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Conditioning for the Throws
The goal of conditioning is to improve your athleticism (become quicker, faster, and stronger) so that you can throw farther. Each individual thrower may have different aspects of conditioning that are more or less developed than another thrower. COnditioning, along with technique, are the two main aspects that determine how far you throw. (Other factors include stature and psychological factors.
There are several dimensions to conditioning. The thrower needs to gain full-body, explosive strength. It is especially important to have good core integrity (abdominals, lower back, and torso), and it is also important to note that a majority of the force is generated by the hips. Core integrity means strength, range of motion, and flexibility. The core should be worked from all angles: back, ab, and side hyperextensions, and rotational torso.
The thrower has to have proportional strength through all of the overlapping sequence of joints involved in the throw. The action involves an overlapping progression of movements from the metatarsals, ankles, knees, hips, spine, shoulders, elbow, wrist, and fingers. An emphasis of full-body and multiple-joint weight exercises helps to balance the strength between muscle groups.
In other words, if a thrower spent too much time on calf raises (ankle joint) and leg extensions (knee joint), while neglecting the hip joint, he may develop pretty teardrop quads, but he won't be able to effectively apply his strength without the proper hip power. We want to avoid weak links in the chain of power. We may also focus on individual weaknesses.
Explosive strength vs. raw strength: Throwers, sprinters, and jumpers have to develop explosive strength, or speed strength. It matters little if you can bench 300 pounds if it takes you 4 seconds to do it. How is that going to help you move a 12-pound ball?
Neuromuscular adaptation: Beginning throwers sometimes have a bodybuilding conditioning mindset--that strengh training involves getting a "pump," getting sore, and training each muscle group once a week. A better approach is to think about neuromuscular training. When you are doing exercises, you want to think about recruiting all of your muscle fibers to fire in unison, or in proper succession. The body adapts by building the proper fast-twich muscle and nerve bundles during recovery. In order to do this, you have to train explosively; not necessarily with the maximum weight.
A quick synopsis of neuromuscular training will help explain what we are trying to achieve. There are voluntary and reflexive muscle contractions. The reflexive nerves protect the muscle from injury by blocking some of the fibers from contracting all at once.
We can do weight training to build the strengh in our muscles, tendons, bones, and ligaments, but there must also be neuromuscular adaptation in order to realize an improvement in performance.
For instance, the Golgi tendon organ (GTO) shuts down further muscle contraction if the muscle has been contracting hard. The proper training will raise the tolerance level of the GTO thus allowing greater force to be used to propel the implement.
Here is a good summary link: muscle contraction
Strides (60-80% over 40-100 meters); Strides can be a "load" (hard trining) or a recovery/warmup activity. Intervals (usually "150s" for the throwers" in an outside lane, start 10 meters out of the turn, run the full turn, then run out of the turn 10-20 meters. Alternate turn direction for symmetry. Walk easy 1 lap between intervals, full recovery (HR~100) before next interval. The turn means the athlete is constantly accelerating. Concentrate on relaxing, running form, leaning into the turn, find balanced, relaxed psition, and just drive each stride. Intervals are usually a load activity.
An important aspect to warming up is not only to get the body fluids flowing and get the muscles warmed, but also it is important to warm up the nervous system to prepare it to act in an explosive manner. Therefore, good warmup activities include fast agilities, some short strides, and even some explosive lifts with medium weight.
Not recommended (for warmup) are static hold-stretches like some distance runners do, or as some fitness instructors advise. These static stretches tend to disinhibit the Golgi tendon organ, which causes the muscles to "give out" at a lower threshold of stress. Pre-practice or pre-meet stretching causes the nervous system to be less explosive. It causes less of the fast-twich fibers to fire in unison.
Post-practice stretching is good, when you are sore, for those with a specific range of motion limit, and for growing athletes (high school and earlier). However, you only have to be as flexible to do the event. Therefore, the athlete can normally obtain the necessary flexibility by throwing.