Thunderball – or how you can train your shot put technique without much organisational effort.

A friend of mine, we’ll call him Mr T, recently told me the following story:

One day, in winter, he was craving for a healthy snack; as it was cold outside, he thought it would be a nice idea to warm up a crispbread. The toaster was still on the table from breakfast, easily accessible in its usual place, so my friend quickly put two crispbreads in it and switched on the toaster.

And then it all happened very quickly:

Blue flames shot out of the toaster! Mr T had the presence of mind to pull the plug out of the socket, but it kept on burning. So he grabbed it, it was standing on the palm of his hand, and like a pro he pushed it away from his shoulder towards the kitchen counter. Like a rocket, the burning toaster shot metres across the room and landed right on target in the sink, where it finally burnt out.

Gosh, I said, who would have thought that mastering the shot put technique would be so helpful in real life?

Until now, shot put was just one of many Olympic disciplines for me… in fact, it is not even one of the ancient sports, such as discus throwing, but it has been an integral part of the Olympic competitions for men since 1896 and for women since 1948.

All right – we can probably assume that my mate didn’t rotate across a circle before pushing the toaster away (but I’ll check again to be sure) – but he clearly pushed the toaster quite far ‘by explosively stretching his arm’, didn’t he?

In this lighter form of the shot put, er, I mean toaster put, he primarily trained the muscles in his chest, shoulders and arms. However, the core, glutes and leg muscles were also used (even without the rotation), as effective kicking is not possible without stability.

And what can the rest of us learn from this story?

  1. It is always worth training the fast muscle fibres in order to increase the explosive strength of the muscles. This can be achieved wonderfully, for example, by doing fast repetitions (singles or fast pulses) in Bodypump. If you also increase your maximum strength through strength training with heavy weights, you are definitely prepared for anything.
  2. You don’t need sophisticated equipment to squeeze in a sports session, in this case a technique training session, when you spontaneously feel like it.
  3. Isn’t it just FIBEEER how much our training can help us in every situation in real life? 😀

P.S. Almost forgot – our very first pragmatic learning should perhaps be this:
Never put crispbread into a toaster.

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