World renowned coach Dan Pfaff takes us through the process of what it takes to improve at an event he describes as being a “delicate ballet”

The javelin is a friendly event in terms of athlete selection – you see all kinds of heights and weights, body shapes and body types. Obviously, having the ability to put your arm overhead and throw something is a good starting prerequisite.

I work in a lot of sporting disciplines and if you study the kinematics and movement expression of the javelin, it’s very similar to a volleyball serve or a tennis player serving in terms of how the elbow, ankle and shoulder rotates.

When I was a young coach, I would go to volleyball and tennis courts and look for kids that I knew probably weren’t going make it in that sport but I could say “here’s another sport where you might have a chance”.

I also look at baseball outfielders who catch the ball on the run and are used to throwing on the run. For bowlers in cricket, too, although the arm mechanics are quite a bit different to javelin they’ve obviously trained in overhead movements.

It’s not just about throwing

The thing a lot of people don’t appreciate is that the javelin is part jump and part throw. You have an approach just like a jumper and you have an impulse step, a penultimate step and then a bracing leg step.

Then, as we brace that front leg and go over it, we actually go airborne – we’re jumping just as we release. It’s this delicate ballet of being a jumper and a thrower simultaneously in one event.

Key elements

I think, in all throwing events, there are three balls that you constantly juggle – the angle of release, the height of release and the speed of release.

Athletes manipulate those variables a little bit but if you go too far and have a lot of lateral flexion [moving to the side], you reduce the height of release or if your throwing base is too wide, you reduce your height of base. Conversely, if you’re too fast and can’t brace and execute the movement, then your speed of release may be incredible but your attack angle and your angle of release is terrible.

Take it step by step

Let’s say an athlete has very little experience of throwing. In that case we’re going start out throwing stones or rocks or different balls and things like that.

Then we might evolve into a smoother ball and a ball on a strap where you have to pull on it. I also use a lot of the foamy Nerf javelins.

Generally, I start out with a standing throw, so I teach kids how to position their feet, how to take a stride and how to co-ordinate that with the arm action and how to release the javelin. We also work on accuracy and I do a lot of target training.

Then I would progress to a walking throw like a three-step throw, for example, teaching the crossover steps. It’s a mastery progression and if they have mastered one stage and show consistency then we move to the next level of difficulty.

So a walking three-step, a walking five-step, a walking seven-step, most of those are with crossovers and not dealing with their withdrawal, just learning to hold the javelin correctly and balance it in the hand, to have good orientation with the javelin and walk correctly.

Placing the feet

The foot angles vary when you are doing your crossover steps. For the kids who have a really fast arm, I let their feet be a little bit straighter and that’s less of a crossover mindset, while the kids who throw more rotationally and know how to use their body and convert it into the arm, they start taking more of a side foot orientation.

If the three, five and seven-step throws are going okay, then we let them cut a kind of bounce jog while they’re doing it and we slowly increase speed as they have mastery.

Some get to the full run and transition into crossovers in that first year of throwing but I’ve actually had world class athletes at major meets doing seven-step throws because that was all they were proficient at. Just adding speed to something isn’t going to magically make it better. I’m a big proponent of mastery.

Key positions

Nobody’s going to throw far leaning back 40 degrees and nobody’s throw far leaning forward 60 degrees – there’s a certain posture of the torso and head needed to throw well.

Learning those positional landmarks and being able to obtain those landmarks and expressions guide the progression rate in terms of what we add.

If we want to add velocity to the throw, there are different ways to do it, like technical efficiency or getting more powerful or timing things better. It’s easy to just add speed to the run and think it’s going to go to the throw.

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But for me, it’s like: “How did that work for you? You added speed and now you’re throwing five metres less. There must be something we’re missing here.”

I think the more consistently you hit these landmark postures and positions, and the movement expressions become consistent, that’s when you turn up the volume and you try to do them more forcefully or faster.

Extra things to work on

Learning to run correctly, how to accelerate and transition and run upright is obviously something to be explored because if we look at world class Javelin throwers they are all pretty decent runners and can run at a good clip.

Plyometric activities are also good to incorporate. Different types of jump exercises help improve our elasticity and our ability to absorb force and produce force.

In the weight room, most elite javelin throwers know some sort of Olympic lift and they do a lot of pulling exercises, not so much on the pressing side. And then they spend a lot of time downstairs, with leg strengthening, hip strengthening and back strengthening exercises.

It’s the classics – squats, lunges, step-ups, deadlifts, things like that. But I think you’ve got to develop the whole body because, in the javelin, the whole of the body is involved.

Examples to watch – look for common factors

Here’s something I encourage young coaches and young athletes to do. Rather than emulate a person who’s at the top or the current flavour of the month, I like to take the 10 best youth throwers, the 10 best high school throwers, the 10 best university throwers and the 10 nest international throwers and look for common denominators in all those groups.

I look for: what are the common denominators of these landmark positions and the common denominators of the movement expression or pathways?

Then, if you’re really advanced in if you have a little bit of software, what is the speed of these movements and the timing in these movements?

I’m going to build a model that takes the best features of the best athletes at every stage of development, so I have a progression of the model and I have the key landmarks.

Then, depending on where the athlete I have is on that journey, we know where we came from and we know where we’re trying to move forwards to.

Coaching tip: get it on film and develop a checklist

There are good resources online which will help you. Olympic champion Thomas Röhler has a youtube channel, for example, where he talks about teaching progressions. With phones or tablets, it’s really easy to film yourself and put up two screens – his screen and your screen – and you can compare and contrast and say: “I’m in the right postcode with this position at that moment or my posture is like his”. You build a checklist.

I developed checklists for throwers so that when they’re reviewing video – and to keep them engaged – I make them do a semantical evaluation on a one-two-three system.

Three is “I nailed it”, two is “inconsistent” and one is “not getting there yet” and they rank themselves on this checklist.

We could have a checklist for: how are you carrying the javelin? What is your posture at these various phases? What are your foot positions? How is your arm moving? Are you getting in these positions?