Garage Blog

After coaching for 3 years, I have learned a significant number of things that I wish I knew while I was still competing. Most of my problems came ...

This article was prompted with the question, "What would you tell your collegiate freshman self about track and training if you could?" I've touched on this subject before, in an episode of Dane's Platform--if you haven't heard it, it's one of our most popular episodes. Check it out here! 

    2. You have to be very internally driven (no one cares)

Many high level athletes already know this well, but intrinsic motivation is absolutely necessary during the transition from collegiate to post-collegiate competition. There is no conference championship to care about, or any home meets to step up for. Now it’s just you, and USATF Nationals is the only meet that really matters (at first). I like to think of myself as having pretty high intrinsic motivation, but I am also a very team-oriented person. Losing the team atmosphere of collegiate track was definitely tough for me. It may sound overly negative, but the external roster of people who really care about what you’re doing seems to shrink a lot. Hopefully, you still have family members, maybe a significant other, your coach, and your training group (if you have one). Especially as a thrower, your sphere of influence in track and field is relatively small, and you won’t become a millionaire doing this sport, so you have to be 100% committed for yourself. If you’re not, things probably aren’t going to work out in the long run.

We're back again! After a week of semi-activity following the end of my season, I started up training again. During these early stages of offseason training, the hardest thing for me is always just staying in it mentally. Early offseason training isn't particularly fun--when it's 90 degrees outside every day, the gym doesn't have AC, and you have some pretty high reps in your program. So that's easily been my biggest challenge so far, but I still think I've made some decent improvements in and out of the circle. 

I'm sure most who read this won't be aware, but my season closed out in a pretty painful way. I went into the last weekend of qualifying for USATF Outdoor Nationals sitting 19th on the submitted entries list, with 18 men competing in the eventual field. My teammate, Ryan Njegovan, and I had one last meet on our schedule to try to qualify. We traveled to Hightstown, NJ, feeling good technically and coming off of a good week of practice. Personally, I felt like I was set up very well to get the PR I needed to move myself into a definitive qualifying spot (I was 42cm out based on marks). 

This blog is a transcript of a conversation between Garage Strength Head Coach Dane Miller, and three of his post-collegiate throwers: Sam Mattis, Ryan Njegovan, and Noah Kennedy White.

Often times weightlifting coaches and throws coaches alike have asked why I use close grip snatch as a variation.  They want to know where the transfer can be found from the strength side and if there is even a transfer from the technical side of the movement.  Then the never ending question arises….who did I learn the movement from?

There are many successful women on the world stage who coaches look to for inspiration. I think many coaches lose sight of the fact that these athletes are throwing, at the heaviest, a 4 kilogram implement (in the case of shot and hammer). The women’s discus only weighs 2.2 pounds! Yet I hear high school coaches telling female athletes things like, “you gotta go to McDonald’s, you gotta put on weight.” This is exactly the wrong attitude to take. Women don’t NEED to be huge to throw far. You can take one of a number of examples of excellent female throwers who are muscular, but not terribly overweight: Maggie Ewen, Valarie Allman, Whitney Ashley, Sandra Perkovic, the list goes on. Perkovic is easily the most dominant female discus thrower alive right now. Ewen is the most well rounded thrower, female or male, on the planet.

Many people see elite athletes training with a lot of frequency. Nine, ten, eleven times per week sometimes. I want to address some of my thoughts on training frequency, and some of the important considerations when a coach or athlete is deciding how much frequency is enough.