Arm Tightness

[TGDisc]

Sorry if this question has been covered, but I haven't come across it yet...

On a backhand throw, should you focus on letting your throwing arm be as loose (not flexed or tightened) during the entire throw? Separate this thought from hand grip as I know your grip wants to be actively tight, but does the remaining portion of your arm need to be tight or does this create resistence?

To better describe what I am talking about, imagine in your reachback you have to pull a weighted cable (like at the gym) in the same line as your throw. You could partially relax your arm and pull a small amount of weight but you would be using you rear and outer delt, but when you get heavier and heavier, you'll notice your shoulder, bicep, AND forearm are required to pull it.

 

[SaROCaM]

You only need the minimum tightness to keep your elbow forward and grip the disc. Your hips/core generate the power; the arm and hand are basically just there to hold the disc.

It is like one of those Japanese pellet drums. The beads are like the disc, the string is like your arm, and the drum/handle is like your core and axis of rotation.

If you haven't done this before, stand up and let your arms hang loosely at your sides. Turn your hips/core to one side, then quickly reverse direction, turning the other way. Your arms should whip around on their own. When you throw, it is basically like this, except with elbow forward. The wrist/arm/elbow hinges will close and open creating the whip-like action of the throw.

I'm not a fan of the weighted cable example. I mean, it is good for the concept of pulling along a line, but 1) the disc should be accelerating; most people aren't accelerating when pulling a cable attachment and 2) many cable attachments are as heavy or heavier than a disc on their own, so the weight on the stack doesn't matter as much.

 

[TGDisc]

Thanks! I have been trying to pull hard (tighten up) my tricep at the end of the swing/throw thinking it will speed it up but realize this might be actually slowing it down.

 

[NathanNoodleArm]

This is from DGR back in the day. It might be helpful.

Re: Maxing out @ 300ft...
Postby JHern » Tue Jan 19, 2010 5:28 pm

Two facts:

Fact 1: 300 ft is about as far as most men can throw using primarily the strength of their arm to propel the disc. For women it is closer to 230 ft.

Fact 2: The fact that you get the same distance no matter how you do your step implies that you aren't getting anything out of your legs, which drive your torso, which is the platform for your shoulders...

The sum:

Fact 1 + Fact 2 = You're strong-arming, throwing with your arm, and you're not getting much of anything from your torso and shoulders.

Your arm is of order 10X less powerful than your legs/torso. Stop throwing with your arm! Your arm is only useful for positioning and gripping, other than that, it is purely passive. Your arm needs to be turned into a whip that is driven by the powerful motion of your legs/hips/torso/shoulders.

Here's an exercise I might suggest:

Stand still with your arms at your side, completely relaxed. Turn your hips and torso back slowly and then rotate your hips quickly to the open position. Your arms should be whipped out and around in a windmill motion, without you using a single muscle in your arms. That's the feeling you should be aiming for.

Next do the same thing, except extend your throwing elbow out sideways from your body and hold it there (as if you put a vice around your shoulder). Allow your lower throwing arm and hand to hang limp from your elbow. Do it as if your arm were asleep and some mechanical device was locked onto your shoulder to keep the elbow pointed out side ways from your torso. Don't allow your elbow to move forward or backward, nor up nor down. It is completely locked in place, as if you no longer even had a shoulder joint and your upper arm were fused into your shoulder so that it would always point out sideways.

Now slowly turn your hips and torso back, and turn them abruptly open again. Don't use a single muscle in your arm! Now you should find that you've turned your arm into a whip. Your lower arm should be whipping forward super-fast. In fact, you can whip your lower arm forward way faster in this manner than your arm muscles could ever dream of doing. Your arm muscle strength decreases rapidly as speed increases, so they are useless anyways...trying to use them will only slow down this motion. You'll find that whipping your lower arm forward in this manner, with the elbow "stopped," will feel relatively effortless in comparison to trying to throw with your arm as you've probably been doing before.

Practice getting this feeling for a while. (Later you can work on the grip and positioning in finer detail, but for now focus on using your legs/hips/torso/shoulders as the powerful motor for whipping your arm forward.)
__________________

 

[TGDisc]

This is from DGR back in the day. It might be helpful.

Re: Maxing out @ 300ft...
Postby JHern » Tue Jan 19, 2010 5:28 pm

Two facts:

Fact 1: 300 ft is about as far as most men can throw using primarily the strength of their arm to propel the disc. For women it is closer to 230 ft.

Fact 2: The fact that you get the same distance no matter how you do your step implies that you aren't getting anything out of your legs, which drive your torso, which is the platform for your shoulders...

The sum:

Fact 1 + Fact 2 = You're strong-arming, throwing with your arm, and you're not getting much of anything from your torso and shoulders.

Your arm is of order 10X less powerful than your legs/torso. Stop throwing with your arm! Your arm is only useful for positioning and gripping, other than that, it is purely passive. Your arm needs to be turned into a whip that is driven by the powerful motion of your legs/hips/torso/shoulders.

Here's an exercise I might suggest:

Stand still with your arms at your side, completely relaxed. Turn your hips and torso back slowly and then rotate your hips quickly to the open position. Your arms should be whipped out and around in a windmill motion, without you using a single muscle in your arms. That's the feeling you should be aiming for.

Next do the same thing, except extend your throwing elbow out sideways from your body and hold it there (as if you put a vice around your shoulder). Allow your lower throwing arm and hand to hang limp from your elbow. Do it as if your arm were asleep and some mechanical device was locked onto your shoulder to keep the elbow pointed out side ways from your torso. Don't allow your elbow to move forward or backward, nor up nor down. It is completely locked in place, as if you no longer even had a shoulder joint and your upper arm were fused into your shoulder so that it would always point out sideways.

