How To Improve Your Penultimate In The Javelin Throw
- Mar 3
- 7 min read
In this blog I will be going over exactly how to increase your penultimate power and
get more out of your throws.
To start: the penultimate is the second to last step in your approach right before you
throw. Think of a 3 step throw.
In order to have a better, longer, and smoother penultimate you need to understand
where to start, and how to improve. That is the essential aspect of what we will be
diving into today. Starting with physical preparation.
Physical preparation:
Understanding what parts of the body are used in the penultimate is key. We use our feet,
adductors, abductors, and hip flexors, so that is where we will be spending our focus.
Training your feet through barefoot pogo hops are going to be
essential to be able to improve jumping power and make the
ability to stay on the balls of our feet become muscle memory.
We will go over why this is important later on. But doing pogo
hops strengthens the arches of our feet, achilles tendon, and
calves. All of which directly translate to having better jumping
ability, which translates to a better penultimate. Doing quick,
submaximal, barefoot jumps for a lot of reps will improve the
tendon stiffness and strength in our feet and ankles which helps
you get that spring that the best athletes in the world have.
“Pogos are a form of plyometric that predominantly stems from
the ankle and knee that requires very minimal knee bend. This
minimal bend forces the tendons to store and release elastic
energy very rapidly, essentially requiring a high level of stiffness.”
Edmunds, Jaye. “The Pogo Jump. What Is It? And Why Is It
Effective for Developing Speed and Bounce?” Jaye Edmunds
- Performance Coach, Jaye Edmunds - Performance Coach, 26 Feb. 2024.
Mobility
When looking at the penultimate there are a few body parts we need to be mobile. We
need the hips both inside and out to be mobile as well as the hip flexor because that
allows us to not only get our knees up and leg to sweep across to gain distance, but
internally rotate our hips upon impact at the conclusion of the penultimate and absorb the
impact of the throw. Try these exercises below to get your hips feeling loose and mobile
like never before!
Adductors
Weighted butterfly
Side split pushup
Side split
Abductors
Pigeon Stretch
Hip Swivel
Psoas / Hip flexor
Couch stretch
Reverse Nordic Curl
Strength
These same body parts not only need to be mobile but strong as well to have great
power in that second to last horizontal step, which helps power your throw. The
stronger your base is, the more ground you can cover, and you will be able to cover it
more effortlessly. This is important because you don’t want to be straining and forcing
yourself into a big jump into the penultimate. It should be a big jump but a relaxed jump
at the conclusion of your approach that will allow you to build tension then release it
into your throw. Trying and straining your way into the penultimate and throw is going to
take away from the relaxation aspect of the throw. By getting stronger your current max
effort will be submaximal, and you will be able to cover more if not the same amount of
ground, without trying as hard.
Hypothetical situation
Your hips and legs are weak. You cover 4 feet on a penultimate at 100% effort.
Your hips and legs get stronger. You now can cover 4 feet on your penultimate at 75%
effort.
This is how this works all the way up until the point of being able to cover almost 10
feet of distance like some of the professionals out there. The point being is those
professionals could probably get 1-2 more feet on their penultimate if that was the
highest effort output part of the throw, and they tried really hard.
But they don’t need to, because they save that energy for the throw. But by getting
stronger, more mobile, and more explosive legs and hips, that penultimate power will
start to become more natural, and effortless.
“Muscling up tends to be thought of in relation to the arm, creating a break in the
energy transfer and leading to a loss in velocity from trying to throw harder. While this
is one cause and definition, the truth is that muscling up doesn’t always go hand in hand
with trying to throw hard (and it can happen even at low efforts), and that it can happen
anywhere in the flow of energy (back leg or hips/low back), not just the arm action.”
“Muscling up is failure to maintain sufficient relaxation in a given joint segment leading
to impaired energy transfer and lower ball velocity.”
Brewster, Ben. “The 3 Types of ‘Muscling up’ and How It’s Hurting Your Velocity.”
Tread Athletics, 19 July 2019,
Some exercises you should try to improve your lower body strength are the following:
Adductors
Copenhagen dips
Hip Adduction machine
Abductors
Seated good mornings
Hip Abduction machine
Psoas
“Foot in KB -lift up”
Psoas dips
Lateral Power
Harnessing jumping ability to improve the penultimate is important, however you need
to be working on more of your lateral power which will give you much more power when
you are sweeping through the crossovers into your penultimate. Vertical power doesn’t
matter as much in this instance but you need it to some degree.
