Dan Pembroke on his Winter Training routines | Neuff Athletic Interview (Part 2)

[Music] do you find it's more about technique now than it was when you were younger or so you know are you doing more drills and such or is it similar i mean now i'm working with uh dave turner and he's got some he's based up in loughborough uh he's a brilliant coach up there and uh he definitely knows his stuff so um he's got lots of javelin drills that we go through just to make sure and yeah as the answer to the question is now technical ability is higher up on the agenda than the actual power because if you for attacking the technically great throw you've got less chance of getting injured and so yeah um this winter is going to be full of lots and lots of drills and uh getting the body so it's consistently growing well and um yeah and then making that javelin fly out there yeah yeah also with with these drills you learn to hit the javelin through the point as well and so all the energy is going straight forwards and knots got deflected through the uh through the javelin and hitting wind and all sort of all sorts of things like that it's really obvious when when we go and we've been to some thrones festivals this summer and you're standing to the side of the track on the 100 middle of 100 meters straight and you see the japanese flying out and it is so obvious to see where you've got a javelin that beautifully follows through the point and is its tail is in its own shadow if you will and then you've got some that kind of come out and fly like this and you're like wow but it it says so is there a particular trick or drill or technique to achieving that flight every time or is it you know how what would you work on to to hit it through the point i mean i'm not a coach uh as such and um you know i don't have the kind of that technical ability to be able to talk that through but i would say keeping the the point close to your head making sure it's not waving up or going out to the side it's a very important thing and also to keep your sight line of sight um relatively low and so that enables you to kind of pop the javelin up when you when you come down for the the plant um yeah and yeah i have to say that's it really i i don't really over think it too much when i when i'm throwing i i think because of all the drills and um such that we do in training these things come second nature and that's the way this should be done um but yeah i think drilling um certain exercises will help you do that and doing it over and over again so your body doesn't doesn't know what else to do except do those things that you've done in the drills yeah building up that muscle memory so that it just is yeah you just relax into it when it comes to putting it all together yeah and definitely as as a young pro i started very young i was 11 years old when i first started throwing javelin and we done a lot of a lot of drills then and i'm so glad that i did then and not kind of emphasize too much on um just competition you know and making sure that i'm doing all the right possible things to be able to get a good technique um from a young age because when you grow up with a good technique you have got less chance of getting injured obviously i say that and i got injured but it didn't go so well no but um yeah there was just a few things that went wrong yeah and uh i i've learned my lesson now and uh i'll make sure that i'm like we said before using all those physio exercises i used to neglect them quite a bit um and i think that's what kind of led me to get me and my injuries that's interesting so even focusing on those physio exercises that that strength and conditioning right from sort of the beginning of your javelin throwing is just crucially important and i suppose that's i was interested also to hear that you you know your winter includes loads of long running and things because i think maybe slightly less so with javelin than with the heavier throws but with throws we don't generally think of throwers as running and that sort of general fitness and yet of course you need to you need to have a really good level of general fitness in order to be able to throw it's not all just about your arms yeah i mean yeah but we we have that specific time so now i'm actually on a break i have like after competition season i have like three four weeks of a break and then we'll go straight into sort of like low weight exercises high repetition just to really condition the body and that works as a as a brilliant tool doing big functional exercises to all those muscles that i was telling you about all the small little connective muscles it gets all there moving right and you're doing things over and over again and so this is a a kind of uh a quick way of conditioning in the body and then you slowly get into heavier weights heavier weights um lesser reps you know as the as the winter season goes on and then towards the spring you're kind of then on like you know maximum weight um full intent of lifting a big olympic bar you know above your head and this all recruits all those muscles that you've been training from the um start of the winter to all fire together um so yeah yeah that's the way we do it it's yeah it's going well it's good yeah next year will be will be my first proper you know season off of back of a a very good winter um i've got all the help from the national lottery they're funding my sport um at the moment so i'm able to train full-time get the rest that i need um and do literally all the training that i want so next year we're uh we're aiming for the big one so we're going to see that world record fall next year are we ah i hope so i hope we're on this interview again next uh same