 I think that's a thing that coaches who we're talking to here, but they need to develop an eye and to develop an eye in an event that lasts a second and a half, you've got to be able to slow things down and you've got to be able to identify specifics. Hello everybody, it's Eric Johnson from AirTage For His Nation. I'm sitting down with my great friend, my mentor, Tony Cirelli. You will find in your throwing careers or coaching careers, you're always going to have somebody that has a huge impact on your throwing. And Tony, the guy who's without a doubt had the biggest impact on me as a coach. I learned a tongue from him. I still learn from him. He's in town for a meet. Like I said, Tony and I pretty much will agree on pretty much just most things. Terminology is usually our breakdown. How we look at it. Right. And then the only thing we might disagree on is who's better looking. So I just thought you're in town. Obviously we've had the COVID thing. Training's been really tough, especially for you in California. You are with your fourth 200 foot discus thrower over, you know, you've had a very successful career. I just thought I would ask some general questions about training. And again, you know, we used to joke around, how do you get so lucky? I mean, people used to say, how does he get so lucky? And there's nothing lucky about success in throwing. You do have more talented guys that come around. That's the lucky. Every once in a while, somebody who has the talent, Aiden being the perfect example of all the people I coach. He is the first high school kid that I coach that I think has the possibility of being an Olympian. Because all the rest of them, as good as they were, I thought they were all too small. Especially as the years went by, you know, in the late 80s, early 90s, when I started kind of coaching you, some, there were still some smaller people around. But after going to a couple of European championships in Olympics, when you get in that stadium and you see people walk in and say, there's no little guys, there's no short guys. And a funny story, Scott Moser, when he threw his throw out of the blue one day, Jay Sylvester called me, and he just ragged on me because my guy's not big enough. And so he just said, you got to start finding bigger people. He said, Scott Moser looks really good, he's got a good technique, but he's too small. And Moser was what, 6'3? 6'3. Yeah. And he was incredibly strong. Incredibly strong. Great technique, you know, but 6'3 is just, you know, a midget when you get out in the international scene. The American scene, you're not. Right. But how good have we been in the discus over the last 20 years? Yeah, only if, just a handful of guys that have really performed. Casey, who's 6'9? Yeah. Jared and Ion both had, Ion had some success, you know, somewhat, but not actually on the world scene. Yeah, and Jared was a finalist. I think it was Doha. Doha, yeah, like 2000, or Degu. No, that was, yeah, I forget. Right. We should, yeah. So here's what we'll do since that won't be the most inspiring conversation for you, for young throwers. For young throwers. Short, go into something else. And you know what, that's a good question because you've had a lot of success with a number of shorter guys. I've had my share of guys that have done fairly well too and they're not exceptionally tall. And nowadays, even you look at a guy like Joe Kovacs, clearly an exception. Shot looks a different story than the discus. That is 100% true. You know, and that's the thing, like we talked about last night, it's like football. It doesn't mean you can't have a good career and you can be good in high school and you can be a good college. But if you're a 6'3 left tackle, you're not going to play in the NFL. It's just not going to happen. Right. You know, you might be good enough that they might move you to some other position, but you're not playing like a tackle no matter how much you want to. So the same thing, if you're a 6'2 discus thrower that's really, really good, it just hasn't shown since Anthony. Yeah. I mean, anybody in the United States can pull that off. Yeah, and that guy. If we can chase the win, you know, the Americans were good at that and get big throws, but as soon as we get into stadiums, we're not very good. Taking it back to just like talking about the shot and the difference or the shot and the discus, but in general, like for young throwers and new coaches, what do you think is the difference between training a brand new thrower who knows nothing versus training, you know, a high school kid versus obviously training them once they're collegiate and older? Well, you know, there's a lot of positives to training somebody who's never done it because you don't have to break any bad habits that they develop from where they came from. So that part of it, like Southern California right coach, there's no discus. Even when they used to have junior high track and field, discus wasn't part of it. So you came into high schools when you started throwing the discus. Okay. Just like in California, you don't get to throw the javelin until you go to college. So you got to pick it up fast. And one of the reasons why there's not a lot of world-class javelin throwers out of California is you're not starting until you're 19 years old. Yeah, it's tough. Can't match the reps. I, you know, I'm kind of thinking about this when you said you wanted to do it. I think for me anyway, it's the system. It's not just the technique. It's not just my philosophies that I put on the kids. It's the system that brings about the excellence. Right. And that's, I think, what a lot of coaches don't have. They know a lot about throwing, but they don't know anything about weightlifting. But they have a fairly good idea about weightlifting, but they don't know anything about throwing. Or they're really good at getting people worked with the terrible technical aspects of things. So you see that in the weight of man throwing in the ring. And I think that's kind of my thing is that I've been able to put together a good system. Right. And so just talking about how big people, I've had five, seven throwers throw over 60 feet and over 180 feet. Right. I've had five, two girls throw 150 feet and 48 feet. They were obviously great athletes, but you don't see people of those sizes making those kind of marks. Right. But I think it was the whole system that brought it together, not anything individually that I did. You know, it's put it all together. I think it makes it. And that's really lacking on the high school level. Obviously there's a lot of college