DISCUS

Richard Marks’ San Jose State Throws Program

While talking with John Powell, he reminded me that he learned the lifts from Richard Marks. I was cleaning up a mess in a desk and found the “San Jose” Program that Marks put together for the team. I should have followed this in college, it is really logical.

Read more

All things discus

If you are interested in discus throwing,
I have some notes on this page that you may find helpful

For those who can’t seem to figure out “Quicktime”…I won’t mention names…
I made a PDF of the 174 throw PLUS and exciting pic!

Sixty (!!!) pages of reviews, discussions, ideas from the John Powell Discus Camps
…including the SLC, Orlando and Dan John “Special” Camps

Pavel T and I outlined a
simple lifting program for throwers “Get Up!” A little handout I use
when people come and train with me to make sure I cover everything.

My Commentaries on Ralph Maughan’s Classic
1963 Discus Article.
My coach at Utah State University wrote this in 1963 and I attempted to update it

Thinking Throwing Through
An article dedicated to those valiant people who attempt “throws” competition with no background

Camp 2002…
one of the best ever!

The “Lost” John Powell Information
A nice little overview of some of John’s training that somehow got lost in the nightmare of HTML

Show up, Don’t quit, Ask Questions
My three-part formula for success in life and sports

A Contrarian Approach to the Discus

It all started with a cross-country skier

Back in 1985, Olympic Medalist and World Champion Bill Koch came to Salt Lake City. A local ski rental store provided a workshop for the public. I was certainly the only “strength” athlete there, but I found Koch’s discussion riveting. Why? Nobody there, save me, could listen to what he was saying. What? Oh, they could hear him, but they couldn’t listen to him.

I was with a student of mine who later skied for the University of Utah. He kept asking the same questions of Koch: “How many hours do you train? What Periodization do you use?”

Koch, an Olympic medalist and World Champ, kept answering: “I take my girls three times a week to the bunny hill at the resort…I race them to the top of the lift while they take the chairs, then we ski down as a family. I do this over and over again. It gives me the “biggest bang for the buck.””

What the other skiers wanted to hear was…well, something else. Koch wasn’t “doing things right.”

There are lots of “us” not “doing things right.”

I left that workshop a much better coach and probably a better athlete. No, I am not much of a cross country skier, but I knew Koch had a gem hidden in this workshop. Soon, I began attending football clinics looking for the same kinds of insights as Koch…people doing things “a little” different. Jimmy Johnson, later coach of the Dallas Cowboys, gave a workshop outlining the keys to football success. He kept adding: “we do things a little different.” He focused on simplicity, conditioning and winning the “sudden changes,” fumbles and interceptions. It worked.

Later, I met football coaches who got rid of snap counts, ran odd formations, only kicked onsides, or ran goal line formations all over the field. Then, I went to camp with the two great contrarians, and good fr iends…John Powell and Brian Oldfield. If you told either of them that we are going “left,” expect them to march to the right.

Listen to insanity long enough and it will sound sane

I had just finished talking at a Track and Field Clinic in California when a few hands went up. “How much do you have your throwers run? ” “Uhhhh, none.”

I should have known better. Same coach, same hand goes up: “I run ten miles every morning, so I figure these high school kids should at least be good for half.  Har har har.”

Continue reading my book on the discus, The Contrarian Approach to the Discus Throw