Why It's Almost Impossible to Shot Put 24 Meters | WIRED

you're probably at least familiar with the chocolate it's a perennial favorite at the Olympics where the best shop footers in the world make it look easy but it is way more difficult than you might think that thing weighs 16 pounds 16 pounds right which is the that's the mass of a bowling ball in something the size of like a grapefruit so you can't really throw it instead you have to kind of shove it from your shoulder or rather put it and most people just aren't strong or coordinated enough to put a shot in more than a few feet with the pros they can send a shot flying 50 60 70 feet or more in 1990 American Randy Barnes set the current world record of 23 point 1/2 meters that's 75 feet ten and a quarter inches so what's keeping somebody else from throwing even farther today we're going to look at why putting a shot more than 24 meters is almost impossible to find out what it takes I talked with the Olympic record holder the spin generates more power but is more unforgiving tried putting a shot myself you drop your elbow here and it spun out looking and spoke with a sports technologist about what makes a perfect put his look something like this if we went back two years it would be something like this now before we go any further it's important to point out that that 23 point 1/2 meter world record it needs a footnote just a few months after he said it American Randy Barnes was suspended from competition after failing a drug test his record however still stands and a new generation of athletes is coming closer and closer to breaking it people are just understanding to throw better that's professional shot Twitter Ryan krauser in 2016 he set the current Olympic record when he sent a shot flying 22.5 2 meters nearly 74 feet I met up with him at the US Olympic Training Center in Chula Vista California for a lesson you can enter the ring to start your throw from anywhere you'll see most people start all the way at the back and after you've completed your throw you have to finish on balance and after the implement lands then you can walk out the back half the rules of shotput are straightforward send this 16 pound ball flying as far as you possibly can without it landing out of bounds and without setting foot outside the throwing circle which measures seven feet in diameter that's kind of the great equalizer if it was bigger taller guys like me would have a huge advantage if it was smaller it beats all short guys my wrists already tired is that a bad thing yeah no good side Krauser his goal is to get me to throw nine meters or about thirty feet that's less than half the distance of his typical throw and keep in mind the distance is measured from the inside of the toe board to the point of first contact not where it ends up rolling and the shots right here coming he started by showing me how to hold the shot ball is not in the palm it's actually up on the fingertips right there so you get that little snap so we'll have you just start with the stage having to do some standing throws most fundamental movement for shot so left foot at the toe board then right foot really about right in here shoulders to me now squat down and bring your center of gravity out over your right foot all right all right that was better than most people but the overall engine is just not quite enough to power it he's saying I'm small and weak next he had me try the glide it's a traditional shot putting technique that involves scooting in a line across the throwing circle from this position you're sinking down and back in the feeling of like a chair being pulled out from under you so it's you're generating energy it's a it's three things this left foot drive drive from the heel and then drive across well massive improvement little by little and finally he had me try the spin it's a rotational move and krauser's preferred technique with practice some athletes find it to be more powerful than the glide but it's also a lot more difficult to perform consistently drive man there you go so like that kind of okay and elbow up elbow up yeah okay he's even be a glider the goal of the glide as well as the spin is to transfer as much energy as possible from your lower body up through your torso shoulder arm hand and finally your fingertips right at the point of release there's a ton of energy transfer that happens right at the end we call it the flick the last little bit of energy transfer you stored up all this energy in a rubber band and at the end it's just coming off just the fingers we actually will end up taping the tips of my fingers because they'll split there's so much force on them it took everything I had to heave this thing 30 feet and it didn't even count on my spinning throw because I fell out of the circle but krauser can put shots twice that distance and make it look effortless a lot of that has to do with his remarkable physicality the closest to us would be like an offensive lineman or professional strongman krauser is six feet seven inches tall weighs 315 pounds and can fire off a 40 meter dash in under 4.8 seconds he can also squat more than 700 pounds and benchpress 225 almost 50 times in a row like many elite shot footers Krauser could probably play in the NFL if you wanted to in fact