Quantifying the Right Pec Drill

[CatPredator]

Lesson one: where snap comes from (the aforementioned plyometric bounce)

if you get way forward into the [power] pocket in this position you won't even have to try to chop your elbow. the tension load on your wrist will be so high it will force everything to uncoil. if you build this feeling, you can gradually try to assist the powering of the uncoil, but i wouldn't try that until after you get a feel for it.

Lesson two: how it's applied to the disc (wrist extension at the apex of the hit)

the wrist will bend keeping your grip and pull fluid throughout...the difficult part that most people fail to do is opening the wrist completely at the end to release the disc and fling it out of the hand after the wrist extension takes place. the wrist can only open with a rapid re-direction of the forearm. which most people fail to do. it is not so much the wrist tension i would be worried about so much as wrist flexibility\fluidness at this time, considering timing is the main focus right now.

be only concerned about a violent twitch motion upon release, and "only" upon release, while keeping everything fluid in motion, focusing to reach the point of contact.

The thing is, the first lesson is harder for most people to understand than the second one, because without step one, there is no step two. People who pull early, the so-called strong armers, and even those with good body positions but no/little snap (these are maybe half-hitters? ~400' with a TB), just don't have a proper understanding of the biomechanics, or natural feel for it, so they miss step one and that makes step two impossible. You can't get good wrist extension without good tension in the arm unless you are a ridiculously gifted athlete.

You can even see it when top pros that throw bent elbow flub a shot. It's almost always because they fail to build the tension in the power pocket before they throw. You can see the flub coming before they even let the disc go and no amount of wrist extension can prevent it. Beto is sort of understating the difficulty of remaining "fluid" all the way to the hit and then using the whip/bounce/hand muscles to drive through the point of contact. That part is really counter intuitive to most people, and can be easily misconstrued as noodle arming your way through the shot.

[Porsche320]

My local club has a Sunday league I'm going to try, and I plan to go out early to work on some of these before the round.
Let me know if this sounds like a reasonable plan. I'm not going to try to learn x-step in one morning, so I'll focus on throwing with 1-step to hopefully develop a sense of timing. I'll start with right-pec drills, but for the round I want to use a reach-back. There are two things I can't quite visualize: (1) When should I start the pull? and (2) should I spin after the throw?
(1) With 1-step, will I reach-back, then step and pull simultaneously? Or will I step and reach-back simultaneously, and pull when the front foot touches? It is hard to tell from slow-motion x-step videos.
(2) If I only have 1-step of momentum, and I'm "punching" the shot, I don't think I'll have enough momentum to require the spin after the throw. I expect I'll only be facing in the direction of the throw naturally.

I feel like I'm trying to learn months of training overnight, but I really don't want to embarrass myself Sunday.

Thanks again JR, Cat and Beto for taking time to answer my kindergarten questions.

[anborn]

@Porshe - I'm treating this as a one step backwards (any change to your current technique will inevitably have a learning curve of some sort as it will feel completely foreign the first time you try it), for a two steps (or more) forwards type of progress.

will hopefully get to a field or a course on sunday to try it out.

[JR]

Cat i was referring to people thinking that there is only the passive extension of the wrist going on and probably something else as well.

I would not go into a event thinking i'm gonna step up the level of my play with one warm up session with a different form under my belt. Realistic expectations. If you don't gain a lot after one practice session please don't be discouraged. For most it takes months to change a single facet of form. Wrist snap the big snap kind is learned by a very small fraction of the players and it requires some muscle power in the forearm and the fingers.

The arm pull starts once the final step touches the ground. Am i right in thinking, that you mean a follow through step with the left leg after the disc has left the hand, when you ask about spinning? If so the answer depends on, how much power you are gonna use. And annies especially are gonna need a follow through step at lower power levels than flat and hyzered throws. While you can make do without a follow through step out to fairly long distances, it depends on your power, whether you should follow through or not. Note that not following through is rougher on your body, because you'll be twisting the joints quite a bit at higher powers levels.

If you learn to follow through at fairly low power levels to full power early on, you'll develop a smoother form, that won't suffer as much from jerking motions, when some body part reaches the limit of mobility. That in turn shows up in consistency and that will help in determining a good shot from a bad one. Which leads to easier diagnosing of the cause of errors. And hopefully faster learning. So i would definitely try to learn to follow through.

Quantifications for me? Half hitter. 400 usually with some 410-420' throws airborne and more with skips. TB record is 380' with a line drive. 94 KPH launch speed at best usually closer to 50 MPH. With gripping hard early in the throw 21 revolutions per second on the disc. Funnily enough i have had trouble keeping the left leg on the ground until the disc leaves with fast runs so i've actually lost speed vs a initially sneaking speed x step with no run up. Still these run up throws go the farthest for me. Go figure. Two fingered grip usually gives me most D for a few years in a row, but i seem to have lost explosiveness from the arm and late pinch timing and power with not throwing as much lately and i only managed 74 KPH with a two fingered grip. No matter if i gripped harder than normal earlier on or not. So i need to test a full force pinch early on too to see what is going on. I imagine short sessions without warming up is the culprit. My club has one hour sessions once a week indoors. I normally need 40 minutes or so to warm up and camera work and the need to watch out for others reduces the throw count so i never warm up fully in these sessions.

[Porsche320]

So, here's how it went down. No immediate gain in distance, but the throws were on average "better." I could effortlessly throw a decent, accurate shot, but when I tried to apply power, I didn't get great results. Before, I felt like I was hitting a stagnation point, but now I feel like I'm just getting started. Still tons of room to go, but I have a better understanding of what I should be trying to do.
I played much better than I expected to. I had realistic expectations, but went well past those.
Thanks again.

