Garage Blog

We must sound like a broken record at this point, skipping CD or, for the Gen Z’ers out there, a tune being played on repeat over a streaming ...

Ask Dane Anything #7 Client: If my triceps, lats and forearms are tight, will front squatting help loosen me up? Dane: Front squats can help but yo...

Ask Dane Anything #6 1) Cutting 50 lbs still want to bench 405 lbs. Suggestions? Dane: The biggest factor is based around current body fa...

Ask Dane Anything #2 Client: What is one food you should not have in your diet? Dane: I don’t think it comes down to ONE food. I think it is much d...

Ask Dane Anything #1: On Site Clients with Practical Questions Client: Tips on what to eat to lose weight while being able to gain muscle, hav...

One of my biggest pet peeves as a throws coach is this prevailing idea that throwers can just eat whatever they want, whenever they want. Anyone is welcome to do this, but they should be ok with looking fat and unathletic, as well as training and competing poorly. It’s not productive for throwing or from a health perspective to eat with no plan and no focus on proper nutrition. Proper nutrition is important for all athletes, and it is one of the easiest ways to make huge gains!

As some may have noticed, I have lost over 60lbs over the last two years. I struggled with my health for a while after being infected with Lyme Disease.  I was fat, felt like shit and had little to no energy. I decided to start playing around with 4-5 different “diets.” What I have learned is that almost every diet works to an extent, as long as there is some mode of accountability.  

Traveling for competition can present a whole host of problems. One of the largest ones is how to maintain the nutritional balance that has been struck during training while on the road.

There are many successful women on the world stage who coaches look to for inspiration. I think many coaches lose sight of the fact that these athletes are throwing, at the heaviest, a 4 kilogram implement (in the case of shot and hammer). The women’s discus only weighs 2.2 pounds! Yet I hear high school coaches telling female athletes things like, “you gotta go to McDonald’s, you gotta put on weight.” This is exactly the wrong attitude to take. Women don’t NEED to be huge to throw far. You can take one of a number of examples of excellent female throwers who are muscular, but not terribly overweight: Maggie Ewen, Valarie Allman, Whitney Ashley, Sandra Perkovic, the list goes on. Perkovic is easily the most dominant female discus thrower alive right now. Ewen is the most well rounded thrower, female or male, on the planet.

Throwers are heavyweight athletes, that’s just a fact. Most of us have always been the big kids in our class, and we were lucky enough to find a sport that uses our size as an advantage. Since we all know that mass moves mass, if we can increase our mass, we should be able to throw farther, right? Well, as you may have guessed there are some considerations to be made when thinking of putting on weight.