A Quick Thought on The Power Pocket

[Bradley Walker]

You are mistaken:

If you say so bro. I was just watching him five minutes ago in the World Championships from yesterday and he almost fell down on half of his full power drives from being so stuck. Certainly no Simon or Paul in the old footwork department... Makes an old clod stepper like me feel better.

Good snap though. He is a reverse K snapper too. He pulls in at an angle and exits at an angle. You can see his exit is really dependant on that exit angle too and he gets a real issue with pulling everything to the right if he doesn't get the elbow to the left (like I said).

 

[Bradley Walker]

You are putting words in my mouth, and frankly going off on a tangent I have no idea the purpose of...

Those diagrams originated with Blake and me and a few other guys who proposed the idea (though not nearly as fancy) more than a decade ago... Blake specifically was talking about the ejection arc 10 years ago (it was called SNAP and Blake was obsessed with it). The reverse P. I made a few videos about it... Like 10 years ago.

What we guessed at then, has now become a commonplace discussion. Still misunderstood IMHO.... Like most sports. I am still learning myself

 

[RFrance]

Bradley, many here on DGCR frequently cite your More Snap 2009 videos. It's been almost 10 years and after teaching this for a while are there any more tips that you would include now?

 

[Bradley Walker]

Well, I am sorry you are disappointed, as far as I can tell you are the one getting all bristled.

Sadly, I gave up teaching disc golf because I was tired of all the arguing... It is kind of the nature of the Internet, people take debate as rudeness. It is what it is... I was asked to post some stuff so I did...

Good luck to you!!! I think I will just bow out... Yall have fun.

 

[Discusted]

Had no idea who Bradley Walker is, then reading through this thread I realized he's the More Snap Video guy. Awesome. I've watched that video a couple times now and I'm glad to have to opportunity to ask some questions. Thanks for making it.

The best part of that video for me was the explanation of how you are actually throwing the outside of the disc. It makes those Hammer Throwing Drills make a lot more sense. So in that video I really got an understanding of what SNAP actually is. But I'm still lost as to what are the steps and instructions to actually get more snap, now that I know what it is.

Let me break down my understanding of that video and see if you can help me on some sticking points. So to get more SNAP:
1. You imagine that you are actually throwing a hammer, with a handle and an outside weight/head.

2. You need some initial momentum to bring the disc into the power pocket. So inward pull and weight transfer to accomplish this?

3. Then accelerate the arm and rotate the shoulder as hard as you can to throw the head of the Disc down the line.

When I do field work I can feel that SOMETIMES I get that snap, the Disc rotating quickly on the pivot point of your grip and sometimes I don't. Is it a matter of not enough momentum coming into the power pocket or is my reach back and inward pull at the wrong positions?

 

[scoopa]

Dammit guys we had THE Bradley Walker, Mr "Snap 2009"

We had one of the god fathers of snap back and we ran him off in a day

 

[timothy42b]

I hope this isn't a rabbit hole, but...........

I just watched a slo mo video of Nybo.

Up to release, his hand and disc are moving at the same speed. Well, doh, they're attached.

But after the release, at each frame, the separation between hand and disc increases. It seems his arm relative to his body move much faster than disc relative to body.

 

[drk_evns]

Brad, what makes you say Nybo has bad lower body mechanics? The fact that his leg doesn't whip around just means he has an efficient brace (aka - no wasted/leftover energy to swing his lower body around). Kind of in the same way PP's back foot touches the ground once and catches her weight but KJ just stops right there.

SW, does that sound right to you?

 

[lyleoross]

I wanted to point something out very quickly. The notion of snap is much older than 2009. The Videos on this came out and are quite nice, but I was reading and hearing about tendon bounce and snap around 2000 when I first started. Those comments were made by guys like Ken Climo, who used to post but gave it over due to, on line toxicity.

The hammer video, and I am one of those who never realized who the author was, and maybe still don't, is brilliant in it's simple imagination of how you get more torque on the disc at release. The common theme up to that point was that it "just happened." For the first time, someone talked about putting the disc in a position where you could snap the disc out by having a point that rotated as you unwound. I also thought BWs comments here, on linear, to rotation, to linear mechanics were damned smart. I had always viewed it as body motion puts forward motion, and your arm motion puts rotational on the disc.

