Charlie,
In your book you mention seeing (i think Beyer) lifting some mind boggling weights in training I was just wondering what other throwers you have seen in your travels that had freaky strength. Timmerman, Oldfield, Wilkins, Powell. Gunthor?
I know you said you saw Oldfield take on about 8 cops once, was he equaly as strong in the gym?
Before Charlie’s reply, i can give you some stats for the SPutters you mentioned (all in kilos and meters):
Name / SP / Bench / Clean / Snatch / Stand LJ
U.T. / 23.06 / 190 / 220 / 162 / 3.40
B.O. / 22.86 / 225 / 173 / 134 / 3.57
W.G. / 22.75 / 240 / 200 / 150 / 3.62
U.B. / 22.64 / 290 / no / 190 / 3.60
I don’t give the squat because all performed with different techniques and impossible to compare.
I have to say that my favourite is Werner Günthör, i have videos of him hurdling, jumping, stretching, rarely the adjective “athletic” had stuck so well to someone.
Pierre,
Thank you so much. My favorite has to be Oldfield, i once saw him race Lynn Swann(NFL hall of fame wide reciever) in 60 meters and almost beat him. He also had the appearance of Bieng very Athletic.
Oldfield’s bests for dash are 40y 4.3, 100y 9.6 and 100m 10.5 (on asphalt). Like Günthör, he was able to High Jump +2m easely. Udo Beyer, at age 18, ran 100m in 11.3 and HJ 1.95…
Pierre,
Thanks. Do you know where i can obtain this info on different throwers and how they trained. or is it something you have compiled over the years from many different sources?
Something i’ve compilled over the years (books, mags, newspapers, coaches, athletes…). I suggest you search also on specialised throw sites, but i’m not very familiar with them.
yes yes, i have found some great info on the throws sites. Actually just like Charlie, some great throws coaches will often post and help others out with training, technique Etc.
After my internship where i worked with a great throws coach and strength coach, i got the throwing bug again. What i love the most is the training aspect rather than the actual competition. On top of that i like to see what the top throwers did to get strong and often times the training programs that i have seen consisted of nothing more than a few basic heavy movements. Makes you wonder where everything got so complicated. Thanks again.
A deatilled report on Gunthors training for season 1993 - when he became WC. But it’s GERMAN, sorry.
He trained with bench up to 200kg (~440 pd), squat 260kg (~575 pd), have to read the text more careful to find out how many rep. (guess it’s 5x)
Maybe the numbers/figures makes some sense.
Does anyone want this article translated? I would be happy to help out.
please, that would be great!
Yes, i’m not fluent in German!
This is a very unofficial list of the best performances i have for elite Shot Putters from various publications (men +21m, women +19.50m) :
STANDING SP 7.25kg/4kg Udo Beyer 21.92m, Helena Fibingerova 19.20m
SP OVERHEAD 4kg Jannus Robberts 29m, Ilke Wyludda 21.74m
SQUAT Udo Beyer 450kg, Ilona Slupianek 330kg
BENCH Udo Beyer 305kg, Ilona Slupianek 210kg
CLEAN Gregg Trafalis 235kg, Ramona Pagel 135kg
SNATCH Udo Beyer 190kg, Ilona Slupianek 140kg
VJ Brian Oldfield 1.00m, Faina Melnik 0.88m
SLJ Werner Günthör 3.62m, Ramona Pagel 3.10m
5J FROG Werner Günthor 19.07m, Ramona Pagel 17.30m
20M FLY Edward Sarul 1.91, Ludwika Chevinska 2.0
30M BLOCK Werner Günthör 4.20, Ludwika Chevinska 4.1
60M BLOCK Edward Sarul 6.8, Svetlana Krivelyova 8.0
100M BLOCK Brian Oldfield 10.5, Ewa Wilms 11.77
Any amendments are welcome!
comments:Beyer is not human…his standing shot put is amazing…elite shot putters are expected to add about 2 meters with full glide…not less than one…very interesting however all the datas, :snatch and clean are usually power versions, even more impressive!!
This is oldfields workout from 1972: taken from
Brian also threw “for max” three days a week.
I could try, but haven’t got the time right now - so if you would take the burden… 
BTW: the numbers are exactly the same like JeanPierre said - I had no doubt
Egger writes that in comp phase 180kg were 75% for Gunthor - which makes 240kg 100%…the amazing thing is that he writes in January 180kg were 100% for him, I would call that improvement…
No doubt either. You’re right and Mr Egger isn’t the kind of coach to give false numbers either.
WOW, thats amazing
Working on translating it.
his program can be found on www.macthrowvideo.com under articles. ulf timmerman and the italian andrei can also be found there.