Half done, the rest to go!

Today is the day when half of my training camp here in Portugal is over, and we only have a week left. So far I'm very satisfied with the work I've gotten done here, and hopefully I'll have time and health to improve a lot more before we go home.

Today I've had a throwing session followed up by som gym with bench press and some other fun stuff too. The throwing session went great today, and it feels like I'm getting a grip on my technique, which gives me better possibilities to adjust and improve details.

Here is one of todays throws, enjoy!

Today was a good day

The day started off as usual, and the morning and early afternoon was spent on some grocery shopping and lunch at a nice beach-bar near our hotel. Other than that all I've really done today is rest and prepare for the afternoons shotput and discus practice, which started at around 3 pm.

The shotput practice went ok, and I had one standing throw that landed on about 14,10-14,20m which I think is a training record. With "full speed", I still have a lot of work to do, but with patience and hard work that too will improve.

Late in the evening yesterday, I finally got the discus throws uploaded to youtube, so I get to share them now instead of yesterday, so here they are!

Day of pain and misery, kind of.

Today has been, well, different. Everything started of as usual with breakfast around 8, and a throwing session at 9, however, things took a turn for the worse.

The throwing session went ok, a lot to fix in the technique, and a whole lot of getting used to throwing far, instead of against a wall as I've been doing all winter. I'll add a few throwing videos from today later on when the internet connection gets a bit better here, because uploading 2 7 second videos to youtube would take approximately 20 hours right now.. (correction, right now it says 1959 minutes...)

And well, now the fun starts. After the training session, I started cycling back to the hotel (approximately 3 km ride per way) and after about 400m when I was to enter the sidewalk which has a kind of concrete edge about 5 cm high. When I was to enter the sidewalk, the tire of my bicycle didn't get a grip at all, so the bicycle and I went in different directions, which you can guess ends up with me on the ground and a nicely bruised leg. The only thing to do was simply to man up, and wash it so well I could with the remaining water I brought to the practice. After that I went straight to our "team doctor" to get it fully washed with alcohol, and THAT part hurt a hell of a lot more than the actual accident.

Since I didn't have much more planned for the day than the throwing session, I figured I might as well go get a massage to figure out some back problems that has been haunting me now and then. The massage was one of the more painful experiences I've had, but it feels like the pain paid off. At least some adjustment to my spine got done, which corrected something that has been a bit of in my back.

Didn't really look that bad, although it hurt as hell.

Atleast my roommate Hugo wasn't bothered by my injury..

Personal Record

As I said in my previous post, I had a hard gym session followed up by some shot put today. The training went on well since I actually spent all day preparing for the practice, and didn't really waste much enegy out in the sun before it.

I'm really excited over the fact that I got a personal record in clean, which was 6x110kg, so results are starting to show, and hopefully I'll be able to get the same kinds of results with the discus and shotput soon too.

Enough talking, here is a video of my lifting today:

Back in Portugal

Today is the 4th day of my training camp, and on today's schedule is a pretty heavy gym session, and later on the first shotput session for the year.

So far, I've had 2 full throwing sessions, and of course, it takes a lot of time getting used to throwing far after I've been throwing against a wall all winter. However, it feels like there is potential for many long throws before the end of the camp, and most importantly, before summer really starts.

Main throwing area at the sports centre, behind it is the shotput area.

The gym at the sporting centre, ideal place for lifting with just enough space.

Back In Business 2.0

Hello. It's been a while since my last update, and as you can guess by now I'm terrible at keeping this blog alive.

 However, I'm simply gonna keep this as a place to update from time to time, when i have the time and motivation to do it. A short update on my winter and spring training so far: I started off the year with my first full season with a new coach, Stefan Kulla. My training has changed a lot, and so far it feels great. I haven't been fully healthy during the training season, but I've managed to stay injury free and just have had some colds during a few weeks here and there.

I'm currently on my 3rd day of a 14 day training camp in Monte Gordo, Portugal, so I'm slowly getting used to the heat and it feels like my body is coming to life just like it did here last year.

That's all for this post, I hope you will enjoy reading about my life and training!

Finnish Nationals.

Today the finnish nationals for 18-19 year olds started here in Savonlinna, and I competed in shot put. I finnished 6th with a new personal best at 14,84m. Tomorrow I'm competing in discus throw, and I must say that I'm very nervous for the competition since it's my main event.

Today, after the competitions, I went with my mother on a "guided tour", or cruise, by boat. It lasted about an hour and went by Olavinlinna and around in Saimaa and Vuoksi.

The "stadium" of Savonlinna.

Olavinlinna, the main tourist attraction of Savonlinna.

The view from our hotel's sauna.