"Simple Keys" to Disc Golf

[iacas]

I'll admit that this is a little beyond my expertise, but here's my 2 cents (and I'll be done). It sounded like you were asking for fundamentals of the game.

I might define "fundamentals" a bit differently. The grip is fundamental in golf, for example (as it is in disc golf, because you NEED a grip to play golf or disc golf), but as in disc golf, there are a variety of grips used on the PGA Tour. They all work, and they all work differently, so there's no real commonality there. So "grip" in golf is a "fundamental" but it's not a commonality. Same is true of posture (some have straight backs, some slump over), alignment (PGA Tour players aim left, right, etc.), and a few other things. No commonality rules them out as a "Key".

The biggest problem that new players face is learning to control angles. Nose down, flat releases are nearly impossible for a new player to hit for some reason because they lack the muscle memory and the technique. So while the concept is simplified, I still think a key to disc golf is learning how your body controls those angles. It sounds like what you are looking for is beyond beginners basics. Hats off to you for this undertaking. I think it will only help the sport.

Right, but at the same time, "Controlled Disc Axis" (nose and wing angles rolled into one) is even more general. If you can improve your "Control" of the "Disc Axis" then you'll improve.

You could look at my thread on the "other" forum. I think it has the same title. There are some more thoughts over there and quite honestly I probably think I've said things here that I actually said over there.

Edit - just saw your humble exit. I say keep at it. If you can give us more of a specific guideline in what you are talking about, I bet you could land on something useful.

I'm trying! It's tough because I'm also trying to avoid giving examples in golf that might not make sense to someone who hasn't studied the golf swing in depth.

Here's what I have right now:
Key #2 - Weight Forward (which covers not only getting your weight forward, but HOW to get your weight forward properly within acceptable patterns, sequences, etc. Measurements could be done visually (video tape) or with pressure plates.).
Key #4 - Perpendicular Axis Torque ("on axis torque" - or torque perpendicular to the axis on which the disc is thrown, resulting in pure linear/rotational speed. Measurements could be done visually by observing wobble.).
Key #5 - Controlled Disc Axis (putting the disc on the angles on which you intend to throw it near the end of the reach-back and delivering it on the desired angles at the release. Measurements can be done visually by noting release angle(s) and the flight of the disc.).

I left the numbering similar to the 5SK we have for golf, but really there may be four or six or seven or who knows how many in disc golf. I'm pretty comfortable with those three for now, though.

[Ryen91]

I see what you are saying now. It makes sense that you can't break it down too simple so you can allow for variance in anatomy and even preference.

Yes, and that was put better than I've managed to do so far.

But my point overall wasn't the exact length of your follow-through, nor the specific anatomical components (beyond basic shoulder alignments), but the fact that hyzers have different follow-through than anhyzer. I didn't know this when I started to work on my form, and once saw a player throw and noticed his follow-through where his right arm finished much higher than his left. I thought "THAT must be why his throws are so good!" and I naively mimicked this motion for a few weeks before a friend corrected me...and I was wondering why my shots were all over the place. I never put 2 and 2 together: shoulder alignment = angle of release.

That make sense?

I'll admit that this is a little beyond my expertise, but here's my 2 cents (and I'll be done). It sounded like you were asking for fundamentals of the game. The biggest problem that new players face is learning to control angles. Nose down, flat releases are nearly impossible for a new player to hit for some reason because they lack the muscle memory and the technique. So while the concept is simplified, I still think a key to disc golf is learning how your body controls those angles. I know that what actually matters is the angle of the disc, but how do you control that angle if your body doesn't know how to go through a proper throwing motion to produce a correct angle of release? It sounds like what you are looking for is beyond beginners basics. Hats off to you for this undertaking. I think it will only help the sport.

Edit - just saw your humble exit. I say keep at it. If you can give us more of a specific guideline in what you are talking about, I bet you could land on something useful.

ACTUALLY it was very easy for me to hit these points once I got proper advice....then again im very athletic Play semi pro sports so I take direction very well Ive learned that the bigger the plant step the higher the trajectory for me because it take longer for my body weight to shift forward the shorter the plant step the lower the trajectory it is very easy to take advice. nose down isnt hard and every time it flares up just from one day of throwing like 100 disc I know exactly what I did wrong and fix it the very next throw

[Fightingthetide]

Your patient persistence is paying off. I am starting to see the light.

