I want to do the discus for my highschool track team in the upcoming spring. The season starts the first of march, and I really need to increase in strength. I am pretty tall (6'3'' in shoes) with long arms which helps me, and I'm sure I can get the technique with practice, but what I'm really lacking is strength. I can bench maybe a max of 100 lbs. I weight 140 lbs, and have very little body fat....like 5%. I want to know if its possible, with a lot of hard work to improve enough to at least DO the event this year. If so, how and what should I do? Since I also do other events, I run 10 miles every day so that calorie loss needs to be factored in.
By running 10 miles daily, you're setting your body up more for adapting to endurance rather than for strength. Think of your body's recovery ability as having 100 units available, period. The more units you use for recovery in one area, the less you'll have for recovery in another. So it's of little wonder that you possess the endurance to run ten daily miles, yet lack the strength for the discus competition--your body's set its priorities on endurance. Since larger muscles are directly related to stronger muscles--and muscle tissue eats energy--your body isn't likely to easily allow for strength increases because the extra muscle tissue would mow down valuable energy.
Depending on your individual recovery ability, you may try adding weight-bearing compound movements to your training regimen. It may prove to be too much, however--the only real way to guage this is whether or not you're making improvements in both endurance and strength gains.
Try a simple routine for three, non-consecutive days of the week (Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, for example) doing the following movements:
- Bench Presses, 10-12 repetitions
- Seated Cable Rows (or Lat Pulldowns), 10-12 repetitions
- Squats (or Hack Squats, or Leg Presses), 15-20 repetitions
Warm up with a light set of 6-8 reps--NOT to failure; you only want to ensure that you have no sore joints or nagging injuries that will interfere with the heavier set to follow. Your main set (you should perform no more than one) will be done with a weight heavy enough to ensure failure on your last repetition; your last rep should be the last rep you could hope to do with any reasonable degree of control despite your greatest effort.
Keep all movements under strict control and do not deviate from correct exercise form. If progress isn't seen within two weeks of working out in this fashion, decrease your resistance workouts to twice a week (Monday and Thursday, for example). Your individual recovery ability will dictate just how far you'll be able to go--but remember that a lack of progress is virtually always due to too much training, NOT because you're not doing enough. The exercise is a trigger, but without sufficient rest in between workouts, no adaptation can occur.
I would also recommend adding calories to your diet--but go lightly as to prevent overloading your digestive tract and causing bloat. Aim for increasing your intake by about 200-500 calories daily, mostly from carbohydrate sources. If you notice a spike in bodyfat, gradually reduce this amount until your weight stabilizes.
The idea is to provide plenty of energy for your new approach, and to allow the working muscles fuel to carry out your endeavors. Good luck!