Last, it is clear that BW has thought carefully about the throw, I would point out that so has Sidewinder. I'd rather have two such thinking people working together than disagreeing over KJ Nybo, one of my favorite players too. Who gives a RA over any individual? And yes, I defend my favorite guys too.

 

[drk_evns]

lyleoross that's all well and good, but when someone who has some "sway" when it comes to online form discussion is telling us KJ Nybo has poor lower body mechanics and only throws far because of snap we can't not question that. It's too big a topic to gloss over and agree to disagree on.

It's totally fair for SW to bring it up and I don't think he's been argumentative at all. He just tells it like it is... and KJ uses his lower body just like any other pro... if not better.

 

[drk_evns]

By the way, Brad W., we call the "reverse-K" thing you're talking about "wide rail."

That's the wide-narrow-wide SW22 teaches to EVERYONE.

 

[sidewinder22]

Brad, what makes you say Nybo has bad lower body mechanics? The fact that his leg doesn't whip around just means he has an efficient brace (aka - no wasted/leftover energy to swing his lower body around). Kind of in the same way PP's back foot touches the ground once and catches her weight but KJ just stops right there.

SW, does that sound right to you?

IMO KJ has some of the best lower body mechanics as well as upper body, his efficiency is off the charts like Ken Jarvis. He is a master of converting his initially slow linear momentum accelerated at the last second into plant and then transformed into rotational momentum through the feet to the body/arm/disc in a very compact and powerful weightshift/bracing. The body rotating is what swings the arm/disc! The tighter/more compact/centered your weightshift/spine rotation the more it will increase your arm speed exponentially. Your arm has no power without the body(mass*acceleration). The lower body is what sets up the upper body for the arm/disc swing. If you don't clear the front hip and keep the upper arm wide enough with a closed shoulder, then you don't give yourself a power pocket to swing the disc through your center of gravity, otherwise you have to swing the disc around your center which kills efficiency and adds a ton of centrifugal force onto the grip.

Note that I commented on this video 5 months ago and referenced KJ:



Power comes from the ground up... it's physics right?

 

[sidewinder22]

The hammer video, and I am one of those who never realized who the author was, and maybe still don't, is brilliant in it's simple imagination of how you get more torque on the disc at release. The common theme up to that point was that it "just happened." For the first time, someone talked about putting the disc in a position where you could snap the disc out by having a point that rotated as you unwound. I also thought BWs comments here, on linear, to rotation, to linear mechanics were damned smart. I had always viewed it as body motion puts forward motion, and your arm motion puts rotational on the disc.

Last, it is clear that BW has thought carefully about the throw, I would point out that so has Sidewinder. I'd rather have two such thinking people working together than disagreeing over KJ Nybo, one of my favorite players too. Who gives a RA over any individual? And yes, I defend my favorite guys too.

lyleoross that's all well and good, but when someone who has some "sway" when it comes to online form discussion is telling us KJ Nybo has poor lower body mechanics and only throws far because of snap we can't not question that. It's too big a topic to gloss over and agree to disagree on.

It's totally fair for SW to bring it up and I don't think he's been argumentative at all. He just tells it like it is... and KJ uses his lower body just like any other pro... if not better.

I consider myself a student of Bradley Walker and Blake_T, as I was on DGR back in the day. I agree with lyleoross that when Brad's Snap 2009 videos and thread came out, and the way he so eloquently described it, there were so many light bulbs that went on in my mind. It's the main reason I became obsessed with throwing hammers and throwing the disc like hammer. It really is that simple.

However IMO and I think HUB agrees with me, the missing ingredient to the "full-hit" or the "incomplete secret technique" is the lower body setting everything else up which wasn't talked about much on DGR. Every top thrower gets into that same or very similar lower body position in the pic with KJ earlier. The kinetic chain sequence has to start from the ground up.