If you actually come up with this program, I want in. Those keys that you have listed are exactly what I have been wondering. I just never defined them as you have.

[iacas]

Your patient persistence is paying off. I am starting to see the light.

If you actually come up with this program, I want in. Those keys that you have listed are exactly what I have been wondering. I just never defined them as you have.

To be clear, I currently probably rate somewhere between "completely suck" and "almost completely suck" at disc golf. I'm around a +1 at golf (would be lower if I had more time to actually play - you don't get into the golf industry if you want to play golf, though). I'm no instructor, and I'm certain that seabas, Blake, and 100 other people are all better dg instructors on their worst days than I am on my best.

But I enjoy analysis of form, I enjoy this approach to instruction, etc. I tend to employ it in everything I do, from teaching my kid softball (what are the true commonalities of the game's best fielders? Hitters?) or soccer (though when I taught her and her friends at age 5 just getting them not to clump around the ball was a victory ), etc.

If we can come up with "Keys" and define and narrow them down and so on, I won't "own" them - they'll be collaboratively and community owned. And the name "5 Simple Keys®" is a registered trademark of the system for which I'm Director of Instructor Development, so we won't be calling it that.

Thanks.

[Fightingthetide]

I hear ya. Regardless of what it's called, I think it's a great idea and in some ways could help further the past research and efforts done in disc golf. I'll leave it up to those who know how to teach this sport on a technical level. This is above my pay-grade

[keltik]

I think we need to lock Blake, JR, and iacas in a mountain cabin for the winter and see what they hash out by next spring. I'll also take bets as to who gets killed first.

[Ryen91]

i SAY THEY all die to an explosion of the cabin november 25th by 2 (looks in my closet) no 3 and half sticks of dynamite at exactly 3 pm and I will be bet 10000 dollars on that .....what are my odds of being exactly right I say you should give me 20 to 1 LOL

[iacas]

I think we need to lock Blake, JR, and iacas in a mountain cabin for the winter and see what they hash out by next spring. I'll also take bets as to who gets killed first.

I'd do it. Let me check my calendar. Hmmm... It appears my first free winter is 2047. If we could do a half-winter, though, I can squeeze it in Dec-Jan 2042.

I do appreciate all of the conversation. Thank you very much.

In golf though we have 5 Simple Keys, they're each, when broken down, fairly intricate and they leave plenty of room for the individual quirks or "personality" of each person's golf swing. Nick Price (and I) have a fairly fast tempo golfing, while someone like Fred Couples has a slow tempo. But Nick Price and Fred Couples were both major winners and top ranked golfers because of the things they did have in common - absolute control over 5SK - while finding a tempo that suited them, and even fairly big differences in parts of their golf swing (their backswings are quite different, their posture, follow-throughs, etc.).

Students like 5SK in golf because they realize they only have to do five things (and many already do one or two) to get better. It clarifies things for them, and simplifies things.

Anyway... I'd be killed first, even if it's by offing myself because I'd be without Internet access for too long. Though by 2042 maybe we'll have neural Internet or something.

[JR]

I have a guess about the reason why you're doing this and my advice is to keep at it. Don't give up because there are yahoos in the other place don't condemn us based on what they are doing. You are asking so much that answering would entail a books worth of info. Most if not all disc golfers are shocked to see their throws in slow motion because they thought they were doing one thing and then they see what they are really doing. Disc golf is really cool and so are many people in it. Here is some slow motion pivoting from a video that two nobodies made with a world champion with two 3x world champions as spotters and crowd controllers:

So with these kind of people in the game how can you go wrong? So keep at it and i'll reply to some of your points later i got cold from throwing today and am getting shivers. By the way check out the other vids from the same channel and the channel citysmasher1 for Bradley explaining many things well.

