The Question This Article Answers
Babbitt identifies “rushing the throw” as one of the eight key coaching observations linked directly to biomechanical data. Kipp’s research confirms that a longer entry phase is associated with better performance. But how does a coach actually teach an athlete not to rush? What develops patience in a thrower and how do we build it deliberately?
WHAT THE RESEARCH TELLS US
In Babbitt’s analysis of Mykolas Alekna’s world record series, the first throw of the competition was identified as rushed. The kinematic data confirmed it — that throw was the only one in the series that showed a decrease in discus velocity between phases, dropping from 11.99 to 11.16 meters per second during the transition. Every other throw, including the world record, showed a continuous and uninterrupted buildup of velocity from start to release.
Kipp’s broader study reinforced this finding. Across 115 throws from 39 elite athletes, longer entry phase durations were positively associated with throwing distance. The world record throw had an entry phase 5.2 percent longer than the first throw of the series — a difference of just 17 thousandths of a second that reflected an entirely different quality of movement organization.
The research is clear. Patience in the entry is not a stylistic preference. It is a mechanical advantage.
But knowing that patience matters and knowing how to develop it in an athlete are two entirely different things.
WHAT PATIENCE ACTUALLY IS
Before we can teach patience we need to understand what it actually is.
Patience in the discus throw is not slowness. It is not hesitation. It is not a conscious decision to wait.
Patience is the natural consequence of a nervous system that knows exactly where it is going.
When an athlete trusts the movement pattern — when the nervous system has been trained to recognize where balance exists, where the next destination is, and how force should build across phases — there is no impulse to rush. The athlete does not need to manufacture speed early because the movement system already knows that speed will be available later.
Rushing, by contrast, is almost always a symptom of neurological uncertainty. The athlete who rushes the throw is an athlete whose nervous system does not fully trust what comes next. So it compensates by trying to create speed early — before the system is organized to use it effectively.
You cannot teach patience directly. You can only create the conditions that make patience inevitable.
WHY TELLING AN ATHLETE TO BE PATIENT RARELY WORKS
Consider what happens when a coach says “don’t rush” or “be patient” to a young thrower.
The athlete hears the instruction. They consciously try to slow down. For one or two throws they may appear more patient. But as soon as attention shifts back to the throw itself the rushing returns.
This is because the instruction addressed the symptom without addressing the cause.
The athlete is not rushing because they lack willpower or discipline. The athlete is rushing because their nervous system has not yet established the internal landmarks it needs to feel safe moving through the circle with confidence.
Telling an athlete to be patient without first building those landmarks is like telling someone to be calm in a building they have never been in before without giving them a map. The anxiety is not a character flaw. It is a reasonable response to navigating unfamiliar territory.
The solution is not a better cue. The solution is a better map.
HOW MOTOR MAPPING CREATES PATIENCE
In Article 1 of this series I introduced the concept of motor mapping — the neurological process by which the brain establishes internal reference points for key positions in the throw.
Motor mapping is the foundation of patience. But the sequence in which we build that map matters enormously.
I begin with the standing throw — which is, by definition, learning to throw from the back foot with the lower body leading. The standing throw is not a simplified version of the full throw. It is the complete expression of the most critical principle in the discus: the lower body initiates, the upper body follows, and any premature acceleration from the upper body immediately disconnects the entire unit from the ground.
This principle does not belong only to the full throw. It belongs to every phase, every drill, and every repetition from the very first day an athlete picks up a discus. A beginning thrower who learns to let the lower body lead in the standing throw has learned the most important thing there is to learn. A beginning thrower who allows the upper body to take over in the standing throw has learned a habit that will compound through every phase of the circle.
If there is any premature acceleration, it will come from the upper body. And the moment it does, the connection to the ground is gone — and with it, the ability to accelerate the discus efficiently.
Once the standing throw is organized — once the athlete has learned to feel the back foot, to let the lower body move first, and to keep the upper body patient behind it — we move to the middle of the circle. Here the power position is developed not as a static pose but as a balanced position that emerges from sequential movement. The center of mass must stay between the front and back foot throughout. Balance is not a checkpoint at the end of the movement. It is a continuous condition that the movement must maintain.
