My Throwing Motion (iacas)

[JR]

Try this: Stand with the feet at shoulder width in front of a large mirror or look at somebody standing upright with the same stance. Are the heel, knee and arm pit on the same vertical line? It is very doable with a relaxed x step.

I'd like to hear what Blake has to say about that video. You have great ball of the foot height now which gives the best possible protection against getting the foot stuck in the middle of the pivot. Tremendous progress in there congratulations!

Your running direction was for a mild anny and the arm went in a mild hyzer. The left leg remained bent at the knee at the rip. Look at your follow through distance of the throwing arm and how the thumb points up. The hips and the shoulders not turning much along with the shoulder blade colliding with the back muscles stops you follow through to rough behind you. Compare that to the first top view of a top player slowed down that i thought of:


Markus Källström and Camilla Jernberg are even more extreme.

For more movement range of the arm in the follow through try rotating the arm from the shoulder socket and to a smaller extent elbow counterclockwise very quickly right after the rip. It helps in eliminating one source of OAT although it was not a problem in this throw plane preservation wise. It can be a problem power generation wise. The farther the arm follows through freely without drag the higher the chance of a fullest possible achievable acceleration up to the hit is.

[seabas22]

Watch the hip and spine travel in the follow through.

[iacas]

JR, I'm not sure that your signature is true. The video you chose to post shows Avery landing well to the left but throwing a slight hyzer to a flat shot (it's not an anhyzer). http://f.cl.ly/items/3y0S31080V1I3j2F1q ... Export.jpg That doesn't mean you're wrong (certainly not for whatever style of throw you preach, obviously Avery isn't 100% your style), but it doesn't seem to be the case very often. No need to respond - it just doesn't seem to be a hard and fast rule in backhands among the best. Maybe they violate the rules, but not violating them makes it easier. That's certainly a feasible thing.

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I'm going to be a good student and listen to and attempt to do whatever Blake asks me to do. I'm not going to have a "too many cooks in the kitchen" model to instruction.

When he tells me, too, I'm going to post here (with words and video most likely) at which time everyone can agree or disagree with him, but it won't sway me. We ask our students to trust us (though, to be fair, we give them good reason to within a few minutes of their lesson starting when they see improvement), so I'm trusting Blake to lead me down the proper path.

As I said, I made these throws without any thought. After the towel fell down on the first throw (I'll find one I can clip to the net next time) I didn't even really have a target. I was just throwing it towards the net.

If my practice is to not even throw a disc for the next two weeks but to work on some sort of drill or somesuch, I'm doing that.

[JR]

I want to answer. I would not wonder if Blake prescribed drills. If he doesn't you should still do the right pec drill and the secret technique thread drills.

There are plenty of players who throw placement accuracy shots like Avery did and other top players who throw like in my sig. My sig definitely is not a hard and fast rule but it is a very good way to maximize the accuracy and since most misguidedly ask for more distance i try to deviously improve their scores instead by improving their accuracy and consistency especially. Throw second shots or the tee in the rain or natural tees and the difference between my sig and the way Avery moved become apparent quicker and in a rougher way. Any slip with any step will be magnified and mistakes result in much worse lies if you don't play wide open courses. Tunnels are the real testers where every bit of accuracy and consistency shows up easily in the score cards. For that you need statistics so you need to throw a low of rounds if you don't have the hole for yourself so that you can practice a tight hole over and over again. That means that silver bullet fans won't be able to see the benefits as easily as those that do the real leg work of research by getting the statistics.

Some throw distance like Avery in that vid and accuracy like in my sig. Some throw exclusively with one or the other. In my experience after you have gotten in enough practice two different driving forms maximizing pros and minimizing cons for distance and accuracy separately gives you the best scores. Scott Stokely was right in that. In a time when Kenny ruled taking a world titled from him was a huge feat. Only a few guys have managed that. Russell, Todd and Doss being the other early winners. I can't say for sure when the rest of the pack got to be good enough to not have Kenny run away from them but the club that beat Kenny in his top performance days is small. Scott has a 3 DVD instruction set that is good in many aspects so maybe you should check it out because it goes deeper into the game than just form.Course management etc.

