Forehand Instructional

[spitfire]

Great video! My sidearm is not good at all so I avoid using that shot because my % of making a good shot is low. Sidearm is the biggest thing I want to improve this year and your video will help a lot. Thanks for posting it.

[ChrisWoj]

Chris: I would like to thank you profusely for your forehand instructional. I have been using forehand for short approach shots, but as soon as I tried to put any power into it my technique would fall apart. Your video provided such a clear description that I have been able to improve my forehand considerably.

At the ice bowl last weekend, I managed to squeeze a forehand or two down some tightly wooded fairways. Today on the practice field I managed a few forehand drives to 240’, which is probably 40’ further than I was able to throw a week ago. While a 240’ flick isn’t much to brag on, it opens up a lot of useful options that were previously unavailable. Needless to say, I’m pretty encouraged to continue working on forehand drives, especially since my backhand distance isn’t much to brag on, either.

Thanks again, Chris!

Awesome! I love hearing stuff like that, I'm really glad it helped. I hope I can get out and do some more professional videos in a field sometime with a decent camera. Hopefully I'll be able to demonstrate and help even more at that point.

Great video! My sidearm is not good at all so I avoid using that shot because my % of making a good shot is low. Sidearm is the biggest thing I want to improve this year and your video will help a lot. Thanks for posting it.

Just remember to break it down, start short, and slowly increase distance. Keep your form solid and the confidence controlling it for more power will come.

[JHern]

Chris, I don't know if you've come across this past thread...

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=10739

Its a bit old and musty-smelling now, but maybe it would be fun to bring it back out here, dust it off, and keep it going. The idea was to keep editing the list until it became more or less authoritative/comprehensive, and be a good resource for players to learn from (and much better than what is out there now), but it never really got to that point because most of us weren't expert enough to take it up another notch. I bet you could help a lot.

[ChrisWoj]

Its late now, but I'll be sure to look it over more than the skim I've given it thus far. It is interesting, for sure. Really I wish I could see the completion of what I wanted to begin last year on wikipedia.org to be honest. No one on the PDGA DISCussion boards took me up on helping so I kinda wound up letting it fail myself... I posted up full USADGC and USDGC results on there, with some information. I wanted to get pages up on all the top pros - more extensive stuff on the game itself - pages on various throwing styles.... etc.

[JHern]

I'm a night owl, though I have time zone to my advantage.

-Tell me what you think, and I would love to move that list of fundamentals to the next level with your help. Maybe others could add more as well.

-Tell us about your wikipedia stuff. DGR is a better venue to air this: more feral, more vigorous, more active...PDGA seems milk-toast in comparison to DGR.

[Monocacy]

Chris, I was wondering if you (or anyone) can describe the forehand follow-through, particularly with the feet and legs. I am asking because I injured my hip throwing forehand a couple of weeks ago. I was playing a round in the snow, and on the fifth hole (so I was warmed up), my left (plant) hip went “twang!” when I drove forehand. Seems to be “iliotibial band syndrome”, where a muscle sheath catches as it passes over the knob of the hip joint. Hurt like a mofo, but apparently will be good as new after a couple of weeks of rest and Advil.

I think the cause of the injury is that my plant foot was too planted, concentrating the twisting forces on the left hip. Here is my question: how do you avoid stressing the plant leg hip joint when throwing forehand? Do you pivot on your plant foot? If so, do you pivot on your heel, or on the ball of the foot?

Any advice will be greatly welcomed.

Also, I watched the video again, and if I can throw forehand again without hurting myself, I think I see how to eliminate a bit of unintentional wrist roll-over in my throw.

[superdrive]

This and maxing out 300ft thread made me think about my FH form. I figured that it was all arm. I could throw FB 75-80m and when it came down it pretty much died. Added x-steps and lowered pull line: 10m more distance and huge increase in spin. I don't even know how far the D stuff goes. Will post vid for critique later...

[JR]

You definitely need to pivot just like BH when running with FH.

[Monocacy]

You definitely need to pivot just like BH when running with FH.

Thank you, JR. My follow-up question is how do most folks do their FH pivot – on the heel, on the ball of the foot, or some combination? Unfortunately, with the record-breaking snows around here, opportunities to practice anything beyond putting have been extremely limited.

My putting is getting much better, though, but that’s another thread.

[JR]

The nice thing about FH is the limited space that is needed to train it. Many indoors venues allow for it as long as you don't have a disc in your hand. Just look at the dorm room in the original post linked video. You can also check the Discraft video on forehands and Mark Ellis here is our resident FH expert.

I think most use ball of the foot pivot. The benefit is naturalness of motion when the plant step is short enough. An additional bonus is stability. Pivoting on the heel is like trying to balance on a ball. Because essentially you need to have a fairly straight knee with a long step to cleanly and safely pivot on the heel and at that point the heel is not as wide and rounder than the ball (irony at the wording in English) of the foot. When you're balancing in the late stages of the throw and follow through you don't want to slip or burrow into soft soil to twist you away from the target and changing nose and hyzer angle. Which moves easier a wide flat part or thinner rounder part of the foot?

Not getting too long of a plant step protects the ankle and knee and to some extent hip to thigh joint.

[Monocacy]

Thank you, JR, I will try your suggestions. It looked like Chris took a pretty long, low stride in his video. Emulating this long stride does add power to my throw, but to avoid injury it looks like I need to find an alternate power source.

I will try shortening the stride a bit and staying on the ball of my foot.

[JR]

People are different and the more power you have in the legs and hips the safer it is to take longer steps. You have to test out the optimum for yourself. Often times what feels the most natural and least constrained is the best way. Because you don't need to load and unload legs like you do with the arm. Although you can load and unload the hips with proper timing giving even better addition to power generation. Hips are loaded by reaching back farthest as the plant step lands. But that is more applicable to BH although it's not inconsequential in FH.

[Monocacy]

Pivoting on the ball of the foot seems to be working, so thanks for the advice. I played three rounds this weekend with lots of practice throws, and the hip feels fine. I will be trying out different ways to use my legs to power the forehand, and see what works.

Forehand distance and accuracy are gaining on my backhand, even though I can still see the disc wobbling on some forehand throws. Throwing Valkyries forehand did enable me to score two birdies on holes that I had never birdied before.

[patdabunny]

That depends entirely on the purpose of the forehand. If you want short and accurate forehands you adjust that closer to the center of the disc. Longer shots require the additional leverage of throwing through the far point on the disc.

What exactly does it mean to "throw through the far point on the disc"? I understand Bradley's thought on the hammer concept in throwing the weight opposite the grip. Do you want to get the point opposite your grip as far back as you can in order to get the maximum spin and snap? That's what I don't understand--how to maximize the leverage you get. If you could please explain this, I'd appreciate it.

I throw both BH and FH pretty equally, both to about 350', BH more accurate at max D, but FH more accurate under 300'.

Today I was practicing using Buzzzes and started using a form like Avery Jenkins' versus just a walk up. This constituted holding the disc perpendicular to the ground, bringing it down and around for the "wind up," and then bang. I was consistently throwing buzzzes with only slight R to L fade, and getting close to 300'. I'm looking forward to using the finger technique Chris mentioned in his video to getting a little more spin and speed. I'm also looking forward to using drivers with this. Hopefully I can break 400'. My goal is to break 400' consistenly both BH and FH.

Thanks!

Daniel