cruzduck drives - take 3

[cruz duck]

I have spent the last two days working on the right pec drill. The first day I just tried to get comfortable with the drill, it started out feeling pretty awkward. The second day, I worked on getting my weight forward. I exaggerated it to make sure I got the weight shifted forward. It felt like I was lunging forward. Towards the end, I no longer felt like I was lunging. I am not sure if I just got used to the feeling or if I am not lunging as much. Towards the end, I tried to work on getting the disc to rip out of my hand. I felt like I made a little progress on this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTlIYO6f6xI

I have a few questions:

1) Am I doing the drill right? Looking at the video, I noticed that I am rotating my shoulders through the throw, I believe that mb keeps his shoulders still when doing the drill. Is my shoulder rotation a problem?

2) Am I getting my weight forward enough? too little, too much?

3) Can you see if I am getting the disc to rip out at the release? It felt like it was, but I am not sure.

4) Anything else I am doing wrong?

5) What other things should I be working on with the right pec drill? Maybe releasing the disc farther out?

Thanks for your help, I really appreciate it

<< edit >> - fixed link

[black udder]

links?

[JR]

About to go to sleep. Try to get more speed to the arm chopping the elbow straight. I've seen great results for myself and people I've taught face to face by having them to a drill like this: Note you need to be fully warmed up to avoid injury as this is gonna be a quick motion. Breathe in as deeply as you can then exhale almost fully with eyes closed to relax to sleeping state. You may need to do this twice for best results. Never mind the form and not holding a disc try to move your arm as fast as you can from moderate reach back to past the rip to follow through. Like you woke up twitching from a nightmare or suddenly hearing a beast attacking you from 3' to the right hitting it on the nose. Twitching speed like you touched something hot anything less is selling yourself short. Try to feel the arm speed and then compare to your current with disc throw.

Now you have a goal for muscle looseness and speed. The looser you are the faster the arm moves. Try to get as close as you can with a disc with first the right pec drill then a regular throw. Note that the arm moves the fastest when the grip is barely touching the rim not squeezing it at all and the arm muscles are as loose as possible until you tighten both just as the wrist is bout to start bending from the acceleration.

For the intention of this drill the timing isn't crucial and neither is the arm path. So it's a good early drill but realize that a real throw is dominated by both factors so you don't want this drill in memory. It can be good as a sensitizing and ensuring maximum acceleration of the arm exercise prior to throwing in the final stages of a warm up. Younger players like me can still need almost an hour of warming up and throwing to reach best speed. Don't expect young lad speeds that you may have witnessed on videos. There's probably not enough knowledge here about people of your age starting out to determine the best possible approach for arm speed emphasis in training. However; you can seriously improve in this area judging by my father who's older than you.

[black udder]

Only thing that really comes to mind is that you're throwing the disc. As soon as the disc is gone, your arm speed slows down. I'll use the board punch analogy again. In Karate, they punch to a spot beyond the board to break it. It's a similar principle here. You are accelerating your arm speed to a spot beyond when the disc rips out of your hand.

Instead of just trying to pull from that position, try imagining that you are elbowing somebody around the spot that would leave your elbow pointing toward the target. Once you hit that spot, you want to stop the elbow movement and chop your forearm out. Once that's swinging, move the shoulder and elbow again to allow for follow through. It sounds hard to do, but it's actually pretty natural. Just try it slow a few times so you don't hyper extend your elbow. It's not a complete stopage, just a brief stop to start the elbow moving.

You then want to keep that arm moving really fast to a point beyond when the disc rips out. Doesn't matter much what the disc does. The exercise is designed to help you with late acceleration muscle memory. Thus, when you do your walk up and normal reach back and pull, you don't pull until you get to this position, and then you're fast as a bullet

[Redisculous]

BU: The elbow stops because you havent moved your shoulders around yet right? Does your upper arm *almost* hit it's limit for it's range of motion?

[black udder]

BU: The elbow stops because you havent moved your shoulders around yet right? Does your upper arm *almost* hit it's limit for it's range of motion?

