What makes Ryan Crouser — shot put’s world-beating giant — so good?

Ryan Crouser launched the farthest shot put throw in history last Saturday. 

The double Olympic champion rewrote his own world record, scripting a new mark of 23.38 metres at the Simplot Games in Idaho. The throw, at the indoor meet, beat his previous world record of 23.37m, set outdoors at the US Olympic Trials in Oregon in 2021, as well as his world indoor best of 22.82m, achieved earlier that year in Arkansas.

Last Saturday’s record throw comes a year after Crouser had a throw of an identical distance annulled. He thought he had broken his record by a centimetre last January at the Millrose Games but a faulty laser measurement device meant that the competition was cancelled.

Despite his dominance — the reigning world champion has registered eight of the 12 best marks in shot put history — Crouser was not expecting the record.

Big surprise

“The biggest surprise of my career so far,” he wrote on social media. “Wasn’t expecting a 23.38m today…Training this week was a bit frustrating, just struggling with feeling flat and a bit under the weather. Decided to take Thursday and Friday off. I’d never taken two rest days in a row before a meet until today, but figured it was better than overtraining. All I can say is that if things are rough, try to stay positive and you might surprise yourself!”

Crouser’s success, however, comes as no surprise — for, both nature and nurture contributed to an early immersion in sport. He was brought up in a family deeply embedded in athletics, especially in the throwing events. His father Mitch was an alternate on the discus team at the 1984 Los Angeles Games while his uncle Brian was a two-time Olympian in the javelin and cousin Sam represented the United States in the javelin at the 2016 Rio Olympics. 

It was in grandfather Larry’s backyard that young Ryan attempted his first toss with the heavy metal ball that would shape his life. His childhood throws were unpredictable — once, he lobbed the shot through the top of the garden shed and had to go back the next day and replace the roof.

Crouser almost went the route of the discus, much like his father. He competed in both events for a while, but got disenchanted with how the elements affected the distance the discus travelled. The shot put had no such problems. “No matter how windy, it’s not going to move a 16-pound sphere,” he said. “I like the consistency and repeatability of the numbers around the shot and not having to worry about, ‘Oh, I’m going to have the wind or not.’”

Crouser is athletically gifted. He is hard to miss at a track meet — and not just because of the wide-brimmed cowboy hat he often wears. He measures in at 6’7” and 145 kilograms, but carries that mass nimbly. He is explosively fast: his running burst out of a three-point stance compares favourably with the best athletes in American football, his coaches say. He ran track in school and was also a keen basketball player.

This all-round athleticism and exposure to other sports serve him well in the shot put, a point he made in the ‘Advice to my younger self’ series on the World Athletics website.

“You are right not to specialise too early,” Crouser wrote to his younger self. “Track and field produces a lot of repetitive movements whereas playing basketball is more reactive and teaches a broad array of movements. This will prove very helpful when you eventually specialise as a thrower because you will have a much better understanding of what your body can and can’t do.”

A student of the game

In addition to his physical gifts, Crouser also has a sharp, curious mind. A standout student, with an interest in maths and science, the 30-year-old has a master’s degree in finance. His deeply competitive spirit and do-it-yourself mindset combine to devise out-of-the-box solutions.

For instance, he built a training ring at his home in Arkansas during the coronavirus pandemic to ensure that he did not miss even a single day of practice. His homemade ring was constructed out of two sheets of plywood and screws bought from Home Depot. If he threw with too much force, the plywood had a tendency to slide. So it made him really concentrate on his footwork. 

Shot putters fashion themselves as part-time physics gurus, spending hours analysing their throws from multiple angles, hoping to eke out a few more centimetres. Crouser has taken this a step further, working as a volunteer assistant coach at the University of Arkansas.

The job requires him to know the nuances of his craft so he can better explain the process, which in turn benefits him. Some of his shot put pupils happened to be left-handed and to better teach them, Crouser worked on attempts as a southpaw. He could reach about 15.5m with the left; the knowledge he gained in reverse-engineering the method was just as satisfying.

Indeed, the time Crouser has devoted to understanding his craft is reflected in the analogy he uses to explain the difficulty of doing what he does. He asks people to imagine grabbing a 7.3kg bowling ball, heading to an open basketball court and attempting to chuck it from the free-throw line to the basket all the way at the other end!

“We’re strong and we move well and we’re generating a ton of force,” said Crouser. “It’s hard enough to make a three-quarter court shot, just to throw a basketball that far — now throw a bowling ball that far. That puts it in perspective.”

To maintain his strength, Crouser has an arduous training programme. He also eats — a lot. His 5,000-calorie-a-day diet consists of two loaded breakfast burritos, packed with bacon or sausage, in the morning, a pound of lean ground beef with rice, smothered in barbecue sauce, for lunch and then three of the four servings from a meal delivery service at night. And when he sets a new world record, he goes out for a “big, old double-double hamburger somewhere”.

Given Crouser’s record-breaking streak, the natural question that arises is: just how far might he be able to reach? He has been trialling a new technique, in keeping with his experimental, playful approach to constantly improving. It involves him shifting his starting point to the right and adding an extra step into the spin, designed to generate more rotational power.

Should the technique bed in suitably over the next few months, it will, in his estimation, offer a higher top end. Crouser has already taken the shot to places it has never been. There is no telling just where he might take it next.