Reflecting On Your Season As A Discus Thrower
BY JOSH DOUGLAS
Welcome back to another discus-based blog! This time, I will aim to help athletes effectively reflect on their 2024 season.
Some of us have had a season we’re happy with whilst some of us haven't. Sadly, that's just the name of the game. Sometimes we hit goals and sometimes we don’t.
So, for the sake of looking forward, we must first be able to objectively look back on our performances. If you've had a great season, you mustn't let that cloud your reflections, as you might be unable to see room for improvement. And for those who had a less-than-positive season, it's also essential that you realise there are lessons and some positives to take out of what you might deem failures.
For athletes who've had a successful year...
I want to be clear that I'm not asking you to start second-guessing how well you've done. After all, you might have had the most perfectly successful season you've ever had.
If so, you must reflect on what made your season successful. Was it a gym programme you were on? Did you start using some cues that worked? Did you find overweight or underweight throwing to impact your distances?
Continuing the momentum
By noticing things that have enabled positive change in your season, you can then aim to carry them through to your next season. I can name too many times in which, because I wasn't very aware, would unknowingly stop doing something that used to help me a lot and then spend time trying to get it back.
I used to do plyometrics a lot when I was doing well. I stopped doing these over time and was then surprised when my distances dropped!
Every thrower will have something that their bodies respond to really well.
If you can reflect and learn what things might've contributed to your season's success, then you must continue doing them.
Study your success
Now, this is a slightly more negative outlook. But, through scrutinising your success, you'll be able to have an even better season next year.
Let's say you achieved an excellent rank in discus this year. For some that might be reason enough to say you had a great season, which it is, but that can lead us to ask some other questions, such as the following...
Were you as consistent as you could've been?
Did you achieve that rank when it counted?
Did you do everything you could to make your season as successful as it was?
If the answer to those questions was no, then you can improve even more on your performance next year, which can only ever be a positive thing.
No one is going to have a completely perfect season. Discus is a complicated event with many moving parts and contributing factors. It's impossible to accomplish everything in one season, but acknowledging where you might have fallen short empowers us.
Dealing with a disappointing throws season
If you're like me and tend to have quite a pessimistic outlook, it can be very quick to put a season down to not being successful.
If I'm being honest, there are certainly times in which my seasons have not gone to plan. But if we overanalyse the things we did wrong, we tend to miss out on the things that we could do right or did do right.
All the things that went wrong become lessons that we can carry through into the next season.
Maybe you went to a big competition and crumbled under pressure, or you were too overwhelmed to perform to your best in every event you attended. This doesn't necessarily mean it's your destiny to be this way forever. Maybe you need to include more mock competitions in training. Or, you're used to doing 40 throws before you get a good one at training and could do one or two sessions a week where you only do 8 throws (2 warm-ups, 6 comp throws).
Questioning to develop athleticism
In fact, you may think of a few things if you're feeling somewhat deflated from the past few months...
- Were you strong enough to throw far, but your technique let you down?
- Did you neglect a lot of your training?
- Did you have some things going on in your personal life that affected you?
- Were you training hard but your recovery didn't match it?
- Did you consider peaking for the big competitions but just trained right through?
I'm not suggesting you ask yourself these questions to beat yourself up. The reason for reflecting this way is that it enables us to see where we went wrong and then plan accordingly for the next year.
If we simply summarise our poor experiences as just being bad without understanding why we went wrong or how we went wrong with our performances, it can be demotivating. But rather than thinking “I'm probably not cut out for this”, asking questions gives us a plan for next time, which is only a positive thing.
Effectively reflecting as a thrower
Be objective
I know I've almost covered it already, but ensuring that we are reflecting objectively and not allowing ourselves to slip into negative or positive bias is only a good thing.
Reflecting immediately after a poor or good season will cloud our judgement in terms of how to progress next time. If we do this after a bad season, we may conclude that we shouldn't continue in this sport, we're not destined to do well and even ask ourselves "What's the point?".
If we reflect immediately after a successful season, we may decide that there is no room to improve which will potentially stunt our performances next year. It's always an idea to give yourself some downtime before you sit down and have a rational self-reflection about your season.
External help
Another way we can reflect to the best of our ability is to bring other people into our train of thought. This could be a coach, training partner or even a family member.
Having a second or even third opinion may help you pick up on some things you may have missed in your reflection. It may help at the end of each season to sit down with your coach to go over the following...
- What were your aims for that year?
- Did we hit them? Or did we not?
- If we did, how can we do better next year?
Throwing videos
Having videos of you throwing in and out of competition may be helpful. If you were to compare the two you may find out that there were some technical differences in how you performed in training versus how you did under pressure. Discus throw is an incredibly technical event and even the smallest change in your technique can be the difference between PB'ing and not PB'ing.
If you do notice some differences, then you can plan for next year to be more aware of these potential changes. Another way in which videos can be helpful is if you have videos of you throwing from when you had a good season. If you had a season you were proud of last year but a terrible one this year, you can compare and contrast, while potentially seeing where you went wrong.
Looking through your training log
If you have a training log of what you would do around the times you were competing, you may notice that some things potentially hindered your performance.
Maybe you were in the gym doing a heavy session 24 hours out of a competition. Perhaps you were in a block of really heavy lifting around the times you were competing, meaning your body wasn't able to move as fast as it could have done. How we block and plan our gym programs should reflect and align with the competitions in which we want to perform our best.
This is why methods such as periodized training are so used throughout athletics in general. We need to have set times in the year to focus on different physical attributes and maybe during your poor season, they didn't align. The other side of it is you could have had an amazing season and it still wasn't aligned and that means that you missed out on some potential further improvements in your performance.
Don't deflect. Just reflect.
Whether it's been a positive or negative experience, everyone has something to take out of their season.
Whatever shortcomings you may have noticed throughout this season, you should take these into the next year as lessons and things to improve on. Whilst it is important to train to our hardest and the best of our abilities, it is also vital that you understand we are all human.
Don't beat yourself up for not getting everything correct. No one does everything perfectly 100% of the time. Yes, we all are athletes, but we are also people first.
Some of us are earlier in our journeys than others, and if all the answers were given to us on a silver plate, the sport that we engage in would become very unmotivating.
So, to all of you that had a good season, I want to congratulate you for all of your hard work and I hope you take the necessary steps to carry that momentum into the next season.
On another note, to all of you who believe your season was somewhat of a letdown, I also want to congratulate you on your drive and dedication. You did your best with what you knew at the time, and I hope that you take the disappointment you're feeling not as a failure, but as inspiration to continue striving.
See you all next season.
About Josh Douglas
Joshua Douglas is a shotputter and discus thrower, who competes across the UK and is a high placing athlete in many of the events he participates in.
He is also currently undertaking an undergraduate degree in sport psychology, and is very passionate in helping other athletes in this area, as well as other areas in throwing and athletics!
Josh will mainly be talking about discus throw in his content. However, as he is studying sport psychology at university, he will also cover this area in his blogs where he can!
Joshua is a member of Southampton AC & Loughborough Students AC.
Instagram: @bigbjosh
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