I'm still working on my timing, so I could be wrong here, but my understanding is that when you turn away, as you start to pivot your upper body, you pull into the right pec area and your shoulders are 90 degrees from the target. At that point, you start your pull and your elbow fires out and stops, your shoulders continue to rotate and your lower arm chops. As it's chopping, your shoulders are coming around so that as your arm straightens and the disc comes out, your body pulls your arm away and keeps you from hyper extending.

I've thrown and straightened my elbow. It hurts, not so much as to injure, but enough that I care not to repeat it.

I think the best way to see it is by watching Brad's slow motion videos. You can see it's so subtle. What you want to look for is how he picks up speed right as the disc comes into his chest.

Basically, what you want to do with the elbow is make sure that it's point out to your target before you pull. That way you harness more power. If you watch newer player's throws, you'll see that their elbow is past the target or way in front of the target when the disc is coming out.

[Redisculous]

Right, extending your forearm all the way = painful/bad. I was just wondering if when the disc got to your pec, if the elbow stopped because it couldn't go any further further, or if you put some effort into stopping it.

[Redisculous]

cruz duck, sorry to take this thread so far off topic. It looks to me like you are letting go of the disc. It feels really weird to not let go at first. Just don't grip it too hard at first until you are confident in the fact that it will come out on it's own, then work on getting that grip tighter.

If you are using putters I like to use a fan grip, or they really don't come out sometimes

[black udder]

Right, extending your forearm all the way = painful/bad. I was just wondering if when the disc got to your pec, if the elbow stopped because it couldn't go any further further, or if you put some effort into stopping it.

In Dan's video for working from the hit backwards, he shows that you want to try and get the disc past your right pec before you stop the elbow. I want to say he says something like the difference between chopping when the disc is at the right pec and after the right pec is like 50' or something.

I don't really think about stopping it, I try to get the disc into the right pec, let it glide a little further and then chop. It's all muddled up for me as I learn/modify my form. When I get it right, I can get 350' with my fairway drivers on demand. When I'm out of sync, it's closer to 300'.

[cruz duck]

JR: Thanks for your comments - I will try your drill. Yeah, I agree that I will never be as explosive as the young guns. However there is plenty of room for improvement. My expectation is that I can make some big improvements over the next week or so, then the improvements will come slowly. I expect that this is something I will be working on for a long time. I will concentrate the next week or so on quickness, after that I will still devote a portion of every training session to this. It will be interesting to see how much progress I can make.

black udder: good comments. This is kind of embarrassing. When I decided to do the right pec drill, I knew it was for late acceleration. Yet, when I got out on the field I worked on getting my weight forward. I completely spaced out on working on acceleration. sigh ...

I am thinking about starting my next drill with my shoulders stationary and my elbow pointing towards the target. This way my elbow will already be stopped. I will just try to swing my lower arm towards the basket as fast as possible. I will try to keep accelerating through the hit and then follow through with the elbow and the arm.

The second half of my next drill I will rotate my shoulders. This will allow me to practice thrusting the elbow out and then stopping the elbow and chopping the lower arm out.

Redisculous: No problem about the thread drift. That was an interesting and valuable discussion. I want to work on releasing the disc farther out from my body. I think the key to this is holding on to the disc as long as I can. I will also have to work on holding the disc more loosely. Hopefully this will lead to the disc ripping out of my hand.

Thanks again for the comments. I have casual rounds with my son and/or friends scheduled for the holiday weekend, but I will get back to the training sessions on Tuesday.

[JR]

That sounds like an awesome plan but you really need to do it long term. It takes a while to build up fast cells and to learn body control for such fast motions unless you're used to them.

[cruz duck]

I agree, I think this will be a long term project.

A week ago, when I started this training, I thought I could form a step-by-step plan. We would identify my flaws. I would drill on them one at a time and in a few weeks, I would be throwing 350 feet!