Finnish winter is long so you'd get a much longer time window to arrange the schedule

the most given advice here revolves around the most important things all the best players have in common. So we're right with you with the keys and Blake has preached that probably from when this site was created and most seem to have benefited from it so we sure get where you're coming from. There's a video on Youtube with Christian Sandström, the Jenkins siblings and Nate Doss visiting the Swedish top athlete studying center with all sorts of measurements. Avery and Dave did blue suite measurements when they were at the university of Oregon but i don't know about release of the data. Mister Carlsen from Norway did his thesis of top Norwegian players driving and he measured them with 8 computer controlled 280 FPS cameras IIRC. I translated the most important parts in:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4019&hilit=thesis

Unfortunately that site doesn't have the thesis any more and i don't know where else Mr. Carlsen released it later. He reads the Norwegian disc golf association site if you need to contact him.

[iacas]

I have a guess about the reason why you're doing this and my advice is to keep at it. Don't give up because there are yahoos in the other place don't condemn us based on what they are doing.

Primarily:

1. I'm stuck at home in a chair (doing work) and mildly obsessed with DG, so this is about all I can do to satisfy that right now.
2. My mind works like this. I like to boil things down to the true essentials, leaving room for "personality," and it helps fine-tune my practice and get results the fastest.
3. I'm always reading things like The Talent Code, etc. and find that this way of approaching problems fits in well with that.
4. I'm a golf instructor, and I'm passionate about that, so thinking about other problems improves my skills as an instructor.
5. I hate sucking at things.

The "other" site has actually been pretty decent in this discussion. It might be a bit too high-brow (and believe me, that's a pretty low bar) for many of the "lesser" elements to have joined in, if you know what I mean.

You are asking so much that answering would entail a books worth of info. Most if not all disc golfers are shocked to see their throws in slow motion because they thought they were doing one thing and then they see what they are really doing. Disc golf is really cool and so are many people in it. Here is some slow motion pivoting from a video that two nobodies made with a world champion with two 3x world champions as spotters and crowd controllers.

I've got that video on my desktop right now, actually. And this image, which I just made earlier today:
http://f.cl.ly/items/302U0Q2d1L1t073d25 ... terick.jpg

So with these kind of people in the game how can you go wrong? So keep at it and i'll reply to some of your points later i got cold from throwing today and am getting shivers. By the way check out the other vids from the same channel and the channel citysmasher1 for Bradley explaining many things well.

Thanks. I will do that (eventually... as much as I want to not work, you know how it goes... ).

the most given advice here revolves around the most important things all the best players have in common. So we're right with you with the keys and Blake has preached that probably from when this site was created and most seem to have benefited from it so we sure get where you're coming from.

Thanks. I didn't want to shut out the thoughts on the "visual" thing Blake mentioned earlier. I'm not sure what he meant. With a full reach-back players aren't looking at the target the whole time, so that's not what he meant. I'm hoping he comes back and shares some thoughts on that. I don't know what it is. Maybe it's almost the same as "Steady Head" in the golf 5SK - maintaining a constant head height or something. I'm hoping to hear more about it.

There's a video on Youtube with Christian Sandström, the Jenkins siblings and Nate Doss visiting the Swedish top athlete studying center with all sorts of measurements. Avery and Dave did blue suite measurements when they were at the university of Oregon but i don't know about release of the data. Mister Carlsen from Norway did his thesis of top Norwegian players driving and he measured them with 8 computer controlled 280 FPS cameras IIRC. I translated the most important parts in:
viewtopic.php?f=2&t=4019&hilit=thesis

Thank you. It sounds like a great study and I'm really interested in the data. Hopefully this is the start of a trend for more analysis of the throwing motion(s) of the game's best.

[JR]

I don't want to dictate the amount of keys you need to get right. One absolute necessity for a good throw is getting a strong enough grip that doesn't allow the disc to slip out early to the side or without pivoting the disc properly.