Only after the power position is established with genuine balance and sequential lower body leadership do we move to the back of the circle — where the wind and start must be organized so that the upper body never takes on its own independent rhythm. Because once the upper body establishes its own tempo at the back, the lower body never fully reconnects. The ground never connects to the discus. And the throw becomes an arm throw before it has even begun.
Patience is not built by learning to slow down. It is built by learning — in every phase, from the first standing throw to the last full circle — that the ground leads and everything else follows.
THE ROLE OF BALANCE IN DEVELOPING PATIENCE
Kipp’s research identifies horizontal center-of-mass velocity during the flight phase as one of the key variables associated with performance. What this tells us mechanically is that the athlete who carries momentum efficiently through the throw has organized their center of mass effectively during the earlier phases.
That organization begins with balance.
Before an athlete can move efficiently through the circle they must first be able to find balance within it. An athlete who is constantly correcting their balance is an athlete whose nervous system is constantly solving an emergency. There is no capacity left for timing, sequencing, or patience when the brain is occupied with preventing a fall.
This is why balance work is not optional and it is not a beginner-only concern. I have worked with elite college throwers who had significant unaddressed balance deficiencies that were directly contributing to timing problems in their throw. When we addressed the balance the timing improved without a single conversation about timing.
Balance is the soil in which patience grows.
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PATIENCE AND TRUST
There is a psychological dimension to patience that coaching discussions rarely address.
An athlete becomes patient when they trust the movement pattern. Trust is not given — it is earned through repetition. And it is earned specifically through successful repetition of the complete movement sequence, from beginning to finish, at speeds the nervous system can process and remember.
This is why I am very cautious about introducing full-speed throwing too early in the learning process. When an athlete throws at full speed before the movement map is complete, the nervous system cannot process and store the experience accurately. The throw happens too fast for the brain to learn from it. Repetition without comprehension does not build trust — it builds confusion.
I would rather have an athlete make one hundred slow, organized, comprehended throws than one thousand fast throws that the nervous system cannot yet decode.
Slow correct movement builds trust. Trust creates patience. Patience allows speed to emerge naturally rather than being forced prematurely.
THE DUTCH DOOR PROBLEM: WHY THE START IS WHERE PATIENCE DIES
When Babbitt describes Alekna’s first throw as rushed, he is pointing to something specific that happened at the very beginning of the movement — in the wind and entry out of the back of the circle. Understanding why the start is where patience most commonly breaks down requires understanding what I call the Dutch door problem.
Imagine a Dutch door — the kind split horizontally across the middle so the top half and bottom half can swing independently. The upper body of a discus thrower operates exactly like the top half of that door. It can rotate freely on its own. The lower body operates like the bottom half — it can also turn independently. And if those two halves are not connected, they can move at completely different rates of speed or even in opposite directions.
Here is what that disconnection looks like at the start of the throw.
The wind has placed the entire upper body — left shoulder, right shoulder, and discus arm — behind the athlete, wound and waiting. As the throw begins, the left hip, knee, and foot start to rotate open in the direction of the throw, and the upper body, connected to that lower left side, begins to move with it. That is correct. That is what should happen.
The problem is what the right leg does at the same moment.
Instead of the hip flexor picking the right leg up and moving it counterclockwise — forward and away from the discus, in the same direction as the throw — the beginning thrower lifts the right leg in hip extension, swinging it backward, back toward where the discus just came from. The right leg goes one way. The upper body goes the other. The two halves of the athlete are now traveling in opposite directions, and the connection between them is gone.
The lower body has either paused or reversed. The upper body is already moving into the throw. The ground, which was connected to the discus through that unified unit, is no longer connected to anything.
When the right leg moves backward while the upper body moves forward, the throw becomes an arm throw before the athlete has taken a single step.
The control Babbitt is observing in Alekna’s world record throw — and the patience Kipp’s data confirms through a longer entry phase — is not simply slowness. It is the ability to move the entire unit as one connected piece, with the lower body setting the tempo for everything above it.
Teaching that control is not a matter of telling an athlete to slow down. It requires giving the athlete a single movement concept that connects the entire unit and hands control of the tempo to the ground.
