No Move Body
This may be perhaps the “wildest” thing I will say to date.
It only took a few years, and very likely about 20,000 releases each of those years of me hearing Dr. B yell, “KIB! NO MOVE BODY” and “HAMMER MOVE YOU!” before it occurred to me, “wait a minute. Does he *literally* mean don’t move my body?? 🤔”
“And furthermore, how the shit would I even do that?!”
Hammer Throw IS a rotational movement along a linear path.
Hammer Throw is NOT simply a rotational movement for the sake of being rotational.
For some, [re]thinking on this idea might help get at what I’m attempting to say. To others, keep going. Whether you get it now or later, the “destination” is the same.
For the majority of my career, I was like most hammer throwers. Taught what most hammer throwers are taught. Fast body (perhaps not directly taught this, but the cues used indirectly promote an athlete to move their body).
General rule: every cue that singles out parts of the lower (or upper) body, knees, feet, hips, etc is an directive towards moving the *body* faster.
I used my physical body speed to give speed to the hammer.
“If I move fast, the hammer will move fast.”
This strategy works. Until it doesn’t. The limits of your physical body being ultimately the limiting factor.
But Nature? Nature has no limit. Allow nature to move your body, and your throw is no longer a thing *you’re* doing, but something that happens *through* you.
Nature will become part of your throw only if you allow it.
Upon crossing zero degrees of your final wind, the body literally need not move any longer. The laws of physics will do the rest for you.
Eventually, I found a way where I could throw while “not moving.” It took a while, sure. But there is nothing like it.
When I was able to achieve “no move body” and the feeling that follows, this is when I began describing what I later termed as the ‘Push Force’. The Tao of Hammer. The Way.
I’ve been telling that story every since.
♾