 Everybody, it's Eric Johnson with Prairie Tape Throw Nation. In today's video, we're gonna talk about shifting gears. We're looking like we're gonna open back up and we need to get back into the weight room. So I have one of my dedicated throwers who have been coaching since the age of 12 who flies into Arizona multiple times a year and has for the last seven years, unfortunately lost his senior season, but has made the most of it continue to train because he loves to train. So today, what we did is we hit the weight room and what we wanted to really focus on the key importance of getting in good warmups, understanding how we really wanna target and loosen up the muscles that we're gonna be attacking in the weight room. If we're gonna be doing snatches, we wanna get our ankles, hips and shoulders really loose so that we're gonna improve our range of motion and we're gonna be able to facilitate better technical movement and put less stress on connective tissue and really target hitting the muscles the more appropriate way. So today I kinda brought in, we went real light because Jackson's gonna be training for the next three days and we didn't wanna destroy him in the weight room. So what we did is we brought him in and we really kind of covered those things. We went through some warmup routines to activate his glutes and his hips. Again, to get his ankles moving, to get his shoulders really opened up and then we attacked some technical stuff and by then he was able to move a lot better so we hit some snatches and we did some pulls and then we added a curve ball. One of the things that we highly recommend, he's gonna be transitioning to the division one level so he needs to get his grip and hand strength. It's gonna be really, really critical for throwing the 16 pound shot and the two kilo disc is. So one of the things is he can notice that in his throwing as he's began to start training with the 16 pound in preparation for going to that next level and grip strength is a really huge thing. One of the things we introduced him to today is the fat grips. And fat grips are basically a really affordable way of adding thick bar training to your training program and the fat grips are a really great thing because you can just snap them on the bar and we did those today. And I'm gonna have Jackson tell me real quick he can see really fast how effective A, the warmup routine was in his mobility. How was it? It was the first time I ever got into a full snatch with my heel staying on the ground after we did that. So really simple way yeah and just activation of muscles. So for throwers out there this is gonna be a really important thing. You wanna be looking at not just getting huge numbers which we're not gonna debate that getting stronger is absolutely massively beneficial but it all goes to the thing where about the throwing chain reaction and in the weight room we're about kinetic chain reaction. We wanna have those small connective tissue balance, structure, postural efficiency all of these things make a big difference. So then as we did that we wanted to add a little thing and we wanted to test grip strength. So then we added the fat grip. So something a weight that he could handle really pretty easily. Now that we brought the fat grip in which is gonna recruit more of the flexors and extensors in the forearm and in the grip of the hand. So now that's gonna absolutely apply to how it's gonna help them develop into moving to that next level with a shot put and especially just with the way we're gonna be in extension inflection of the release in the discus. So we put those fat grips on and what did you think on? Oh, it was, it made the bar feel 10 times heavier. Right. It was just all my forearms like everything else I could lift to just fine curls, whatever but just in my forearms it just slipped out of my hands. So it's a perfect example of, I'm not a huge, like I'm not trying to shamelessly endorse fat grips. There is a link and you can get a pair but the reason is we always stand behind a product that we thoroughly believe in and this is just a great thing. And just recently we were like, you know this is a super affordable way to add that to your training. So for him to pick up a set for like 30 bucks throw it on a bar. Now you're not having to invest $200 into a thick bar. You can just get these put them on. They're really safe, secure. They snug up to the bar really nice. And so we were doing things like we had them do a farmer carry with a really lightweight. So we did a bar belt to kind of stretch it out. So that's a simple exercise that we'll do. And you can usually pretty probably pretty effectively he would probably be able to handle 50 to 60 kilos. Here we put about 40 kilos on the bar. He could handle it pretty easily with no, but when we put the fat grip on now he's recruiting the forearms are bulging. The grip strength is really being activated. There's more neural units being recruited. And now it was a lot harder and it really exposed that his grip strength is a deficiency that we really want to develop. And so when we did that and then we did something so we use a really great way you can add it and you can do something like pulls. And so how was it? When we did pulls, pulling 95 pounds is a piece of cake. Pulling 95 pounds with the fat grips was a totally different animal. And even I just did a few things. We did our supine grip barbell rows to work the back and it's amazing. Even I just did one set of 10 and it's super light but it was amazing. I can still feel how it like I have some old weak forearm flexors and extensors. It's hard to like explain how it felt because it felt so light but it was just gonna fall out of your hands. But you didn't know why. It was confusing. It was a really confusing feeling for the first time doing it. You guys just gotta remember one of the huge important things about your training is not just I gotta get a massive squad, a massive bench. I'm gonna clean a house. Those are all good things and we want that but you have to make sure that you're spending the time. Remember that your grip strength is a really important thing for the shot put and the discus. You gotta spin the discus faster. If you can apply more force if you have more dynamic hand strength, right? Good grip strength. That's gonna help with all those things. You really wanna basically be able to warm up properly to get the muscles moving. You wanna get your grip strength going. The idea is these small things are a really critical part of your program and so many times so often guys are not knowing how to necessarily structure a program and so when they do that, they're forgetting to do a lot of these things. So any rate, so Jackson was in. Hopefully you enjoyed it. Couple quick tips just to make sure you guys understand gotta focus on a complete training picture. Those little details make up huge differences and Jackson even could admit. What is it when we started hitting your hamstrings and attacking your posture last year? What happened to your distances? We're in a short order. In just probably a month, I added five feet to my shot and 20 feet to my disc. Probably mid 40s to, or high 40s to mid 50s in shot and 140s to 160s in disc. So the deal was is we'd worked on this. We started to get hamstring to quad ratio in balance, posterior chain to anterior chain balanced, really important. So those changes in structure allowed him to be able to hit better technical positions. The combination of an improved strength balance was enabling better technique as well and that's why we shot out this video today. So hopefully you guys like stuff like this. We got some, a bunch of weight room stuff coming over the next few weeks because this COVID thing, some of you guys are probably gonna get a chance to compete and some of you guys, this is the beginning of the long off season and you'll be in summertime and we're gonna have workouts and lifts and things coming for you soon. So thanks so much. Like, hit that subscribe button. Tell them to hit that subscribe button. Subscribe. And we will see you on the next video.