Develop the complete athlete.
Great javelin throwers are built as complete athletes. Speed, power, strength, movement, coordination and technical skill develop together. We don’t treat the throw as something that exists in isolation.
About Us
Built from the field up.
We’re Maggie and Sam, and while javelin has taken us around the world, neither of our careers started with a clear path to the top.
In a lot of ways, that’s exactly why JVLN Performance exists.
The experience we’ve gained from our mistakes can be your strength.
Maggie
Learning what makes a breakthrough.
Maggie didn’t pick up a javelin until college. She grew up as a multi-sport athlete, and it wasn’t until a coach at the University of Nebraska recognized her potential as a thrower that her javelin career began.
What followed wasn’t a straight line. She went from throwing 177 feet to 203 feet in a single year. Then, after years competing internationally, she made another major breakthrough in 2021, jumping from 203 feet to a then-American record of 221 feet (67.40 m).
Those breakthroughs didn’t come from simply training harder. They came from asking better questions, surrounding herself with great coaches and athletes, trying different approaches, learning from mistakes, and working out which changes actually produced results.
- 3×Olympian
- NCAAChampion
- Record HolderOlympic Trials
- 221ft67.40 mPersonal best
Also: three Olympic Trials titles, a top-10 Olympic finish, Diamond League podiums, and more than a decade competing internationally.
Sam
From finding the event to understanding it.
After playing baseball for 12 years, Sam was cut from his high school team and found the javelin shortly afterward. With very little established javelin training around him, he began building much of his own training and became the top high school javelin thrower in the country his senior year.
In college, he threw 240 feet as a sophomore and 243 feet as a senior, but despite training incredibly hard, the big breakthrough he was chasing never came. Injuries and plateaus eventually exposed something he had not seen.
“I knew how to work hard. I had to learn where that work mattered most.”Sam Hardin
That realization sent him down a different path: studying the event more deeply, talking with some of the best current and former javelin throwers and coaches in the world, and working to understand not just what great throwers do, but why it works.
- FinalistOlympic Trials
- 1st TeamNCAA All-American
- 247ft75.18 mPersonal best
Together
Good coaching is a conversation.
That knowledge became even more powerful when our careers came together. Sam has coached Maggie through two Olympic Games and was part of the process behind her biggest career breakthrough in 2021. Together, we’ve spent years testing ideas in real training environments, competing at the highest level of the sport, learning from world-class coaches and athletes, and continuing to refine how we develop throwers.
We’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way. That may be one of the most valuable things we can offer you: we want to help athletes avoid spending years working incredibly hard on the wrong things.
We review your throw together, explain what we see, and listen to what you’re feeling. From there, we agree on useful cues and a clear practice focus. Your feedback helps shape what we do next.
Whether your next jump is from 100 feet to 130, 160 to 200, or 200 to 230, the challenge is often the same.
You have to identify what is actually holding you back, and then build the right training around it.
What We Believe
Understand the athlete. Build the plan.
Build around the individual.
We don’t believe there is one perfect technical model or one program that works for everyone. Your goals, experience, training environment and how you respond to the work all shape the plan.
Work with the people already in your corner.
With your permission, we collaborate with personal coaches, strength coaches and support teams. Our goal isn’t to replace what is already working. It’s to help connect the pieces.
We’re still curious, still learning, and still changing our minds when the evidence asks us to. That is part of the work, not the finish line.
The Coaches
Who you’ll work with.
You’ll work with an assigned lead coach, Maggie or Sam. Tell us if you have a preference. Both coaches do not automatically attend every call.
Maggie Malone-Hardin
Three-time Olympian and NCAA champion. Maggie knows the transitions from learning the event to collegiate and international competition, and brings that experience to helping athletes understand their work and prepare for the moments that matter to them.
Sam Hardin
Olympic javelin coach and former Texas A&M thrower. Sam brings experience on both sides of the coaching conversation, connecting technical understanding with physical preparation and the athlete’s own feedback.
Your goals matter. So does the person pursuing them.
We’ll take your ambitions seriously, keep asking questions, and work with you through the breakthroughs and the difficult days. Your results help us understand the training. They don’t define your value as a person.