That concept is what I call the Wind Connect.
THE WIND CONNECT: HANDING TEMPO TO THE GROUND
Twenty-five years ago I began developing what I now call the Wind Connect — a movement concept designed to solve the Dutch door problem at its source by linking the upper body to the lower body from the very first moment of the wind, and then handing tempo control to the lower body for the remainder of the start.
Here is how it works.
The athlete begins with the axis central and the upper body turning back — winding — until it reaches the end of its available range of motion. At that moment, rather than reversing direction or simply stopping, the upper body picks up the lower left side: the hip, the knee, and the foot. The entire left side then continues the backward motion together as one connected unit. The Dutch door bolts are now engaged. Upper and lower are moving as a single piece.
Then the athlete reverses the order. The lower left body — the hip and knee — leads the rotation in the direction of the throw. The upper body stays back, remaining under the tempo control of the lower body. The discus, connected through the upper body to the lower body, is now being governed by the ground rather than by the arm or shoulder.
The Wind Connect does not teach an athlete to be slow. It teaches the ground to be in charge. Slowness is the natural result.
This is the movement concept that produces what Babbitt observes and Kipp measures. When the lower body controls the tempo of the start, the entry phase lengthens naturally — not because the athlete is trying to be patient, but because the grinding, weight-shifting movement of the lower body simply cannot move as fast as an unconnected upper body can spin on its own. The mechanical structure of the Wind Connect builds patience into the movement rather than asking the athlete to impose it through willpower.
SETUP: THE PELVIC TILT — SLIDING THE BOLT AND ALIGNING THE AXIS
Before an athlete can feel the Wind Connect, one essential prerequisite must be established: the pelvic tilt.
Return to the Dutch door. What would it take to lock the top half and bottom half together so they move as one? You would slide the bolt — the vertical bar that runs from top to bottom and joins the two halves into a single door.
The pelvic tilt is that bolt.
When an athlete maintains an arch in the lower back — the default posture for most beginning throwers — there is a break in the line from shoulder to hip. The upper body and lower body remain mechanically separate. The Dutch door stays open. Attempts to feel the Wind Connect are fighting the athlete’s own posture.
When the athlete flattens the lower back and tilts the pelvis forward and upward, something immediately changes. The line from the shoulder down through the hip becomes straight and continuous. Upper and lower now share the same structural column. But the pelvic tilt does something beyond locking the Dutch door — it establishes the vertical axis.
Twenty-five years ago I concluded that the vertical axis was the single most important structural priority in the discus throw. Physics supports this directly: in a rotational environment, force is most efficiently applied at 90 degrees to the axis of rotation. An axis that is perfectly vertical — perpendicular to the ground — creates the optimal condition for generating and transferring force into a moment arm that is traveling and connected to that rotating axis. The discus is that moment arm. The axis is the athlete’s body. And the pelvic tilt is what makes the axis vertical.
When the lower back is arched, the axis tilts. Force application becomes less efficient. The moment arm — the discus — travels a less optimal path. The athlete is working against the geometry of their own movement.
When the pelvic tilt establishes the perpendicular line from shoulder through hip, the axis goes vertical. Force application reaches its most efficient angle. The Wind Connect becomes possible. And the connection between upper and lower becomes not just feelable but unmistakable — because the two halves are now sharing a single, optimally positioned axis rather than fighting each other across a broken one.
The pelvic tilt does three things at once: it locks the Dutch door, establishes the vertical axis, and makes the Wind Connect feelable. It is not a coaching cue. It is the structural foundation that makes everything else mechanically possible.
Before beginning the drills below, establish the pelvic tilt. Have the athlete stand in their throwing posture and cue them to flatten the back and tilt the pelvis forward and upward until the lower back is neutral and the line from shoulder to hip is continuous. Hold this position. No drill proceeds without it.
THREE DRILLS: BUILDING THE WIND CONNECT
Drill 1 · Wind Connect — Pause at 10:30
Using a clock face as reference: 12 o’clock is directly in front of the athlete, 9 o’clock is straight out to the left side, and 10:30 is the position halfway between those two — diagonally forward-left.
