"Volume Throwing" : Helpful or a waste of time?

Interesting thoughts.  Actually (volume throwing) is an idea shared by a minority of baseball people.

My first question would be how many times have you thrown the javelin in competition when you were totally fatigued?  Not speaking about training, but actual competition.

For instance, pitchers throwing 100 or more pitches trying to win a game, what would be comparable in javelin events?  How many javelin throws does it take to place first at an event?

Reason for asking, is I know very little about javelin throwing other than the athlete wants to throw it as far as possible.  Not sure how it relates to a baseball pitcher who uses power and deception along with some finesse at times.  Most pitchers will have three pitches and they are kind of stressful because there is a hitter in the batters box that wants to hit it harder than you are throwing it.

So other than somewhat the same type throwing motion minus the long run up in javelin I'm not sure we can compare the two.  The two major factors in arm injury involve fatigue and recovery time.  Still an interesting theory though.

BTW, congratulations on such an outstanding career.  Very amazing!

Interesting read and thanks for sharing.  Interested to see your responses to PG's questions above, and also wondering this: Do competitive javelin throwers commonly suffer from elbow and shoulder issues (at a similar rate to pitchers)?

I don't believe I have ever thrown "totally" fatigued.  Decathletes and Pentathletes do however, as they throw javelin on the second day of their events.    I have competed a few times with a body temperature of 102 and 103 degrees and feeling weak - not a good feeling at all...

At major competitions like the Olympics and World Championships you have a qualify round of up to 3 throws to qualify for the finals and then in the finals you get up to 6 throws total.  Qualifying and finals are one or two days apart.  

The hardest thing to do is to warm up and stay warm for a maximum all out effort throws with an implement that weighs  5 times more than a baseball.  The total amount of time it takes to complete a competition from beginning of warm up to the end of a competition can 3 to 4 hours or even longer!!!!

Javelin throwers do indeed have problems with their shoulders and elbows.  How it compares to baseball I could not really say.  I don't believe there are any numbers on that from the javelin side.  From personal observation over all the years I have competed on both side of the pond I would have to say European throwers have far less of a problem, which I is believe because we train with medicine balls early on and really learned how to use our entire body to throw an implement. In the US the amount of shoulder and elbow injuries is just ridiculous. I remember competing in a meet 4 years ago in Tuscon with all the top elite US throwers.  I threw a world age record, for a 49 year old, qualified for my 8th Olympic Trials in 2012 and won the competition!!!!!! After the competition it was like being in a battle field.  I was walking around feeling great, with nothing hurting drinking a beer and all the other throwers were lying around with bags of ice strapped to their shoulders, elbows, adductors and knees moaning and groaning .