 The focal point is it good or is it not good? There's a right way to do the focal point in the wrong way and unfortunately we've seen hundreds of athletes this summer all across the United States doing it wrong and we've seen it internationally in places like Australia. There's a right way to focus on the focal point and there's a wrong way to do it and we're gonna talk about it in this video so check it out. It's Eric Johnson from Airtate Throws Nation and in today's YouTube video what we're gonna discuss is a common cue used with elite athletes that gets used often with young throwers and it's absolutely crushing thousands of young throwers. We just recently, if you're watching this video we're recording this about towards the end of our summer throws tour and if you'd like information about our camps click the link in the description and you'll get our pre-season and summer tour information. One of the things that we're talking about is the focal point and after seeing close to 800 throwers attending our camps we see some common things and we see a cue that's often used and it's the focal point. Now I'm gonna demonstrate what a focal point looks like with an elite thrower which is you're gonna grab a section of the throw at say like five or six o'clock and as you come out of the back of the ring you're gonna catch that point. Now notice how as I demonstrate that I'm just naturally starting to move. I caught that point. Here's what an elite thrower does. They see that point and they go. Decent point, it creates a little bit of a pause and what the attempt there is to do what we refer to as our pillar four which is twisting and wrapping. So what we're creating is we're coming out of the sprint both feeder in the air we're wrapping the upper body hitting the discus at the high point and getting to set up the power position. Now here unfortunately is why if you're a young thrower or coach using this cue you wanna proceed with caution. Again many elite athletes a lot of these cues in my opinion are coming from high level successful coaches with high level top tier athletes. Athletes that are already in the top 0.5% and so when you tell an elite kid boom that's it I just hit the focal point but here's what we're seeing all across the country all throughout our practices here in Arizona we saw it in Australia we've seen it all across the United States this is what we're seeing. Kids are holding the focal point holding the focal point trying to turn and they're pulling themselves out of position so if you watch me throw in this direction as I go this way and you're gonna see as I continue to hold and my head doesn't move with my hips I'm pulling myself out I'm gonna basically result in potential kind of a back in check out our back in video and then look at how the heels coming low you can see my weight shifting so what you're starting to see with so many young throwers is the hold the head is staying what it needs to be continuing to move with the hips into the throw and then you're seeing this so you're not only seeing that but you're seeing boom and you're seeing this jaggy head motion instead of a nice continuous rolling motion if you look at the best throwers in the world their heads are not staying here people might be catching a focal point like this and you're gonna see that's me seeing the horizon the correct way on a focal point so this is a common thing let's just pick the top three men's throwers in the world this year look at our two 70 meter throwers Dakers, Stahl, we'll look at Guzdias look at the head as these guys come out of the back of the ring and you're watching their head continues to move with the hips rule of thumb is we don't use the cue of visual focal points visual focal points have a tendency to have the caveat of having the head disconnect from the lower body and what we wanna see is the head in this position so if you look at all those top throwers as you look at them move through the circle you're gonna notice that that head stays with the hips and so what we see at our camps and we see internationally at this point we understand the point of that cue and we're not criticizing that cue but we're saying you have to make sure that kids are so literal and so many athletes we found will do exactly what they're told because they wanna get better and what they're not doing is intuitively feeling okay I held that point and now my head keeps moving that's it it's a literally a few tenths of a second at most and what you're seeing is athletes doubling that amount of time holding it and then what you see is the shoulder shifting back and we're gonna talk about that in another video but the whole point of today's video is if you're using a focal point we don't want a rear focal point where the body's trying to move and the head staying back we don't want the focal point there we don't want the focal point here we don't want another focal point here where those kind of rear focal points origins come from is from the glide and when you're in a linear shot and I keep everything here and I'm gonna be pushing here and in a line then it makes sense you can hold that head back because you're not rotating you're driving in a linear position so your head can just go from here and drive and that helps you keep back but as far as rotational throws go I highly advocate against the focal point and I'm not trying to step on anybody's toes and I think again at the elite level that can work but we use cues that were referred to looking more at body cues versus head visual cues we wanna hold the body at certain points versus holding the eyes at certain points because that can inhibit the movement and we've seen it time and time again at every camp we make an announcement as we go through the throwing portions of our day not to work on that focal point because you can see and we explain why and how it's holding back like we just did and it creates and interferes with the counterbalance of the chest over the power position delivery leg and that's why we are gonna say don't do that focal point. Okay so hopefully you enjoyed this video and found it helpful. Again the goal here at Airtate Throws Nation is to help more throwers and coaches provide them with the tools and the information to get better faster and if you'd like more information and wanna dive deep check out our mini course below if you want premium information where we go through hours and hours and hours of content be sure to check out our digital program our membership program where you can subscribe and you have access to over 30 hours of instruction on everything that goes step by step through the throwing chain reaction system. So thanks so much for watching be sure to hit that like button punch the subscribe comment below and we will see you on the next video. Be sure to check out our next videos be sure to subscribe visit our website for free videos click the links below we have links to our free mini course check out our websites for camps and different detailed information throw farther faster by understanding the science with the throwing chain reaction system thanks so much for watching