As a player that wants to develop my general advice always is to try everything out even if you don't know why it would help. Results speak for themselves. As long as you put in enough research for the differences to become detectable. And that is where gimme everything now whatareyouwaitingfor suckers lose out most times. Just like golf disc golf is for the patient.

[iacas]

So, as no surprise to anyone, I'm working on developing the feel for the hammer.

I'm putting my shoulders at 110° or so, wrapping my wrist around the disc a little bit (11 o'clock), holding it in that pocket a little bit as my arm goes forward without my shoulders opening much at all, and feeling the weight and letting the disc rip out of my hands instead.

I'm not at home so I played 36 holes today, almost all of the holes with mids (there are only two holes over 270). I was mostly trying to "play" rather than practice but I was trying to do things a little bit and could feel it. I'm going to do some hammer drills and more of the Bradley Walker type video where he throws his second one (IIRC) into his neighbor's yard four houses down.

I could feel things being better today. I'd also pull the disc right when:
a) my shoulders spun too much
b) I had the disc farther away from my chest than ideal.

Progress. Not a ton, but in the right direction.

[JR]

You need to have a fair bit of tension in the core muscles to avoid spinning out with the shoulders (could be too early timing too possibly in the same vein of over trying like gritting the teeth and tensing up the neck -you lose if you do that and at times i've noticed that in the run up and have managed to stop and set up again) and maintaining posture especially at higher speed x steps and even more so with a run up. I had a lapse of memory earlier because Discraft has done 3 distance throwing vids. Dion Arlyn the reigning distance throwing world champion talks of base speed of the run up plus what happens later in the latest video.

Check the Discraft video where Marty Peters says not to allow the wrist to be bent to the left of neutral position. Pre curling the wrist is considered a snap killer so i'd avoid that. If you were talking about where you grip the disc it is a little less dangerous but you can put the fingers in the same spot with a small diameter disc with a straight wrist as long as you have large enough fingers.

[iacas]

JR, I thank you for the advice given previously, but I'm working with Blake and am going to go that route. As such I'd ask that you simply leave me to that - I'll post my notes in this thread and am not looking for any outside counsel at this time. I don't particularly like when a golf student of mine goes and finds some new thing to work on all on his own, and I won't be doing that to my DG instructor.

Thank you.

[JR]

That's funny because they are his drills

[iacas]

That's funny because they are his drills

And he didn't prescribe them at this time.

[rhatton2]

Your post of sun 9th (second one on here ) Iacas is excellent, it condenses pictorially the body positions I try to explain to people that I'm coaching so well. I'm going to steal it

For a run through to get people throwing to 300' plus this is excellent as it clearly depicts the most obvious mistakes, which are sometimes so hard to describe in words or text. Whilst the drills from this site work really well I find it really helps to know the sorts of positions the body should be in to make the drills more effective.

[iacas]

Moved my thumb a bit farther out on the flight plate today and threw three of my best drives in a long time. Seems to have gotten rid of some OAT for me. Too many of my discs (that shouldn't turn) were turning despite being released at a moderate hyzer angle.

Two of the great drives were with an unstamped lime Volt - very small hyzer angle, a few degrees - would stand up and turn a few feet, then fade that few feet to end up straight away. VERY happy with those throws as well as the others.

Snap is improving. I still stink, but I'm working on the right things.

[iacas]

Filmed all of my shots on a round I played today. Reach-back was bad. Bending the arm because I'm not turning my shoulder back enough.

When I play my two thoughts are now:
1) Reach back straight (and even slightly to the left side of the tee pad)
2) Keep my hand on the outside of the disc.

When I do those things I make the best throws without much OAT.

Still practicing my hammer drill stuff when I have the time and my wife isn't around to look at me like I'm crazy.

[JR]

The first guy to throw 200 meters officially Chris Voigt reaches back very much toward the left side of the tee. and brings the disc close to the right pec and goes straight back to front from there if i've seen it right from the few vids of him that i've seen. That way keeps the arm muscles looser in the early part of the throw and the more biceps you have the slighter the chance of the bicep to pec collision there is when you reach back farther to the left. This makes the arm pull more complicated and there's more to learn. More timing variables.