sheaf stylin’ with Duncan and Bill -sorta

Alan, Sometimes you use your leg and sometimes not so much. You're not lifting the sheaf with your legs at all. You're stopping a little early at the end of your pull and letting the sheaf just slide off the fork. Try to pull through the end of your throw. Your 4th pull in the video was your best. When you get the fork to vibrate after a pull through the bag then you know it was a good pull. You have to get some twang on that fork. But not the kind of twang Bill gets on the fork at the buffet. 

Jeff, yeah I got a good ringggg out of the fork on the last toss. I get the fork to vibrate about one time out of three.  OK, I will try to "pull longer". UP to now I've been trying to pull hard and then **STOP** suddently to *ping* the bag off of the fork.

Bill, you're absolutely right, I was a bit bent over in the video. I figured this out at the end of the season last year. If I keep my back a little straighter and get my hips under myself a little more, then I have to get the "spring" in the throw from my legs, not from straightening my lower back.  I get another foot or two out of it that way.  Also, the arc was more up and down that way, exactly like you said.....OK, something to remember.

Hey Alen...

I need to agree with Jeff more legs... but you will also notice on each of your throws you step forward... It looks like when you take the bag back for the final swing you change your line and go from back behind your right shoulder to way infront of your left shoulder causing you pull up with the bag way in front of you.... (less power and a harder throw)

Just my 2cents

Just do not listen to him in weight over bar. LOL

I swear Duncan you get the trajectory right and you have 15 feet at least. Then maybe you might be enough to challenge me in WOB. LOL

Still doesnt excuse you kicking my butt up and down the field all day long. I will get my rematch.

Alan, He was'nt kidding. He medaled in every event and wore them the rest of the afternoon. We could hear him walking around the games from our campsight.

Ewwwwwwww

Ewwwwwww squared

Close, and she put her cigar on the outside of the ring before she threw. Also had one old lady cuss when she threw bad, When I asked her if she had cussed. She said if she doesn't throw any better I was going to hear a lot more.

Oh, not so sure about the turning the shoulder/chest idea.  Every time I let my shoulder open or look back liek that I hook the bag and loose easily 8 feet at times.  It's horrible.

Working with Dean (thanks dean) he has never suggested opening up like that and I don't.  Not sure if that works for others, but every time I see someone at a competition open up and turn like that they are hooking the back under the bar....

Video is recorded, just not up.  Damn interwebz.  I'll have it for you this afternoon Alan.  One throw at a time.

Basically, EVERYTHING Myles just posted.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr0vP8XHGKo

It is done...have fun with it Alan!  Iron out the fundamentals and post back with your progress.

SWEET!!!!!  Thanks, Spiderman!

'nuther Alan H video will be produced  over X Mas break.

*  relax shoulders
*  bend knees
*  eyes-focal point about 8 ft in front of me on the ground
*  don't bend over, get in deep-ish hang clean sort of position. Shoulders in front, yes, but not "bent over"

*  at wind-up, bag outside the knees
*  drive bag and fork DOWN, *hard* (this is a violent event) to check point  in front of my left foot.
*  chest up, drive up as hard as possible like a clean...pop hip?....look up, but look STRAIGHT up, not at the bags flight
*  block so hard that the fork pings and vibrates.

got some work to do!

Spiderman be One Good Dude!  Thanks!

I know the feel of having the fork ring after the bag flies off of it. In my video, I got that *ping* in the second throw, the "new" way, which in fact is not what Duncan was writing about at all. Still and all, the fork had a good vibe set up.

I think the point is to drive my hips and chest straight up, just like a hang clean.

It's a very good point.  I throw out here in California with a good friend, Steve Elliott.  He and I are about even in ability. I always win the hammers and the LWFD, he always wins the open stone, caber and WOB (except for a freak in the caber at Ventura this year) and we split the HWFD and the Braemar, depending on who's hot that day.  I had a head start on Sheaf this year, because I'd actually worked on technique a little bit, but it didn't take long for Steve to catch up (like one Games! ), and now he's 2-4 feet higher than I am.

Where he just kills me in WOB and caber and sheaf is in his speed and acceleration in the legs, just like a hang clean or a snatch.  I have the technique and radius-length in the hammers and LWFD....but he's got freakin' garage door springs in his legs, and it shows in the other events.  So this is a focal point of my offseason training this winter....not rally so much to "beat Steve" but just because it's become clear, by comparison, where my weak point is.    Clearly, a good sheaf toss is a function of explosive speed in the core, which is why Steve is naturally good at it and I struggle a bit.

Alan H wrote: .... and I got on the knee extension machine in the gym, I couldn't push up 15 pounds with my right leg.

You mean leg extensions?  Where you are sitting down and you hook feet under bar below you and straight legs out lifting that bar up?

Can I ask why you are doing those?  Those tend to be a bodybuilding type of move really.  Something to get 'pump' with but not strength.  Another issue with that machine (if we talking same thing) is that it puts shear stresses across the knee that it wasn't really designed to deal with.  The knee is designed to take stress from top to bottom...not from front which is where the leg extension machine puts it.

(Now I say all that and I admit I did spend my 20's getting up toward 200lbs [according to plates) on those machines.  But then I was young and listening to what the body building mags were saying. )