Jacko Gill

Jacko Gill burst on to the world scene after winning the World Junior Championships in Moncton Canada. He was a skinny 15 year old from the small nation of New Zealand and by beating powerhouses from the United States at the time such as Nick Vena many eye brows were raised.

In the following years Jacko continued to amaze throwing 24.45m with the 5kg shot, over 20m with the senior weight shot whilst still 16 and capping off his junior career with 23.00 with the 6kg weight. After this some serious hype was placed around Jacko due to his blistering arm speed as well as his slim physique. To add to all of this excitement about the teen shot put prodigy he released a training video through his coach at the time’s (Didier Poppe) Youtube channel. This video featured some of his conditioning and weightlifting training. This can be seen below

As the years have passed and Jacko’s progression has slowed this excitement of the future shot putting prodigy seemed to die down. He has still had some great performances and distances.

23.00 – World U20 Record

20.70 7.26k as a 19 year old

8th at Beijing World Championships – 20.11 (20 years old)

The often criticism regarding Jacko is his focus on gym work compared throwing. Whilst being interviewed by the IAAF as a 17 year old Gill said

“I enjoy weight-lifting, power-lifting mainly, so will lift for around four hours a day, and throw only a couple of times per week. Running would be with Earl, just small jogs, nothing over 2km. My main passion would definitely be weight-lifting though, especially bench press. I like the challenge of trying to improve, and in weight-lifting you either make the lift or you don’t; there are no excuses.”

This idea of heavily focusing on weights is commonly associated with the often criticised USA methodology that over emphasises weights in order to throw far.

4 hours of gym work a day seems an awful lot for any athlete however placing this load on a 17 year old Shot Putter doesn’t seem the right way to go about training. First and primarily Jacko is a shot putter so by only throwing “a couple of times a week” and doing strength and conditioning work for 4 hours daily the balance does not seem correct, especially for a then junior thrower. Could this huge focus on strength and conditioning be the cause of only 37cm of improvement in the last 4 years?

It is also worth noting the fairly dramatic change of Jacko’s technqiue from his days as a 16 year old to his current throwing. He possessed a very natural and different style which worked perfectly for him which has currently transitioned into a more typical general technique. In the below videos you can see the differences

During the intial stages of this change of technique it was noted that Jacko had many sub par performances to his name the most notable of which was throwing below 21 metres with the 6kg at the 2013 New Zealand Junior Championships. There were many comments regarding this performances and if the miraculous days of Jacko were over. However, this warrior was not down and out.

The following season Jacko set a personal best of 20.70, his first improvement since 2012 and put his name back in the game again pledging to compete at his first senior international competition, the Commonwealth Games. At the games Gill made the final with a qualifying round throw of 19.54 however in the final only threw 18.05 which put him in 11th position. This poor result would not have made the 19 year old New Zealander happy at the time however the experience would help him for the following year in Beijing where he would make the top 8 as a 20 year old.

Jacko Gill has an interesting story and the road he follows will be extremely interesting for all to follow. At the end of the day Jacko has just celebrated his 21st birthday and has a long road ahead of himself to establish himself as a great shot putter. Only he can determine what his future will hold and we love to see everybody succeed.

Throwers Unite