I know that eye movements have been tracked with sensors placed in a headband. Feldy said that he sees white when he drives and like a golfer doesn't raise his head until the shoulders turning in the follow through turns the head. I'm different in my form. I retain eye sight and do aim visually too. I pick a spot in pre throw planning to which i aim and try to regain eye contact after the reach back as soon as possible with the eyes turned to the right side. I also turn my head to the right with flat shots (not spike hyzers mimicking mirrored golf swings in the angle of the arm movement) in the pause. That way i see the target as early as possible allowing the eyes to focus and see the target clearly enough to aim at it both sideways and height wise. Because the disc needs to move in a straight line (mostly anyway) the legs, hips and shoulders moving in the kinetic chain sequenced differently from bottom to the top rotate a lot to the right the neck gets stressed. I'm a former competition swimmer so strength and mobility of the neck ain't a problem for me. I've been told that throwing like i do is dangerous for people with neck trouble. YMMV. In golf the weight of the head and neck and shoulder muscle mobility limit the head movement range before the head becomes too tightly connected to the torso weight and pulling you away from the necessary angles. Things are different with a flat throw thanks to a lot more free neck movement range. I have a limber neck and my body and head are effectively isolated from each other by an analogue of a ball bearing. So i don't think my head bobs so much that it ruins the angles.

Aiming with Visual cues is just one method that needs to be executed simultaneously with weight of the direction change pressing against the fingers aiming (AKA aiming with the thumb nail at the rip) and the direction of the running and arm pull vector.

I know you asked about much more but seeing as you like to study the details i anticipate objections and follow up questions so lets limit the topics for manageable post lengths for now. Possibly

[iacas]

I know you asked about much more but seeing as you like to study the details i anticipate objections and follow up questions so lets limit the topics for manageable post lengths for now. Possibly

No length to this response: your visual spotting system wouldn't qualify as a key as it's not a commonality.

A disc slipping out early would probably fall under the "Controlled Torque" Key (or whatever it ends up being called, if it even lasts).

[JR]

One Feldy does not exclude it from being usable and common. I have no data on how common visual aiming is though and especially for which line. I'm not willing to limit teaching to just commonalities when there is a better alternative. And adding visual aiming on top of the other methods produces very real benefits.

[iacas]

One Feldy does not exclude it from being usable and common. I have no data on how common visual aiming is though and especially for which line. I'm not willing to limit teaching to just commonalities when there is a better alternative. And adding visual aiming on top of the other methods produces very real benefits.

All I'm saying is that people can't see the target line from their reach-back stage. If 99.9%+ of advanced disc golfers acquire visual aim at a certain point in the throwing motion, then I'd include it. Otherwise, it's not a commonality, it's a preference, and thus not a Key.

You can disagree with that if you'd like, and I've got no problem with that. But I could name a bunch of "preferences" in golf too that don't become Keys just because a particular instructor or group of players or whatever happen to like them and have good results. If that's the case it's more of an advanced trick or something than a Key.

But since I really am not sure what you mean by this visual stuff, we might be talking about two very different things for all I know.

[JR]

One Feldy does not exclude it from being usable and common. I have no data on how common visual aiming is though and especially for which line. I'm not willing to limit teaching to just commonalities when there is a better alternative. And adding visual aiming on top of the other methods produces very real benefits.

All I'm saying is that people can't see the target line from their reach-back stage. If 99.9%+ of advanced disc golfers acquire visual aim at a certain point in the throwing motion, then I'd include it. Otherwise, it's not a commonality, it's a preference, and thus not a Key.

You can disagree with that if you'd like, and I've got no problem with that. But I could name a bunch of "preferences" in golf too that don't become Keys just because a particular instructor or group of players or whatever happen to like them and have good results. If that's the case it's more of an advanced trick or something than a Key.

But since I really am not sure what you mean by this visual stuff, we might be talking about two very different things for all I know.

Unfortunately i don't know how many top players aim visually. I sure hope the percentage among them is higher than with all disc golfers because it works well. You mentioned your baseball background. They aim visually and disc golf is the same at least to a degree. How close they are to each other i can't say exactly because the last time i've hit a ball with a bat was over 20 years ago. I sure hope visual aiming is a key and not just a trick to improve upon the keys.

From the maximum reach back until eye contact with the aiming point with focused eye sight you aim with the line you're running on. And depending on the form pulling the arm in a straight line at the target (you know the line because you've done a slow pre throw routine placing the arm straight on the line and reaching back on the same line then pulling the arm never deviating). Or with a different form pulling the arm partially simultaneously with the eye aiming in the transition phase from rail to elbow chop aiming (which goes straight at the target).