time next year we're celebrating that wr yeah it's a date we'll uh we'll get the champagne ready definitely that's cool so um so you threw an ote uh competition javelin in tokyo um ote is not hugely well known in the uk and we're more accustomed to names like nordic and nemeth um and others so what is it about the ote that you like how did you find it um as in how did you come across the ote and obviously we now stock them but um you referring them before we stopped them so what is it about the ota that you like well the first thing that brought me to ote was um when i when i was like 15 to 16 years of age i was getting a bit of elbow trouble and this is before my big rupture in in 2012 but um i wanted a javelin that was kind of quite soft on the arm but didn't have too much vibrations um and like i said before my my dad is like a professor now in in javelin jabbing and he he uh he looked on the internet so much and researched so many different things and and led us to the ots and uh yeah they're made in america by a guy called dick held um so you know he makes some incredible javelins with low vibration and what that vibration does in the air if you have a javelin that vibrates when leaves your hand is creating more air space you know and and more and friction through the air so as soon as the ot's leave your hand they kind of have a little bit of give when you throw them so if you miss the point a little bit and when you miss the point it actually puts quite a lot of strain on the elbow so it flexes and lets your elbow recover a little bit but as soon as it leaves your hand it straightens up and stops vibrating and especially in the ote composite javelin which is a composition of um steel and um carbon you have the characteristics of carbon which carbon there is hardly any flex in the javelin at all but you also have the characteristics of the steel so it flexes and especially when you throw now you've got that um forgiveness of the the steel in the javelin and so if you miss the point it doesn't affect your elbow so much but as soon as it leaves your hands it goes pink and just straightened there's literally no vibration whatsoever so yeah you're creating a better flight path and it's um easier for the javelin to self-correct but even if it's not a composite all the otus have yeah they're i would say that they're the best at kind of the um um dampening of the vibrations for through the flight that's mario that's your reason that's really that's a very good reason in my senior career i've always always gravitated towards ots i mean the other javelins are good but my personal preference is that yeah and i think that that's part of it isn't it like the personal preference of finding a javelin that suits you um and obviously as you as you described that's they're a really top level javelin um yeah and you're looking for those characteristics but at the end of the day it's what feels comfortable in your hand and in you know with your throwing style so yeah i mean when you when you pick up uh javelins i've been throwing for quite a long time now and that you kind of like pick a javelin out and go oh god that thing wants to fly you know you you just have that intuition of saying right you know you know what's going to apply and you know what's kind of not for you and um yeah every time i pick an ot out i'm just like this thing's going remind me never to let you in our warehouse yeah keep the yeah so obviously for javelins you've got we've got like discs that you can put around the nose of the javelin to throw it into a net indoors there's also javelin balls and things like that what do you do over the winter do you throw indoors do you or do you do all your training outdoors what tools do you use um at the moment i live in hereford um and my kind of facilities that are that are available to me for specific javelin prayer and quite limited um so i do all my training outdoors um you know if it's snow sun or uh or it's raining um i'm kind of outdoors just put my waterproof song i'm out there but to be honest i kind of prefer that i kind of like being outside in the in the elements it makes you feel that kind of you're working that little bit extra harder um yeah so i do kind of minimum indoor throwing i if i do indoor throwing it will be with um sort of weighted balls against the wall to get that conditioning of my my arm shoulder elbow um but yeah i do i do i can't do jabbing throwing indoors unfortunately yeah so we're all just fingers toes everything crossed there's going to be no more lockdowns this winter um because i think javelins japanese throwers have it amongst well the throwers are the the worst hit i think in terms of training are they pole vaulters and the throwers are probably the worst hit because you can hardly go down to your local park and practice with javelin because you're gonna like kill someone's dog um but especially especially me being a visually impaired they can see the newspaper headlines now like yeah blind man spears dog in local park oh my god [Laughter] yeah that's true so what do you what do you do in lockdown like what's the if if it happens again let's cross everything that it doesn't but what are your plans if you can't get if you can't keep on the track um well over the the past lockdown it was um the people of hereford have just been so amazing you know like they've literally given me the keys to some um some facilities you know through the lockdown but i had a whole track myself you know through lockdown which is like yeah i can't believe it and um you know it's very outdoor open um you know open to the elements um so i've done all my training there and there's also a shipping container which i do all my