With the pelvic tilt established and the vertical axis set, the athlete winds the upper body back to the end of its available range of motion. At that end range, rather than stopping, the upper body picks up the lower left side — hip, knee, and foot — and the entire left side continues the backward wind together as one connected unit.
The athlete pauses at 10:30.
At the pause, the coach checks for two things: first, that the hips and shoulders are still separated — the upper body should still be rotated clockwise relative to the lower body, showing that the wind has been preserved. Second, that the athlete can feel the connection between upper and lower as a single unit rather than two independent halves.
This drill establishes the fundamental feeling of the Wind Connect — the moment when the Dutch door bolt slides into place, the vertical axis is confirmed, and upper body and lower body become one piece.
Drill 2 · Wind Connect — Open to 9 O’Clock with Weight Shift
The athlete performs the full Wind Connect from Drill 1, pausing at 10:30. From that connected position, the lower body now leads the movement — opening from 10:30 toward 9 o’clock — while simultaneously shifting weight laterally off the right leg and completely onto the left leg.
The weight shift is a lateral movement, not a rotational one: the shoulders and hips move together toward the left foot. The left knee ends up slightly over the toe. The left shoulder ends up slightly over the knee. The right leg becomes completely weightless.
The athlete holds this position while the coach confirms: Is the weight fully on the left leg? Is the right leg free? Is the upper body still showing separation from the lower body — still back, still wound, still connected? Is the vertical axis maintained?
When the right leg is weightless and the upper body remains separated and connected to the lower body along a vertical axis, the athlete has placed the entire control of the throw in the left side of the body, connected through the pelvic tilt to the ground. The upper body, the discus arm, and the implement are passengers. The ground is driving.
This is the moment of maximum mechanical advantage at the start of the throw. Everything that follows depends on how well this position has been established.
Drill 3 · Wind Connect — Full Sequence to 7 O’Clock with Right Leg Pickup
The athlete performs the complete Wind Connect, shifts weight fully onto the left leg at 9 o’clock as in Drill 2, and then continues: the lower body leads the rotation past 9 o’clock and continues turning toward 7 o’clock as the right leg lifts.
The critical detail is how the right leg lifts. The hip flexor picks the right leg up and moves it away from the discus — counterclockwise, in the direction of the throw — rather than picking it up and moving it toward the discus. A right leg that swings toward the discus collapses the separation and re-engages the Dutch door. A right leg that moves away from the discus continues the counterclockwise rotation of the entire unit under lower body control.
At the completion of this drill, the entire athlete — upper body, lower body, discus arm, implement — is moving counterclockwise in the direction of the throw, controlled entirely by the lower left side, along a vertical axis, with the ground setting the tempo.
The athlete did not slow down. The lower body simply cannot move as fast as an unconnected upper body can turn on its own. The Wind Connect, built on the vertical axis of the pelvic tilt, produced the patience — exactly where Babbitt observes it and Kipp measures it.
A FINAL THOUGHT ON PATIENCE
Kipp’s data tells us that Alekna’s world record throw had a longer entry phase than his rushed first throw. By 17 thousandths of a second.
That is an almost imperceptibly small difference in time that represented an enormous difference in movement organization.
The patience that produced those 17 thousandths of a second did not come from a coaching cue delivered on the day of competition. It came from a nervous system so thoroughly familiar with the sequence of the throw — and a movement structure built on a vertical axis, locked by a pelvic tilt, and governed from the ground up — that there was simply no mechanical opportunity to rush.
That is what the Wind Connect builds. Not a slower athlete. An athlete whose movement structure makes patience the path of least resistance.
We are building the neurological trust that eventually produces — without instruction, without conscious effort, and without a coaching cue — the patience that biomechanics can measure but coaching alone must create.
Next: Article 3 — Teaching “Leaving Room to Work With”: How Athletes Learn to Organize Space
Each article in this series will be accompanied by video demonstrations covering the key concepts, drills, and terminology discussed. Follow along on Instagram and at davidwollman.com as those videos become available.
Dave Wollman · Second Eye Consulting · davidwollman.com · Dallas, Texas
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