To check out all these exercises in action, watch the video below!
TECHNIQUE UNDERSTANDING
After we have the physical capabilities to hit a powerful penultimate, it is important we
know exactly what we are trying to do. Some of you may remember from the approach
guide that down the runway we want to establish an active block leg and passive back leg.
This sets it up so that the front leg is doing most of the work and the back leg is relaxed
and just sweeping through as the front leg accelerates and brings us forward. The same
goes for the penultimate as you are going to use your block leg to actively pull downward
and propel you forward, bringing your back leg across and landing softly on that back foot.
The reason that it is essential to land soft on the back foot is so that you will land on the
ball of your foot and internally rotate the back knee / hip forward into the block. The key
is, the back leg needs to land on the ball of your back foot because it will not be able to
internally rotate unless the ankle is in plantar flexion. If you land flat footed your back hip
will drag through and not get any involvement, causing your back hip and throwing arm
to be coming through at the same time, having a lack of hip / shoulder separation. This is
also where the active front leg in the crossovers comes into place as the front leg is pulling
down propelling you forward at the time of the penultimate, and when the front leg makes
contact with the ground again, it is going to be a firm block leg.
Be sure when performing a penultimate you are thinking about getting your energy
as linear as possible. Even if you are a rotational thrower, having your energy moving
forward rather than up, or to the side, will help you put more energy into the javelin, and
get your whole body’s momentum and force into the throw and follow through. Too many
people are very vertical on their penultimate, or fall off to the side, or stop completely
at the time of their block, not effectively using their momentum. Be sure to be drilling
“linear energy” as a part of your focus for these drills and concepts. LET also known as
“Linear energy transfer” can be defined as the following
“Linear energy transfer” in the context of throwing refers to the efficient transfer of
mechanical energy from one body part to another during a throwing motion, essentially
maximizing the force applied to the object being thrown by smoothly transferring energy
through the kinetic chain of the body, from the legs to the core, and finally to the arm
and hand at the point of
release; it’s about minimizing
energy loss and maximizing
the power delivered to the
projectile.
“While the linear velocity is
the same at the joint for both
segments and therefore the
rate of energy loss of one
segment equals the rate of
energy gain of the second
segment connected with the
joint, the angular velocity of
the two connected segments
is not necessarily the same.”
Köhler, Hans-Peter, and
Maren Witt. “Energy Flow
in Men’s Javelin Throw and
Its Relationship to Joint
Load and Performance.”
PeerJ, U.S. National
Library of Medicine, 19
Sept. 2023.
Once you understand what exactly you are trying to do in terms of technique you should try
some of these drills to establish good technique and get a really good feeling for it.
So some of you may have heard of the 3 position drill where you are working on the three main
positions of the final stages of the throw. But this time when you go through it, pay very close
attention to your block arm. A lot of throwers only focus on the aspect of their legs, and their
throwing arm during these drills but the block arm plays a vital role. I’ll explain why.
When you are going through your penultimate, your back leg will be across your body forward,
which means your block arm should be across your body reaching across. When you transition
into the back foot contact phase, your block arm should move from across your body, to out in
front of you. This should happen simultaneously with your block leg coming out in front as well
so it is smooth working together as one. Then when you release and follow through it should
move even more to the side as you use it as an active block side arm.
I like to think of it as a right handed thrower using the clock method, “3 - 12 - Block” so each
phase it moves slightly more to the left.
The next drill is the gallop drill which is putting together 2-4 simultaneous penultimates
into one drill. Using a variety of distances, and force of effort, this is a great drill to do as
a throwing drill and a crossover drill. Adding wickets is also good to help you get used to
covering a measured distance and getting that slight vertical energy you need in order
to cover more ground.
And last but not least we have the box drill, which can be good to get your block leg
used to having something to actively pull down onto, and get used to the feeling of
propelling yourself forward. I typically like to use these with med balls because it is more
controlled and lower risk of accident. Doing these out of a 5 step is good, nothing more
intense than that. Remembering the risk to reward ratio when training is important.
Check out this video to see all of the drills we use in Action!
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