At this point, I have given up on any plan. Now I am treating it like an adventure trip. When my son was 8 or 9 years old, we went on a road trip. We did not have much of a plan. Every morning, we would get up and figure out what town we wanted to visit next. We would drive several hours to that town and spend the afternoon at a unique museum or park, maybe play some miniature golf, maybe go see a minor league baseball game. We did this every day for a week, wandering around Northern California and Southern Oregon with no particular plan in mind. I am thinking of this training in the same way.

I have a vague goal in mind (throw better). I know where I am today and I know what I want to work on in my next drill (right pec drill for late acceleration). I know that I am generally moving towards my goal, but I don't know how long it will take me to get there and I don't know what path I will be taking. Next week's plan all depends on where I am at the end of this week. I fully expect to hit some roadblocks along the way that require me to take an unexpected path or maybe even backtrack. I may reach a point, where I decide that I need to rest for awhile. I may take some time off and re-start my training later.

I have made my goal (throw better) purposely vague. It may mean throw farther, it may mean throw straighter, more consistently, it may mean throw the same distance with less effort. I am also fully aware that I may never reach my goal. But that is ok, I will have learned a lot. I have already learned a lot. Plus, I still have a 300+ foot forehand, so if my backhand does not improve much, that is not the end of the world.

Having said all of this, I will be disappointed if my throws are not longer. I am pretty confident that I will end up with a significantly better throw in the next few weeks. I am excited to see where I end up.

[black udder]

I'd suggest something specific distance-wise. For me, it was reaching a specific hole that's 350' (slightly uphill). I know when I throw to that hole exactly how I'm throwing, if I'm on, I reach it with my fairway drivers, if I'm off, I'm lucky to reach it with my distance drivers.

Along with my practice at throwing at that hole is accuracy. Both improve over time, but my original goal was to reach that hole with a drive and I can do that a fair amount of the time now.

With your training, the right pec drill is something you should get a good feel for in a weeks worth of practice - if you can get out 2-3 times. It's just to get the idea of *pulling* late. That way, when you reach back, you don't really pull hard until you reach that "muscle memory" position of the right pec drill.

Once you have a good feeling for pulling late, I'd try and focus on aim and stopping the elbow so the forearm chops. I'd use a bent elbow reachback (not completely bent, about 100 degrees open) to try and help the elbow stopping. Once you have that, work on getting a little tendon bounce in the wrist. You could work on this before or after the elbow stop.

Once you have all those, you're upper body should be working quite well, it should only be timing that's giving you any problems.

I think Dan did all that in a week of intense training, but maybe you could do it in a few months of less intense training. Lots of repetition is the key. For me, I have to do different days because my body won't hold up for 8 hours of throwing.

[cruz duck]

Thanks, I like the idea of having a specific hole as a goal. I think I know which hole I would like to pick.

I am not familiar with tendon bounce. Is that the same as wrist extension? What kind of drills are used for this?

I have always assumed that Dan's intense training was to get well past the 350 foot plateau. At this point, I am just trying to get to 350 feet. I am hoping that it will take considerably less time and effort to get to my goal.

[JR]

For more detailed answer about tendon bounce and snap try the search function. There's tons of stuff on that. Basically hard late acceleration with slight tension in wrist muscles forces the tendons in the forearm to stretch as you accelerate the arm hard late in the throw. Once the elbow straightens and the generated momentum shifts to opening the wrist from bent back to straight, or even right of straight, the tendons accelerate the opening of the wrist by shortening to their normal length. Adding speed and spin and in some cases over 50' to drive distance. Not so for me I think but I ain't a pro for number of reasons and this is one of them. I get some but not nearly all of it methinks.

The vids from this morning show a really low arm speed and even less power from rest of the body. I'd like to see if you ca get through enough equally good positions adding an x step kicking hard with the left leg, bending a bit more from the waist forward, twisting the hips quickly, turning the shoulders and most of all smashing that arm of yours. Kindergarten is over you've learned enough now it's time to imitate the big boys. Well after you've rested. How much faster is your completely relaxed non disc in the hand arm swing compared to the video from today? I hope it's a lot more faster because if it ain't you're gonna be achy from a lot of field practice for quite some time. I'm not sure if doubling the arm speed is enough for big D for your age. Could be though with great form and timing.