training in so it's sort of like real kind of caveman stuff there's literally i just put like a torch in the corner and it's howling with wind and rain outside and i'm in this little chipping container just smashing metals against them like your own private gym yeah but it's very very rustic that is so cool that is really cool love her and also um the gym that i used to work at um which is uh the gb fitness center in contraryless um the owner there uh sonia kerry she she gave me the the permission to actually use the gym as well uh during lockdown which again like i had all the facilities open for me and that's just the warm heart of all the herefordians out there yeah and completely safe because you're the only one who's able to do that so wow that's amazing what i hope that does yeah it's the warmth of people isn't it it's really good yeah and man like the people of hereford i've only been living here for like two years and uh all of them are so supportive you know the people that i've met you know for my career and like when i came home from the paralympics my my whole street was out you know outside my house you know it's like 10 o'clock at night and they're all still there on a school night as well and um oh yeah it's just great they're all there cheering me on that's fantastic well yeah and hopefully following this your profile generally is gonna hugely increase um both you know because you deserve it and also brilliant you're gonna win win best beard award on the sunlight men's magazine that's what i'm going for that's the main target that is next year let's do it yeah never mind never mind the world record we'll just go for the beard that's such a good idea but it's just awesome to raise the profile of like parasport you know just to to show that there's no reason why anybody shouldn't access sport and you know there really is something for everybody and the benefits that it can give you and you know that's also just fantastic yeah i think powersport means something totally different to me than what it was in able-bodied um sport everybody was literally just all about the performance this is something totally different it's been given me the wings um to be able to you know go on to that extra extra level and and think differently about my uh my condition before before i got into powersport i always thought of my eyesight as something quite quite negative kind of kind of sunk it back into the backs of my brain and didn't really think about it too much and um as soon as i went for my first national classification the whole situation done like a 180 and you know i i went from thinking oh god you know my eyesight i wish it was better i wish it was better to i hope my eyesight is as bad as they say it is so i really like to do parasport and so it immediately got me started uh getting me thinking positively about my um eyesight and my condition and so i think that's what parasport is so powerful at doing it's about um kind of enabling people to start thinking positively and that you know it gets me back to my my other point if you have that one positive thing and if that positive thing is your disability there's incredible things that you can do and not only for yourself but like other people certainly going through the same thing as you being able to show them kind of pathway to start thinking differently about their disability and then you empower people to be come able beyond their dreams yeah and wouldn't it be great if when someone's googling like you know maybe their child has just been diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa and they're googling it and the first thing that comes up is not you know medical descriptions of the of the problems that you're going to face throughout your life but the first thing that comes up is dan pembroke smashes the paralympic record followed next year by the world record you know um and all of that positivity wouldn't that be great yeah yeah exactly i mean there is so many things you can do you know if you got given this diagnosis um just just recently you know yeah it's it's not the greatest thing in the world but there are so many things you can do and so many things available to you you know if you look go to um british blind sport go to their website or if you found that you wanted to get into athletics you know contact british british athletics there'll be open days and where you can go and try out different sports um and even if if it's not sport you know if it's anything that you you fancy doing if you if you have a hobby or something that you love to achieve it can give you so much empowerment and uh to realize that your your condition doesn't hold you back and if it's a degenerative condition like mine you know it's gonna get worse but that it's not worse right now so work with what you've got and if you keep working with what you've got it brings you back to the other point is you know you adapt you're always gonna adapt so in 10 years time when you're thinking about my eyesight's going to be that much worse well you're going to adapt to that point and it's up to you to be positive throughout that journey um so you adapt the best you possibly can and not just kind of hide yourself away and wrap yourself in cotton wall you need to go out there and experience it it's been awesome to talk to you thank you so much for your time it's been a complete pleasure congratulations again on the paralympic performance we look forward to seeing a lot more of you over the years to come and we shall continue to you know keep in touch and follow your journey um and yeah good luck for your winter season enjoy and we'll speak again soon thank you very much thanks for talking to me [Music]