Can anyone out there help me find a good in season lifting program for a jav thrower? I used the search function but couldn’t find much. I’ve seen good strength gains in the past with WS4SB, is west side good in season, or will the ME days be too taxing? Any help would be appreciated, I can provide more info on myself if necessary.
I’m gonna assume that you want this because you are involved in Track and Field. If that is the case, I would think your best option would to be to talk to your throwing coach. I can’t imagine that your throwing program doesn’t hasn’t told you what they want you doing in the weightroom.
If you still need a program, I would suggest taking advice from here with a grain of salt; look for a track related website. elitetrack.com might be able to help.
Good luck
Appreciate the direct to that site. My throws coach is the head track coach. He knows what hes doing as far as technique is concerned but when it comes to lifting hes got a lot to learn, he gives literally everyone on the team the exact same lifting program i.e. 400 meter guys are doing the same thing as high jumpers. I’m definitly going to check out elite track.
I threw Jav in HS and College, and the best results I got were on a fairly simple program that my college coach prescribed.
We basically did 5x5 for Bench or incline, 5x5 for squat and 5x5 for an olympic movement or variation (cleans, hang cleans, power snatch, etc). We did this 3 days per week.
Accessory work included lat pulldowns or pullups and pullovers (3x6-8). We also did a ton of med ball work. We would do 8 or 10 different types of tosses for 10 max effort reps each before each practices.
We ran with the jumpers not the throwers, since our sport involved a running aspect. Every workout was different, but we basically trained anywhere from 20m-200m. The longer the distance, the fewer the repeats. We also did a lot of acceleration work, and obviously worked a lot on crossover speed.
Obviously you can’t do this much work In-Season, and looking back at it now, it seems like a lot of heavy work. Some people would probably fry their CNS with 5x5 for 3 exercises 3 days per week, but I made gains on that program like never before.
I would say the key to whatever program you do is to include some olympic movement for the explosiveness, and stick with a few compound movements for the upper and lower body.
Squats should be a staple as well as a big press (flat, incline, push press, etc.)
We focused on pullovers because it’s a great movement for any overhead thrower.
I really like deadlifts for back development, but considering we were doing an OL variation 3 days/week, there really wasn’t a huge need for them back then.
Too much rambling…long story short, you need to train the muscles involved in your sport, and you need to train to be explosive. My best throw was 220’ and change, far from world class, so take this info for what it’s worth.
Appreciate the input