Discus & Shot Put - 3/16/15

After taking some time off for J to welcome baby L into the world, we got back to business this spring.  A local high school coach agreed to work with us on the discus and shot put events.  None of us had ever done either of these before, so we started off just learning the basic moves so as to not hurt ourselves.

Both the discus and the shot have varying weights - we stuck with the high school girls versions.  First, we practiced "putting the shot".  Just holding it correctly was a bit awkward - you only use your fingers and thumb, down to the first knuckle.  The hand should never touch the shot.  Then you tuck it just behind your ear.  The footwork for both of these events is the hard part and the coach had us practice in just the beginner's form - either no steps, or very minimal.  For the shot, we took one big lunging step and "punched the giant" - his way of saying that our hands should punch outward and upward for the right trajectory - jumping and swiveling our hips to land with the opposite foot forward.

K and R practicing the shot put

After some practice shots, we did start from the actual circle.  It's truly amazing how far the "real" athletes can put these heavy things!!!

After our introduction to the shot, we moved over to the discus ring.  At first, we practicing bowling the discs into a fence - to get the motion right of them coming off of our pointer finger last.  Then we tossed them straight up in the air - again, to get the spinning in the right direction.  A couple of us had issues with wanting to release them with the spin in the opposite direction.  A couple of the coach's throwers were there to demonstrate the full motion, including the spin.  We simply took one large step again, for fear of damaging the nearby school or cars if a disc when spinning wildly outside of the safety cage.

L2 releasing the discus

Again, knowing the distances these things can fly was amazing.  These are definitely simple looking events that can take years and years to perfect.  The slightest off-motion can make the difference!

Shot put and discus complete!