coaches that do that. And I think as much as anything, once again, it's that they put together a good system. Yeah. Some people, it's like, oh, the weight, it's not a big deal, I'm going to do this. Yeah. And I think that lacks. Right. So fortunately, I have a system. Yeah. I think if you want to be a good coach, it's what you've got to do. Yeah. You have to have a system and you've got to understand your athlete, physically and mentally. If you know about throwing, then you need to go learn about weightlifting. Right. You need to have a great look in your throw scopes and you need to go work on understanding how throws work. Right. And then in between, how much do you work on? How little do you work on? And running as a ball. Right. Other things besides those two things. Right. All have to work together. That's the problem. Like I've said, in any sport, the thing with private coaches is the aspect of, every kid I've ever asked that a private coach, did he ask you what we did today? Right. And the private coach is not asking you when you did it at the high school and he really doesn't understand what you need to get better. Right. Because if you did 50 stadiums and he's doing stadiums today, he's like, okay. You don't need to, yeah. You don't need to do that. Thankfully, I always ask my athletes. Yeah. I have to. Like what do you do? You had to have this squat workout today. Okay. We're not going to try to throw hard, you know. It's like, it's not going to work. Exactly. For people that don't know, for, we did the Tony Tarelli Olympian Throws Clinic was something we built. Tony started it. I kind of got involved about your fifth year. Yeah. And we just did our, what, 29th year. So we've done 23 of these. But taking from that, and then obviously things have changed and all those guys got older and we've gotten older. And then I had started Erité and then Throwing Chain Reaction Program. And we've utilized that system and you've been to those camps and you've had good things to say, which is nice. But, you know, kind of talking about that, because we talk about different terminologies, but you had said, which I was, you know, happy to hear, like, this is exactly what people need to be learning. And so when you're talking about a system, I'll just kind of ask you for your feedback. Like, what did you think of how we break it down? And because the idea is, of course, to teach people how to understand complexity faster, right? See the throw, know how to break it down. When you're teaching multiple people and having a set of guidelines makes it easier for them to understand. Actually, back to you, which was, I had been coaching for 16 years when I started coaching you, but it opened up things for me, being able to go to the elite throwers camp down in San Diego and certain things that I hadn't been exposed to before that, just being in high school. But so that aspect was being you and how he broke it down. You know, wind up for double support, for single support of life. So that's how I do it. And it's not exactly that, but your pillars are basically those positions. And so it's... I'm mechanically astound yet. As long as that is the thing. And as a coach to his athlete, you could say spaghetti and broccoli. To them, that means get on your right leg and they get on their right leg and the cue that works is the cue that works. But a more systematic approach to it is going to help the athlete understand it. Yeah. And I totally see that in their system. So, you know, that's a good point. And again, you know, kind of not to bring it all back to, you know, the throwing chain reaction system. But I mean, that was the motivation. You know, people don't know Tony started his camp to help the sport to help it in Orange County and get more coaches. And funny enough, you didn't get as many coaches as kind of... And then it started to get... We started to get more and more coaches. And originally when it first started, I was just doing that. Right. I wasn't really, you know, coaches... Basically was coaches would ask if they could stick around. Yeah. Like, yeah, you know, just bring a couple athletes and you can stick around. Right, right. And then, you know, it was about when you started in that we started including coaches into it. Right. To get bigger. Obviously, that is, I think, one of the things I pulled. That was always the mission of your camp that I became the director of. And then so that just kind of carried into when I created it, it was like, you know, this is about getting the sport better and putting out more information because there's good information out there and then there's some really bad information out there. I think, you know, you probably come across YouTube videos and if you don't know anything about throwing, you could watch a video that's got, you know, there's some videos out there that have like, you know, 100,000 views and they're not very good videos. People think, oh, it's got a lot of views, it must be good. Yeah. And so that's obviously why we try to put out the content. So that was definitely, you know, something I kind of carried in from you and I thought, okay, with technology, because when you and I started coaching together, there was no YouTube. There was no cell phones were like large and heavy and there was no smartphones. And I think obviously, you know, with that opportunity came like, oh, wait, we can get this information out. I think that's a thing that coaches who we're talking to here, but they need to develop an eye. Right. And to develop an eye in an event that lasts a second and a half, you got to be able to slow things down. Yeah. And you got to be able to identify specific. So just like you want the kids to work on a single thing, you have to look at a single thing. So if you're looking at the right foot, that's all you should be looking at is the right foot and then being able to slow things down, which has always been my, I don't know, through sports or whatever. It kind of seems like we've always been able to do it. But if you can slow things down, it really helps on meeting. Right. Although now you can film and look at it. Back in the day, you couldn't look at the film. No, you can just on your... The coaches couldn't even look at the film. Right. Yeah, they've changed the rules finally. The athlete's been looking at the film. Right. Yeah, because that's what? NFHS? Right. National Federation, right? High schools? Yeah. So that's a big deal. You don't want to look at too much. You don't want to spend too much time doing it. But it's definitely a tool. That's the thing if you see things.