Javelin Technique with Curtis Thompson – Wanda Diamond League

Follow the #DiamondLeague on social media:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/diamondleague
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/diamond_league
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/diamondleague
TikTok: https://vm.tiktok.com/vemXKw/

To license Wanda Diamond League footage contact IMG REPLAY: https://www.imgreplay.com/contact

some people like a shorter runup some people like a longer runup mine’s kind of in the middle but the whole goal of your runup is to increase speed going all the way into the last two steps of your throw my name is Curtis Thompson I’m a US Olympic Javelin thrower and today we’re going to go over some technical things on how to throw a javelin javelin throw is without a doubt one of the oldest sports in the world with roots dating back to the ancient Olympic Games in in 78 BC at that time throwers competed both in accuracy and length over the years accuracy was left behind and athletes focused only on throwing the farthest today over 2,700 years later the goal Remains the Same to my knowledge there’s three different ways of holding a javelin the first way is the American Grip where you use your pointer finger and your thumb on the edge of the cord as it lays in the middle of our palm and we grip it that way um the other way would be the Finish grip where we use our middle finger and our thumb same thing on the edge of the cord and it’s in the middle and our pointer finger kind of Li lies where it feels comfortable some people like to put it closer to the middle finger some people like it along the back of the jav and some people just like it resting kind of in between just depends on what’s comfortable the Third Way is the fork grit where it uses our pointer finger and our middle finger it goes on the edge of the grip this way and it just sits right in between here and that’s how some people will throw as well every grip uh you can throw far which whatever way you decide to use um it just depends on what’s comfortable for you and uh that kind of can change throughout your career as it did for me the size shape weight and center of gravity for the javelin are defined by World Athletics rules for men the javelin must weigh at least 8 800 G and be between 2.6 to 2.7 M long the women’s Javelin must weigh 600 G and be 2.2 to 2.3 M long one thing that can differ is the stiffness of the javelin the stiffness of the javelin is you know how much does a javelin forgive when we don’t throw a javelin through the point um you’ll see a lot of it where this if if we put our power into the javelin do go through the point this jav will bend um this is one of the stiffer javs so it’s less it’s less forgiving than another Javin that that would have more forgiveness when you have a jab that’s more forgiving it’s correcting itself in the air so that it can fly um they’re designed to fly that’s what they want to do um but as a stiffer jab it doesn’t correct as easily so you can tell if you’ve done something technically wrong in your [Music] throw whether it’s shooting a a puck kicking a ball or throwing a javelin you won’t do it very successfully standing still speed is essential in generating more power and in this case keeping the javelin flying for as long as possible this is the javelin Runway um we have a foul line right up there at the front we can’t cross it we can’t touch it um our best thing is to stay away from it some people like a shorter run up some people like a longer run up mine’s kind of in the middle but the whole goal of your runup is to increase speed going all the way into the last two steps of your throw what we call a penultimate step or impulse and that’s just those steps right before we release the javelin most people who start the run up they will have their Javelin where it’s level um parallel to the ground um nice and steady as we run to our Mark that we like to put down on when we want to transition and so our transition will normally look like this we’re forward and we’re going to go back just here and we’re going to be in this position as we do our crossovers going into our throw to sum it up in the javelin throw there are three separate stages you’ll have to pass before getting your final result there is the grip the run up and of course the actual throw doing these successfully will of course help you reach the next level