he was actually invited to try out for the Indianapolis Colts but there's more to shotput than brute strength Krauser is also surprisingly flexible and has outstanding coordination at the 2019 World Athletics Championships in Doha he threw a personal best of 22.9 zero meters that's just 22 centimeters shy of Barnes record see that little flick yeah that has even a little bit more force to find out what makes browsers techniques so effective I spoke with John Crosby he's a sports technologist with the US Olympic Committee talk to me about Ryan krauser's technique in his form and why it's so fantastic yeah so I mean Ryan's just a beast as you can tell there's a couple of different things that go out there going on there Ryan's just so in tune with proprioception that he knows where his body is at all times and he can really feel that kinetic chain to see when he's coming out of the back that positional awareness allows Krauser to send the shot flying it close to the perfect angle almost time if you're familiar with projectile motion you know that the ideal launch angle for distance is 45 degrees but for shot foot the optimal angle is actually quite a bit smaller than that usually between 35 and 40 degrees and that's because distance depends on more than just your launch angle it also depends on the speed at which you put the shot or your release velocity the problem is that in shot put steeper launch angles lead to lower release velocities and that's just because humans are stronger in this direction and they are in this direction that's why most people can benchpress a lot more than they overhead press Plus moving a shot up means having to fight gravity the point being it's a lot easier to move a shot horizontally than it is to move it vertically which is why the sweet spot is between 35 and 40 degrees shallow enough to put some good speed on the ball but still steep enough to get some hang time how fast is it exiting your hand and at what angle a great thrill for me is usually between 36 and 40 degrees speed wise you'll be looking about 30 to 33 miles an hour and the forces required to produce those speeds are tremendous remember how krauser said he tapes his fingertips well you and I would need way more than tape to keep from injuring ourselves if your hand try to say apply the pressure needed for a 22 meter through our 72 foot throw I think every single tendon that connects all of these went without a doubt be gone and there you might some bones might break as well so I always will actually break my hand trying to do what you're doing but how much farther could someone realistically put one of these things I think with the levels that the athletes are at and as the technique has progressed I think that 24 would be it'd be unbelievable to see but it's not beyond the realm of reason and what would that take in terms of exit velocity the answer is less than you might think relatively small changes in release velocity can have a big impact on total distance if you increase the velocity by even a tenth of a meter per second you add about 25 centimeters to the distance of the throw here's another way to put that if krauser can find a way to add just point to me per second to his release velocity that's less than 0.5 miles per hour he can break the world record another 1/2 mile per hour and he can become the first person in history to put a shot more than 24 meters now an extra mile per hour on your release velocity might not sound like much but when you're already one of the best shot putters in the world it's enormous especially when reaching for that last little ounce of performance could mean risking serious injury one of the biggest issues that the shot-putter is run into is just staying healthy when you have that amount of force and got like on your body that often it's so easy to injured and then they're already towards the higher end of strength levels and power levels so for them to get even stronger you're increasing that injury chance so what is the ideal physiology for someone who's capable of putting a shot more than 24 meters you want really really long levers if you could make someone who's 6 3 with say 7 6 arms because that just lets you apply force for a longer time and then super dynamic you'd have someone who's fast in the sprints really good at jumping and you just have to have that baseline strength the potential is there it's just getting the individual that can do it but until all those things come together remember that what elite athletes like Krauser are doing today is already almost impossible

Channel: WIRED

Views: 4,171,979

Rating: 4.8697147 out of 5

Keywords: olympics 2016, olympics 2020, shot put, ryan crouser, randy barnes, shot put throwing, throw a shot put, how to throw a shot put, how to put a shot, shot put ball, shot put almost impossible, wired almost impossible, wired ai, wired shot put throwing, ryan crouser shot put, shotput, shotput almost impossible, shot put farthest, farthest shotput, 24 meters shot put, 24 meters shot put throw, shot put 24 meters throw, 24 meters shot put throwing, throwing shotput, wired

Id: TZANFlvsXv4

Length: 10min 13sec (613 seconds)

Published: Thu Nov 21 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Sun_of_a_Beach]

Great vid. Thanks for sharing!