i'm sort of here sort of...

[Blake_T]

had a local player ask me to chime in on here a bit. i don't have a ton of time for it but if there's any specific threads etc. people want clarification on post a link here and i'll see.

just try not to link to something i've already answered 500x in the past, that's the kinda thing that burns me out

[rusch_bag]

How's life?

[Whiz]

I am with Rusch. How is life treating you with the GF and kid? Hope you are doing well and stick to doing that which gives you more energy and excitement the more you do it...whatever that may be. Disc golf for many on here, not for others.

-Paul

[Whiz]

One quick question...yes or no will work i think. I was practicing and messing with moving my plant step to the right and I found I was gaining more distance if instead of just focusing on opening the hips I focused on bringing my left hip (RHBH) through the throw quickly. Should an explosive hip opening be focused around the left side of the hip rather than the hips generally? I am sure many people could answer this and you can just leave it alone if you like.

-Paul

[JR]

Christian Sandström showed in a video that he takes equidistant equally much body rotating steps going into the x step, then planting and pivoting the right leg then stepping through with the left leg. To manage that with the best speed the plant step needs to be correct length meaning not too long or short to jam the right hip joint by asking more motion out of it than it has a motion range of. The same is true of aligning the plant position sideways with the direction of the tun up and x step. The left hip needs to move a lot to have your torso facing 90 degrees to the right of the target after the follow through like Christian showed. This ensures that you do have a follow through. Not having one saps a lot of power. So you may have gained elsewhere than you think if your follow through has been lacking. That does not mean that you also wouldn't turn the hips more explosively which you should absolutely do. Whatever gets you to do it the fastest you can manage is fine. A lot of power comes from the hips. It's among the most important things to do in a throw.

[Iman522]

If you have time I would be kinda curious about a question I posted in the Roller thread http://www.discgolfreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=16562&p=317971#p317971 (I sure hope it hasn't been answered thousands of times but I couldn't find it anywhere )

Hope everything working out for you. Glad to have you back...well sort of

[Jeronimo]

Dude. Whar ya been?

[zj1002]

JR and myself hashed out some new ideas about the so called "Trigger Pull Grip". I would be curious to know your thoughts on the thread and if you have ever worked with something like this in your drills. Would be curious to see if you think this is a worthwhile drill or if it will have any long term negative effects to a throw

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=19767&hilit=trigger+pull

[Blake_T]

been busy with life stuff. went through some car issues followed by some kid troubles that led to housing difficulties. overall things are going okay now that i've finally finished selling off most of the crap i had in the garage sale section. turned 5 tv's into 3 bigger tv's sold video games to pay for a window, etc.

Whiz: don't put too much emphasis on the hips. it does happen in 2 stages, first with a rotate in and second with a rotate out. the second rotation shouldn't really happen until the disc is leaving/just left and it's pretty abrupt. but, i'll put it this way: if your goal is to really throw far, you're looking at the wrong stuff right now. if you are wanting to go from 450' to 520', improving hip mechanics can do a lot here, if you are wanting to go from 350' to 450', it's not what you are looking for. i would say work on developing snap and then worrying about hips after you have the snap. i know this is a non-answer, but honestly, hips usually make up like 10% of throwing power.

Iman: i'll post a reply there.

zj: i've never really worked much with it, so i don't really have any comments.

[Whiz]

Thank you for your reply Blake. I have been working on my snap quite a bit. I was motivated to get out and practice today by Masterbeato telling me how bad the weather is in Minnesota compared to our (cold for here) weather in Charlotte. I have been working on the hammer drill and feel like it is benefiting me. I am trying to isolate the snap by throwing with either just the index and thumb pressure or a fork grip with nearly exclusive thumb and index pressure. The only issue I have been having...and maybe this is not important...is feeling the pressure of the disc against the palm of my hand. I am going from around the right pec position with the disc curled in and focusing primarily on wrist movement. Should I focus more on arm speed than active wrist opening? I feel that I am opening my wrist all the way but am not leveraging the disc correctly. I am trying to focus on the feel of the weight of the disc as I believe this to be of importance in the drill. Should I be focusing on something else or am I just not giving the drill enough time? If you feel you have already answered this elsewhere I can certainly look through your other posts and if you choose not to answer this question I will take that as my answer . I am maxing around 380 with PDs so maybe this should not be my focus at the moment.

[Blake_T]

it's a flow. you have too much crap swirling around. timing trumps EVERYTHING.

drop the disc and get like a 12" dowel rod or a ruler or something like that (a ruler may even work better).

two useful things to do with it:
1 - learn to "cut air." if you try to snap the rod you will get one of two types of sounds. A) a slow "swooooosh." B) an abrupt "pffft."
B is good. A is bad. i find this is more clear cut for most people than the towel drill.

2 - throw it and focus on the feel and wrist break. if you are a sharp enough tack to be able to differentiate between what a good dowel rod throw and a bad dowel rod throw are... (one flies fast and on target, the other flies like shiz) throw it a few times and feel the leverage as you bring things through*. pay attention to where the rod is pointing before it leaves your hand on the good throws. that is the position you must hit to get a good, accurate throw with a disc.

right now you are focusing on a ton of unimportant stuff. there is a lot less body responsible for the throw than most people think. this past year i was basically holding a roc like 1' below my chin and using no legs or upper body rotation and throwing them 325' from a standstill with laserbeam accuracy (yes, basically strong-arming it). when i added all that other crap into the mix it added like 25' to my throw. big whoop.

you want to feel how to sling a disc it's the same as slinging a ruler/rod. actually, it's very similar to throwing an aerobie ring as well.

*what you are actually doing is accelerating the end of the rod along a golden spiral. if you are familiar with angular velocity concepts (e.g. the outer edge of a record is spinning way the f faster than the inner edge) accelerating the rod on along an increasing radius will yield an angular velocity that is waaaaaaaaay faster than any kind of arm speed you could generate.

[Iman522]

Blake ur awesome. Thanks for the reply.

I might have to try this dowel rod snap thing. It sounds very interesting...

[Blake_T]

the primary thing for the dowel rod snap thing is for people to actually do it.

i post all kinds of incredibly useful tricks for developing stuff and people rarely do it but then ask questions that they could have answered on their own had they done it.

if you do the dowel rod, pay close attention to how late in the motion that final "lever" feeling happens. that is the second half that creates a "full hit."

[Itchy]

Is it bad to throw a lot of understable discs? I have quite a few that I use for anneys and I have a buddy I play with who always tells me to just get a better sidearm and quit throwing BH anneys and get ride of my understable discs because they hurt my form. I thought throwing understable discs helped improve your form because they show more flaws and let you know when you had a bad throw?

I am working on my forehand, but thought I'd read that understable discs are good for field work.

[Blake_T]

depends on your interpretation of understable. for the reasons your buddy is citing, that's wrong.

if your expectation of a disc is to have 0 fade, that's bad as well.

keep in mind he's right to the extent that you should have at least a passable sidearm.

also, you should be able to throw both anhyzers and turnover shots and not only 1 or the other.

you should be able to throw understable and be able to know when understable is bad/low percentage.