Athletes Berni, Jallisa, Christina and Stephanie traveled with coaches Fred and Jim to Kamloops last week-end for 5 training sessions with the world-renowned Throws coach and former Olympic Gold Medalist.  Dr. Bondarchuk has about 10 high performance athletes currently training with him in Kamloops including 3 internationals and 2 Olympians from Beijing.

Heading up to Kamloops, we really were not too sure of how much time or attention we might get with Dr. B, or how much interaction with the other athletes?  After the 1^st day we were unanimously excited and grateful that we got more than we expected.

We met with the head coach Jarett McLean and discussed the training schedule.
The first session was at 9am, and we had Jallisa (intermediate) and Christina (novice) throwing hammer,
Berni and Stephanie throwing discus.  Dr. B showed up at 9 and gave us his undivided
attention for about 30 mintues before the other world-class throwers started to arrive.  The other athletes
started to work in with our group and with 3 circles it was an efficient session and Dr. B.
was busy shuffling from 1 circle to the next.  The Ocean Athletics coaches were able to discuss training
programs with the athletes and find out about their throwing schedule and various weights
as well as their weight training program which we could observe at the nearby shed.
At 11am we drove down to another training site where the shot-putters train.  Berni, Stephanie
and Christina again started first under the watchfull eye of Dr. B., then 30 minutes later
along came Olympian Dylan Armstrong and another high level Shot putter.  Dylan’s program this week
had him throwing a 19lb. shot, which appeared to be landing in the range of 19 Metres.
I had a good chat with Dylan about his weight training program and his throwing regimen
which includes shots from 6Kg (dents in the cement wall 25M away) upto 9Kg and 10Kg.
Suprising to learn that Dylans weight training program is all relatively light weights with
an emphasis on speed.   Dylan was eager to share his knowlege with us, encouraged the
athletes to ask him questions at any time and was a true ambassador of the Kamloops
T&F club.

At 3pm it was back to the Hammer/Discus cages, and this time only Jallisa continued with
Hammer as the other 3 threw Discus.  Jallisa learned a new wind-up routine which gave
her first turn entry more momentum and it immediately showed in her throwing distances
roughly 10% farther.  She also seemed to stay in good balance from the constant feedback
of Dr. B. which is in contrast to her 2008 competition year where she was off form more often
than not.  We had a visit from Judy Armstrong and learned some more about the economics
of the high performance athletes.

On day 2, we were told that the high performance athletes had a rest day and we would
have Dr. B all to ourselves.  Christina decided to take another try at Hammer and it was
a great success with her acheiving many 3 turn throws with the heavier 4Kg implement into the 30M range.  Jallisa again
had a good set of throws approaching 40M and some more fine tuning from Dr. B and Ocean coach
Fred Sommer who by this time had become a protoge of Dr. B.  In additon we had a visit
from Olympian Sultana Frizell on her rest day and I had the opportunity to discuss her observations
of the throwers and learn about her training program and progession from high school
through college.  I had the chance to chat with 6 of the high performance athletes and
the 2 Olympians were the most accomodating and helpful, i must send them a letter of
gratitude.  Stephanie and Berni were excited by their Discus progress and Fred continued to learn more from Dr. B.

After a 2 hour break we came back for the last session where all 4 girls were now all
throwing Discus.  Dr. B. made some good points which Fred was able to digest and
again they all showed some improvements. The 3 girls all made some technical refinements and were throwing over 30M, in the range of their personal bests.  Masters athlete – Berni seemed to be the most excited and energetic of all taking the most throws and making some great progress, clearly throwing beyond her seasonal best.