"Pushing the weight instead of pulling or dragging the hammer" I have heard people talk about this but what the heck does it really mean?

Hold your hands together, arms straight, directly in front of you. The point of the triangle is your centerline (perpendicular to your shoulders). Dragging the ball is when the ball is well off to the right of your centerline. To push the ball you are trying to keep the ball as close to the centerline as possible. Why? If you drag then the radius is shortened and this takes velocity away from the ball. Radius is KING! Why do they call it pushing? I can't speak authoritatively but I can say that when you drag it feels like you are pulling (dragging) with your left shoulder. When you push, it feels like you are pushing the ball around with both shoulders, it feels much more balanced.

Incidentally, back in the glory days of US wire hammer (Connolly and company) the preferred technique was to drag. It wasn't until the Russians started to dominate (Sedykh, Litvinov, etc.) that the push became the dominant technique.

I AGREE WITH BORGES!!!

Maximizing the radius is the goal.  Doing it with speed is the trick.  I first lit on this after talking to a friend of mine in the weight room who throws wire hammer.  He's been in clinics taught by Sedykh and throws with some others in the SF bay area.  I tried throwing the light weight while thinking about keeping the ball as far away from me as possible and keeping the whole motion smooth.  After a couple of throws, I was hitting in the range of my PR, but it seemed almost effortless.  With good technique, PR's will come with more trunk rotation speed, but you must maintain that radius.  If you try be too aggressive, it's easy to get the ball behind you too far and then you are dragging/pulling.

I'm no expert, but that's how it feels when I throw.

Coming from a T&F background this is my perspective of “Pushing” Vs. “Dragging”:

Pushing comes from taking your fully extended arms & hands from the right side to the left side and not moving your left side until the implement is past you (past center line and heading to your left side). From here you can move your feet and turn. The push is derived from your right hand, hip, and foot. These are the engines. The left side stays relaxed and free to allow the implement to accelerate through the centerline and just ahead of your right side. The idea is to let the implement do most of the work and you only need to stay in the middle and keep pushing your hand(s) past you. Hence the effortless throw.

Dragging is when the implement is behind the centerline and usually stays stuck on your right hip. The head, hips, and feet turn well ahead of the implement leaving it behind the body. This shortens your radius and you wind up dragging the implement around with you. The only way to accelerate the implement is to turn faster. Your grip is strained as well as other parts of your body because of your body position relative to the implement.

The discus can be put behind an athlete and thrown very far because of how light it is. The Olympic hammer needs to be pushed rather than dragged because of the forces exerted and the ball speed required to throw far. In highland games the implements are much heavier and require more patience with a deliberate start to setting the implement up for the throw. The weights for distance can be pushed in to the start, followed by the feet catching back up, to push again through the rest of the trig leading to the release. If you continue to push the ball with your hand, hip, and foot you will continue to accelerate the weight through out the throw into the release where you want to push up and out. The key is patience and waiting for the weight to work for you.

The hammer can still be pushed but it is the thought of using your hand, hip, and foot to push the ball through the centerline and past even though you are using two hands. There should be a big long arm sweep through the middle and past, catch it again and push it through. The trick is to not “hold on” to the hammer and slow it down but to let it run around you keeping a long radius. “Holding on” is when you pull in with your arms and unintentionally slow the hammer down because it is moving so quickly. Let it run and run fast!

I’m not saying this is easy but it is a conceptual approach to the throws. Either way a long radius, good body position, and acceleration will make for long throws and fewer injuries.

Steve D wrote: I'm actually waiting for Ryan V. to chime in and break down the WFD and Hammer tech that goes on in his mind....

I think I can answer that one. Ryan is thinking "The sooner I throw this thing over the fence and into the horse pasture, the sooner I can get to Hermana's and have a 5lb burrito."

This was an excellent string.  Went out and tried to focus on it.  I don't think I ever quite got it, but I did stumble into what almost felt like pushing instead of dragging and my distance went up about 5 feet from normal practice distance and I wasn't even being aggressive.

One insight though, for me to get the feeling at all it had to feel like it was almost going to go past 12 before I started the turn.  If I can get the hang of this I expect some new PRs in KC.

I am not a great thrower, my best 28 in competition was 49' in Wakeeney.  But I threw 44 tonight with 34#.

Excellent thread.  Any more thoughts on this?

BTW, in order to see many of the topics in Articles section, you have to make sure that "All" is selected in the "Show Topics" area at the top-left of the page, and not just those from the last month. 

using the "figure 8" arm swing when starting the first turn in the weights has an incredible amount of push to start the first turn with speed and then gives you the whole second spin catch up and get the weight in drag so you can yank the crap out of it. Kinda like a hybrid push / pull. That is how Matt Sandford set the world record with the 28. Its also how I added 2-4 feet to my weights...in like a week.

Will,

please explain the figure 8 if you could.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF03ElP2Mdk - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lF03ElP2Mdk

here is a video of it perfectly smooth. Watch the right arm and what it does to the weight. This is not a casting start. It is essentially a push of the handle forward - but by first turning the hand away from the right butt cheek on the back swing - the ball shifts to behind the handle and stays behind the hip - I don't really know how to describe the motion. But done correctly it really makes the throw much smoother while keeping the speed of the first spin up.

What I guess it really does is take all the slack out of the caste and turn method.

my brain hurts.

here is another clip with a side view

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryNey3fpABc&NR=1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryNey3fpABc&NR=1

god - watching those gets me fired up to throw!

just be quick with the play pause button....

If I can get vid files I can do a ton of crap with them.... just tuff to get stuff off youtube and often you lose frames persecond ability