Unlike the football and basketball teams, there’s no off-season conditioning or summer league hoops for most prep throwers. Your athletes don’t toss the shot in a fall league. Odds are that at most any school, 90% of the throwers last picked up an implement when their season ended last spring. And maybe half of the kids have never touched an implement before. Your lucky if 50% of them have even lifted a weight. So how do we make the best use of the two-plus months you have with these "recreational" throwers?

Teach them one technique, not two!

Now is this an anti-O’Brien style editorial? ABSOLUTELY NOT. There’s a lot of old school coaches out there who swear by the glide and feel it is the most reliable technique. To make these statements represents a form of heresy or libel against their favored technique.

I am by no means bashing the glide. It has been a very effective style for over fifty years now, and will continue to be just that for those best suited to it. But I have a vision of high school track meets where the glide becomes the novel technique. A vision where both the shot and discus are hurled with similar techniques that breed improved performance.

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Certainly, the fact that my knowledge and experience in teaching the glide technique is limited contributed to my decision to teach only the rotational. However, I found that using one technique:

1. Reduces the confusion for the students,

2. Makes it much easier to teach a larger number of student-athletes

3. Does not give the early frustrated thrower an "al- ternative" style to retreat into – prep throwers perceive the glide as easy and less complicated and if both styles were available, in times of difficulty would want change to the glide.

4. Athletes are all on "the same page" and better equipped to help out a teammate

5. Makes practices easier to organize

I allowed a few of my throwers at Annville Cleona to glide because I felt these prep throwers did not have the athleticism, coordination or mental capacity to spin. I was right, but that also proved true for them in the glide. The fact that they were gliding became big distraction to my spinners when I first took over the program. As in any program there are athletes that pick up the technique very fast and with others it becomes a struggle. Making them focus on this one technique makes it easier for me to transition into discus.

Having an experienced rotational thrower on the team or at practice on a regular schedule definitely helps the prep thrower with visualization of the whole process.

I found that videotaping is a must at the beginning to help the students "see themselves" as rotational throwers (besides the obvious training benefits). I tape practices and at the end of the week give them each copies on CD. I also taped each meet, reviewed it with them as a group, and then sent them home with a copy to study in slow motion. I would give them a "pop quiz" while working out the next day on their mistakes and ask them what THEY would do to correct them.

I found that if you are not ready to give the young athletes the support needed at first, you might as well go back to the glide, where you can just scream out your instructions. In young athletes that are still trying to find out who and what they are about, the concepts of balance out of the back, hitting three o’clock, blocking and screaming can become at first overwhelming. My first conversation with the kids always begins with a disclaimer – This will be frustrating to many of you at first, BUT once you start to master the spin, you’ll put the gliders to shame. This same message was given repeatedly thoughout the season until one day it’s no longer needed.