[anborn]

went and played a round at a local course sunday, went from having a stiff wrist, to more of a loose wrist/arm during my throw to try and get more whip/snap action. was spraying all over the place and didn't really figure out timing until #16. 16 and 18, felt smooth but the aim was off. gonna have to work on how hard to pinch and stopping my shoulders in line with my target. but on #17 crushed a drive that actually went where i wanted it, and it felt super smooth. gonna have to work on nose up issues now since my throwing style/motion changed a bit.

think i need to hit a field to just work on this stuff without worrying about playing.

[Porsche320]

Played a round today on a course I hadn't played in a while to see if I could beat my score. I was crunched for time (afternoon fundraiser - something worthy) so I skipped the warm-up, and any diagnostics. I simply played fast without worrying about or trying to correct poor throws.
I had a number of poor drives, and they all had a few things in common: They had a stronger rip out of my hand than my "normal" drives, and they all released a few degrees right of where I was aiming (RHBH), and they would rotate/bank to the right (in the understable direction) more than normal and never "come back" - they would keep turning right until it hit the ground and rolled in a circle. My better drives left with less rip and banked to the right less, and at the end of the flight would bank back left (overstable direction) and fade a bit.

I'll get some video as soon as I can, and I know it is impossible to make accurate suggestions without seeing, but I have to think this is a common problem. I was throwing DX Archangel and DX Leopard flat (no hyzer). My thoughts were that I was -for whatever reason- releasing too late, or possibly throwing harder. If I'm throwing harder, would throwing with a small hyzer help?

[UFO]

I am pretty much in the same boat and on a steep learning curve. Trying to acquire multiple discs in the same mold for practice - and in my mind I want to quantify or measure progress more accurately by doing so. I want to use the archangel for this but it doesnt come in good plastic so they will be breaking in and changing a bit but probably not enough to worry about. My dx leopard and star leopard are two different animals all together...maybe just a bunch of dx archangels is the cheap way to have 5 or so of the same disc. X out archangels are 5 bucks at gottagothrow btw.

[Porsche320]

For that exact reason, I was contemplating going to Roadrunner over Archangel. Then again, getting 3 X-outs for the price of a single champion is appealing; also, discs just for throwing practice should take negligible wear, so DX isn't such a liability. Another issue with X-outs is limited selection of disc weight, which I am just starting to think about.

Any input on this (and my drive problem above) from more experienced guys?
Thanks again, the direction is incredibly encouraging.

[JR]

Thwere was one very overstable run of DX Archangels at least. The understable ones are ones, i've never thrown, but from hearsay they aren't hard to overpower to turn as is the case for DX Leo. Especially beat ones of both. Yes hyzer flips to flat. If you make it to do so.

[UFO]

Backed down from Valks to Archangels and loving it. Just practiced with two archangels bkhand and two wraiths forehand and kept putting all 4 in a 20ish ft circle around 275' out, maybe 75 percent effort. Fun practice.

[Porsche320]

It worked out that I had a bit of time this morning, so I went out to my favorite soccer field to throw for around 25 minutes.
At 80% power, everything flew like it has been, but when I increased to 90% everything flew more understable. I think I'm finally starting to see differences in disc wear. The distance discs I've been using for a while, DX Eagle and DX archangel both turned over way too much thrown flat at 90%, and my lightly-worn DX Leo flew slightly understable, and near-new Champ Leo and new DX dragon flew pretty flat.
I started throwing hyzer on the understable stuff, with mixed results. With a slight hyzer, I got good flight, but I had trouble getting the angle right.
As a whole, average distance is going up, but I still can't break 300'
Would it make more sense to learn to throw these discs (which will evolve with wear), or get new versions of the DX stuff I have, and/or use only champ in the woods to stabilize the wear?
I feel like I answered a few questions this morning, but created a whole new set of questions.

[JR]

For monetary reasons and traveling to courses with rocks it is good to slow down the wear cycle by having a champion plastic version of the main discs. Except Rocs and other discs, that fly differently in champ and cost more than their worth.

[JHern]

...the difficult part that most people fail to do is opening the wrist completely at the end to release the disc and fling it out of the hand after the wrist extension takes place...

I think I fall into this category. I can throw 375' with no run up, but getting up to the 450' category has thus far escaped me...but I know I can get there, and I will eventually. Adding a run-up doesn't always help. When I watch video of myself, I can see that I'm missing something at the end of the throw, my arm doesn't feel the urge so much to follow through the hit. When I try to force my arm to follow through, it just feels forced, not like it is powering through the hit and out with violence. Put another way: I'm great at pausing the shoulder turn when they are neutral, which allows me to "half hit" it, but still terrible when it comes to cranking up the angular momentum again at the hit. I should probably just shut up, go back to the garage, and do right pec drills, until I get it.

...the wrist can only open with a rapid re-direction of the forearm. which most people fail to do...

By rapid re-direction, do you mean as part of the elbow chop, rotating the forearm from closed to open? Or do you mean a sudden sideways motion of the forearm just at the hit?

[MrScoopa]

Or maybe belly button drills.... No seriously.

The wrist cocks going into the "pocket", or the angle made by your bent elbow. As the elbow chops the disc goes from moving forward to sideways slinging it out. Yada yada you know all this.

The lower and later the pull the quicker the action becomes. The forward to sideways action.

I cannot get into the pocket at all with the disc positioned higher than my belly. If it is literally at my right pec I miss it. I think it has to do with the lengths of the different segments of the arm. My forearms are long.

So try pulling lower and see what your results are in the field. Hopefully more D with less effort!!!