primary movements they focus on are variations of the squat, the power clean, the power snatch, including the throw events, she says.

Wilson points out that avoiding dizziness when spinning in a throw is all about practice. “You just do it over and over again. The first few times you do it, you feel dizzy, but then you become aware of where you are. It’s like anything we see — gymnasts, how do they not get dizzy when they spin upside down? Or divers? The more you do something, the more your brain adapts, and the more your body adapts.”

Adapting to rotation is just one skill with particular nuances – like a controlled run in pole vault, as opposed to a full-force run in sprinting.

“You have to be absolutely fast, and you have to work on absolute speed,” Greg says. “But pole vaulting has to be very precise, so it’s a precision sprint. You have to hit a mark… within a very narrow range. It’s narrower than the long jump. So the sprint has to be very precise.” He explains that the goal can be considered “controllable maximum speed.”

Specific exercises, from jumping jacks to underwater jumps.

Wilson says his approach to training is that “all shooters are athletes,” meaning they have to be able to do everything from bench presses and squats to running and jumping.

Hogan, who coaches the women in the heptathlon — which concludes Friday and consists of the 100-meter hurdles, high jump, shot put, 200-meter run, long jump, javelin throw and 800-meter run — and the men in the decathlon (a series of 10 events), seeks to tie together workouts for events that share similar movements.

For example, “long jump and hurdles have some similarities in terms of the starting rhythm,” Hogan says. During workouts, athletes spend the first two hours working on the mechanics, form, and strength behind the jump (as they also do in throwing). This takes the form of standard jumping, a workout that involves a lot of jumping and bouncing to build muscle strength.

“We’ll do concentric jumping exercises, where we’re on a box and we drop to the ground and then we try to bounce up, jump as high as we can,” Hogan says.

There’s also jumping, skipping and running up stairs, which makes for a lot of fun—especially when they’re done in a diving pool, something decathletes do to work on their pole vault technique, doing the moves completely underwater. Hogan says it’s the best way to slow down and “feel what your body is supposed to do.”

It’s especially helpful to work on the upside-down swing—which a pole vaulter must do before propelling himself over the bar. “It’s a very strange, unfamiliar movement,” says Greg. “A lot of people have trouble just visualizing it. The water is a way to get a feel for it.” But maybe 50 percent of his training is sprinting, mixed with strength training and then the actual pole vault.

“It’s hard to get the strength you need to pole vault without pole vaulting,” he says.

Body type can be very important.

Hogan, a two-time Olympic heptathlete, says these events show how a wide range of body types can benefit different aspects of track and field. She says she’s noticed differences in her performance as her body has changed.

“At different bodyweights, I competed better in certain events than others,” she says. luck“As I got lighter, I did better on jumps than on throws. When I got heavier, I did better on throws than on jumps.”

Greg explains that in pole vaulting, body type “matters a lot,” explaining that “taller, thinner athletes are better suited to pole vaulting because you’re pushing yourself into the air and flying, so any added weight that doesn’t help is painful.”

He also says that your height gives you an advantage in guiding the shaft correctly, as long as you don’t overdo it. also Tall, which may make you “unable to have the full body strength to withstand impact and perform gymnastic movement.” He says the “sweet spot” for men is between 5 feet 11 inches and 6 feet 2 inches.

Meanwhile, the discus throw requires “long levers,” or long arms with a “big wingspan,” Wilson says. That’s because the discus is lighter (2.2 pounds for women and 4.4 pounds for men) and larger than the throw, requiring a wider rotation circle to reach far.

But long arms aside—and although many throwers are larger than, say, pole vaulters—Wilson says there is no ideal body type, and points to men’s shot put as an example, noting the differences in build among American shot putters. Ryan Crouser and Joe Kovacs.

But age can matter, especially in throwing, because mastering many elements of competition takes time. “It doesn’t happen overnight,” he says. “It’s something that happens over years. That’s why throwers are probably a little different from track athletes: They’re at their best when they’re in their early to mid-30s.”

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