From the outside, the American throwing scene is on top of the world. We are in the process of preparing to do our regular HMMR Podcast world championships preview episode and the US looks as strong as ever in the throws after two great major championships in a row. Just look at the world lists for 2025 as well: world leads in 3 of the 8 throwing events (women’s shot put, discus, and hammer), second position in 2 more (men’s hammer and shot put), and top 5 in another 2 events (men’s javelin and discus).
Author’s Note: This article was co-written with the support of Don Babbitt, Martin Bingisser, and PJ Vazel. Additional thanks to Mohamad Saatara for giving us the coach’s perspecitve, Caleb Seal for giving us access to the Ramona competition, and the members of the Marquette University Biomechanics Lab (Chris Geiser, Emma Patterson, and Wanda Sihanath).
In part one, of our series analyzing the biomechanics of Mykolas Alekna’s world record in the discus we looked at the rhyhm and release. Part two broke down the delivery subphases. Part three looked at the orbit and phase durations throughout the full throw. In the final part below we the center of mass velocities and changes during the throw.
https://www.hmmrmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/alekna_figure7.jpg359696Kristof Kipphttp://www.hmmrmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/HMMR-Full-Logo400.pngKristof Kipp2024-08-05 05:00:162024-08-06 05:06:36Analyzing Alekna’s Record Part 4: center of mass
Author’s Note: This article was co-written with the support of Don Babbitt, Martin Bingisser, and PJ Vazel. Additional thanks to Mohamad Saatara for giving us the coach’s perspecitve, Caleb Seal for giving us access to the Ramona competition, and the members of the Marquette University Biomechanics Lab (Chris Geiser, Emma Patterson, and Wanda Sihanath).
In part one, of our series analyzing the biomechanics of Mykolas Alekna’s world record in the discus we looked at the rhyhm and release. Part two broke down the delivery subphases. In part three below we now look at the orbit and phase durations throughout the full throw.
https://www.hmmrmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/alekan_figure_4.jpg358755Kristof Kipphttp://www.hmmrmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/HMMR-Full-Logo400.pngKristof Kipp2024-07-30 00:18:332024-08-04 04:39:31Analyzing Alekna’s Record Part 3: Phase durations and orbit
Author’s Note: This article was co-written with the support of Don Babbitt, Martin Bingisser, and PJ Vazel. Additional thanks to Mohamad Saatara for giving us the coach’s perspecitve, Caleb Seal for giving us access to the Ramona competition, and the members of the Marquette University Biomechanics Lab (Chris Geiser, Emma Patterson, and Wanda Sihanath).
In part one of our series analyzing the biomechanics of Mykolas Alekna’s world record in the discus we looked at the rhyhm and release. In part two we look a bit more in detail leading up the release; specifically looking at the discus velocities during the delivery subphases.
Author’s Note: This article was co-written with the support of Don Babbitt, Martin Bingisser, and PJ Vazel. Additional thanks to Mohamad Saatara for giving us the coach’s perspecitve, Caleb Seal for giving us access to the Ramona competition, and the members of the Marquette University Biomechanics Lab (Chris Geiser, Emma Patterson, and Wanda Sihanath).
On Sunday, April 14, 2024, Mykolas Alekna competed in the open men’s discus competition at the World Athletics Invitational held in Ramona, Oklahoma, USA. The series included a new world record and was the first series ever with all six throws over 70 meters.
Over the next week we will release a series of articles dissecting Alekna’s throws in Ramona. Each throw was recorded with eight high speed cameras and analyzed by the Marquette University Biomechanics Lab. This article series will look at the data behind the results, and also how coaches can learn from and interpret that. In part 1 we look at phase-specific velocities and release parameters. Part 2 will dive into discus velocities during the delivery. Part 3 will look at the orbit and duration of each phase of the throw. And the final Part 4 focuses on the center of mass.
https://www.hmmrmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/alekna_wr_sequence.jpg3901099Kristof Kipphttp://www.hmmrmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/HMMR-Full-Logo400.pngKristof Kipp2024-07-23 08:46:002025-05-16 07:51:42Analyzing Alekna’s Record Part 1: Rhythm and release
https://www.hmmrmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/best_of_2023.jpg472900Martin Bingisserhttp://www.hmmrmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/HMMR-Full-Logo400.pngMartin Bingisser2024-01-18 09:16:202024-01-18 09:16:25Top training resources of 2023
The World Championships wrapped up last weekend. Last week things got off to an exciting start, as I detailed in our halftime report. Below I continue the analysis by looking at the last four throwing finals: women’s hammer, women’s shot put, and both javelin finals.
Perhaps my favorite podcast episodes to record are those where we get to comment on the throwing events: who is hot, who is not, technical trends, training trends, and more. Last week we posted our World Championship preview episode with Don Babbitt. Since then I have been immersed in the sport as I watch the action unfold every day in Budapest.
On this week’s episode we cover a hodgepodge of topics including: holding peak condition, what we miss out on when we focus on video review, rethinking benchwarmers, and the hardest level to coach at.
The athletics community suffered a enormous loss on May 11 when Shaun Pickering unexpectedly passed away. He was an Olympic athlete, coach, and fan. But more than anything he was the man behind the scenes that helped push the sport forward. To help remember him, we’re joined this week by some of his best friends including Vesteinn Hafsteinsson, Charles van Commenee, Robert Weir, Frank Dick, and Don Babbitt.
