Sam's Forehand and backhand

[zpitman135]

Sam is forehand dominant, but ive convinced him to start backhanding more. I need to clean up his footwork and weight shift for starters. Any tips on his forehand would be good too.

Backhand full speed:


Backhand Slow Mo:


Forehand full speed:


Forehand Slow Mo:

[seabas22]

BH is really flat footed, and needs to turn away more while delaying the pull.

FH is similar to Nathan with less wrist roll. Try an x-step or crow hop to help transfer weight properly and get more power through the hips.

[JR]

The same things FH as with Nathan except the arm didn't drop low and the wrist didn't roll. Sam landed with a stiffened left leg in the final step and too little pushing off of the ground with the right leg which left him weight back.

BH similar things to Zach. Sam is a very stiff guy torso wise in the throws. Is he a weight lifter or something that makes him naturally stiff? That is the exact opposite you should strive for in some areas of the body. You do need to maintain posture upright but he was so stiff that his hips and shoulders were hard locked into neutral position. That loses a huge amount of power. Before the disc leaves the hips have to have twisted to the right of neutral position and the shoulders even farther. Both angles need to change even more in the follow through.

He is the archetypal strong armer. It is good that he gets some bend in the elbow but it should be strengthened for a more forceful and faster snap by pushing the elbow out farther. He needs to realize that the arm alone is very weak compared to legs, torso and arm together. Because he is used to throwing hard with the arm it gets progressively more difficult to reprogram him from yanking at full speed with the arm from the get go the longer he waits. I'm speaking from personal experience here. The thing is that even with his good arm power it may not be enough to be able to accelerate hard enough until the end of the throw. To know for sure he needs to try out different arm acceleration points to see which gives him the most D.

He would get a lot more power by reaching back farther. In order to do that he should turn both feet a lot farther back. Up to pointing directly away from the target. The same goes for the arm reach back. When you get the arm pointing away from the target you maximize the distance the arm travels. That can increase the disc speed and will with proper acceleration point for your power.

He wasn't as flat footed as the other guys. The heel pivot does happen even though the ball of the foot is very little off of the ground. Too low to negotiate even a twig.

[zpitman135]

Well he is a football player so that may have something to do with it. Ive tried to get him to loosen up, but maybe he just needed to hear it from someone else than me. It looks to me like he is hitting decently, but im sure his strong arming is killing the snap and any possible wrist extension.

[JR]

He has enough arm power and speed to have some snap but even in half hitting domain he is lacking in the rest of the body. DG throw ain't weight lifting or smashing objects with a super heavy sledge hammer. The muscles will be taxed a lot in the last few inches of a toss when you get a good disc pivot and grip pinch the hell out of the disc but before that you should be pretty loose. The places where you do exert yourself are left leg push starting the throw, the right leg stiffening to brace for a while in after the plant to transfer the momentum to start the twist of the hips, hips twisting actively and wrestling the wrist down after the elbow starts to straighten out. Stiffness anywhere else should be hard enough to maintain posture and the angles of the disc and otherwise as loose as possible. That means that he is stiffer in more places than need be and all the time. Big time. It's not like he is trying to lift a new record in weights like he uses his muscles now. It's more like fuck what was that!!!??? turning around for your life when an oncoming train honks three feet from you and you instinctively turn as fast as possible to see what the threat is. That is instinctive. If you sneak up on him and crash two cymbals together behind him or ask him to remember how fast the twitch motion of being scared to hell for your life or removing the arm from something hot is those are the feelings in the muscles one needs to have much of the time in the throw. The muscles feel like they tense up only in the outer layers. Not through and through like in a weight lift. I imagine throwing a shot put ball or hammer throw hammer is so stressful that in those the muscles are taxed through and through.

In disc golf the discs are so light that the arms have enough power to move faster and force is mass times acceleration. Kinetic energy is half the mass multiplied with the velocity squared. In a real throw the longest flights come from as much velocity as possible combined with as much acceleration as possible without compromising speed at all. I can't say for sure if you need to sacrifice some acceleration to gain more speed vs the max acceleration you can muster. It probably depends on the thrower too. People have different speeds, strength and ratio of fast cells vs the fastest muscle cells. The automated twitch of the reflex of pulling away from a hot thing is faster than you can achieve consciously i think. One should strive for that kind of quickness to max out the acceleration. Try catching flies or gnats with stiff arm muscles. Then with loose muscles. Which one do you think will catch them? That illustrates the meaning and need of muscle control and not being stiff all over.