 

[slowplastic]

However IMO and I think HUB agrees with me, the missing ingredient to the "full-hit" or the "incomplete secret technique" is the lower body setting everything else up which wasn't talked about much on DGR. Every top thrower gets into that same or very similar lower body position in the pic with KJ earlier. The kinetic chain sequence has to start from the ground up.

Agreed too, I don't see how you can continually pull/leverage the disc unless you have a balanced brace/counterweight to swing from. As well when you're in balance the arm seems to want to get into better and better positions, and knowing the goal and arc diagrams definitely helps.

 

[drk_evns]

However IMO and I think HUB agrees with me, the missing ingredient to the "full-hit" or the "incomplete secret technique" is the lower body setting everything else up which wasn't talked about much on DGR. Every top thrower gets into that same or very similar lower body position in the pic with KJ earlier. The kinetic chain sequence has to start from the ground up.

Totally agree. I was referred to the old DGR threads about snap between BW and Blake_T when I was working on my arms/wrist understanding.

They really were obsessed with snap, and they made huge strides... but honestly HUB and SW22, you guys put it all together. Your stuff is the stuff everybody references. It's the only way to get the full picture.

You guys are the new generation Blake_T and Bradley Walker.

I went from throwing 280' max to confident 425' in one serious summer of study. I watched all of seabas22, read all of heavy disc, and watched lots of YouTube. Oh, and ungodly amounts of frustrating field work.

Lower body is just as, if not more important than upper body.



Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[sidewinder22]

By the way, Brad W., we call the "reverse-K" thing you're talking about "wide rail."

That's the wide-narrow-wide SW22 teaches to EVERYONE.

AFAIK Blake_T coined the term "wide rail", and the "hammer pound", and he also referred to the wide rail as a "U" throwing --> --> direction RHBH which is similar to "K" rotated 90 degrees left. I'd recommend reading "The Myth of Disc Pivot" thread. https://www.dgcoursereview.com/dgr/...&t=24903&sid=34daf63b1d1e8fe978b6df855545fda3

The right-pec and closed shoulder drills are simply just narrow - wide arcs since the elbow/disc doesn't extend into the backswing or before the power pocket.

 

[lyleoross]

All the stuff I read twenty years ago argued that the full body motion had one function. Timing. That the movement from legs, to hip, to core, to shoulders kept everything going in the right direction and on a linear scale, so to speak. I agree, but that isn't the same as distance coming from those movements. For sure, using more core gives me distance, but without proper snap, nothing goes anywhere in a hurry.

 

[slowplastic]

All the stuff I read twenty years ago argued that the full body motion had one function. Timing. That the movement from legs, to hip, to core, to shoulders kept everything going in the right direction and on a linear scale, so to speak. I agree, but that isn't the same as distance coming from those movements. For sure, using more core gives me distance, but without proper snap, nothing goes anywhere in a hurry.

I don't think that anybody is saying that snap isn't important.

At least my POV is that if I want to learn to throw pro distance, meaning "everything right" rather than the easy way to 300+, it's best or most reproducible to learn that full body motion. Of course be aware of the end result and goal.

If you want to hit a baseball far you have to know where the ball contact should be...outside your front foot. Know how it feels to leverage the bat. Always have that "through the ball" in mind. But after you can make contact and hit them out of the infield, and you want to get some bat head speed, time to learn the overall movement. You always have to keep that bat leverage and contact point in mind, but the power doesn't come from the bat/hands only, that's for sure.

Of course some people are just "naturals". Others have to learn it and be coached. It doesn't mean they cannot do it. Also different methods work for different people.

 

[VLaForce2002]

Mr. Walker, in your experience can a 50 year old man learn to throw 500 feet even off he never threw that far in his youth? I guess what I'm asking in your observations what are the upper limits for 50-60 crowd with good snap?

 

[Discusted]

Brad, what makes you say Nybo has bad lower body mechanics? The fact that his leg doesn't whip around just means he has an efficient brace (aka - no wasted/leftover energy to swing his lower body around). Kind of in the same way PP's back foot touches the ground once and catches her weight but KJ just stops right there.

SW, does that sound right to you?

I thought the brace absorbs the power from weight shift momentum but also transfers it to rotational energy. I always thought: more weight shift, more rotation.