Now slowly turn your hips and torso back, and turn them abruptly open again. Don't use a single muscle in your arm! Now you should find that you've turned your arm into a whip. Your lower arm should be whipping forward super-fast. In fact, you can whip your lower arm forward way faster in this manner than your arm muscles could ever dream of doing. Your arm muscle strength decreases rapidly as speed increases, so they are useless anyways...trying to use them will only slow down this motion. You'll find that whipping your lower arm forward in this manner, with the elbow "stopped," will feel relatively effortless in comparison to trying to throw with your arm as you've probably been doing before.

Practice getting this feeling for a while. (Later you can work on the grip and positioning in finer detail, but for now focus on using your legs/hips/torso/shoulders as the powerful motor for whipping your arm forward.)
__________________

Thank you very much, and I guess I read your mind because I started experimenting with this out in the field after I posted this yesterday, and *started* to feel what you're describing. Here is the crazy thing: I have no doubt been strong-arming it but fairly regularly hitting 375 (rolled with a measuring wheel on flat grade level field) with an X-Step. I was doing the one leg drill (from a standstill) yesterday and concentrating on the above mentioned things and threw a Leopard 350 and driver 365. So I would agree that using legs and hips correctly results in distance, but using your legs incorrectly can almost decrease distance.

 

[sidewinder22]

Thank you very much, and I guess I read your mind because I started experimenting with this out in the field after I posted this yesterday, and *started* to feel what you're describing. Here is the crazy thing: I have no doubt been strong-arming it but fairly regularly hitting 375 (rolled with a measuring wheel on flat grade level field) with an X-Step. I was doing the one leg drill (from a standstill) yesterday and concentrating on the above mentioned things and threw a Leopard 350 and driver 365. So I would agree that using legs and hips correctly results in distance, but using your legs incorrectly can almost decrease distance.

^^ Right, most players try to power their weight via tipping off balance with their legs which gets in the way of momentum and destroys the kinetic sequence.

As for tightness, similar to Nathan/JHerns's post - I prefer to think of it as a Dingle Arm or ball on a string = tautness. The tension/tautness in the string/arm increases as the speed(centripetal force) increases and holds on to the ball/disc. So in the backswing there is very little tension but it is still taut, and as the acceleration increases the tautness remains but the centripetal force and tension is 10x. The main difference is that the elbow acts like a reciprocal cam of a compound bow during the throw easing that tension off until the very end of the throw.

 

[TGDisc]

^^ Right, most players try to power their weight via tipping off balance with their legs which gets in the way of momentum and destroys the kinetic sequence.

As for tightness, similar to Nathan/JHerns's post - I prefer to think of it as a Dingle Arm or ball on a string = tautness. The tension/tautness in the string/arm increases as the speed(centripetal force) increases and holds on to the ball/disc. So in the backswing there is very little tension but it is still taut, and as the acceleration increases the tautness remains but the centripetal force and tension is 10x. The main difference is that the elbow acts like a reciprocal cam of a compound bow during the throw easing that tension off until the very end of the throw.

The top video is very helpful, and actually the model they use to explain chaos theory.

The second is pretty helpful, although it seems if our elbow was the bottom of the cam the arm would hyper extend. Simon could prolly throw 800 feet with that arm lol.

Thanks for all your videos SW. They are very helpful!

 

[sidewinder22]

Here's KJ Nybo's arcs and levers...

Black line is the the target line and COM of disc as it leaves, so the image is rotated 17 degrees from level.
Red line is the hand.
Green line is the COM of the disc before release.
Purple line is the lever between the hand and COM of the disc.

 

[Inverted]

Here's KJ Nybo's arcs and levers...

Black line is the the target line and COM of disc as it leaves, so the image is rotated 17 degrees from level.
Red line is the hand.
Green line is the COM of the disc before release.
Purple line is the lever between the hand and COM of the disc.

So you really dont pull straight down the target line? It's more kinda parallel, but curved into your pec/pocket, then out and down the line, no?

 

[TGDisc]

Jesus that aerial and the lines show that the hit is like a 1 foot area of distance : 0

 

[Hoeschel]

When watching videos of pros it often looks like the angle between shoulder and upper arm is fixed for a big part of the throw. After reading this thread i assume that this is not due to an active lock but because of some other reason... maybe because the shoulders drag the upper arm behind?

 

[sidewinder22]

So you really dont pull straight down the target line? It's more kinda parallel, but curved into your pec/pocket, then out and down the line, no?

Feels like you are throwing/tossing the weight of the disc straight like it were a stick or hammer or water bottle. Like the ball on a string, you can manipulate or change the angles arc/rhythm of the circular motion and toss it in a certain direction pretty accurately. You feel the directional tug of that weight/inertia at the top of the backswing straight back and at the bottom of the swing arc straight to the release like the bow and arrow, and in between the elbow(with a wide upper arm angle) takes that tension off the lower arm until it extends the arc outward and blasts the acceleration really late which immensely helps with gripping/accelerating the disc as long/fast as possible like that compound bow cam.

 

[sidewinder22]

Jesus that aerial and the lines show that the hit is like a 1 foot area of distance : 0

Blake T said that the last 12" of the throw were exactly the same for all the top throwers despite form differences.

 

[sidewinder22]

When watching videos of pros it often looks like the angle between shoulder and upper arm is fixed for a big part of the throw. After reading this thread i assume that this is not due to an active lock but because of some other reason... maybe because the shoulders drag the upper arm behind?

Pure mechanical advantage. Your whole arm has no real leverage when extending the elbow/wrist with a hugging upper arm angle 90 degrees or less or open shoulders. Try using/controlling or tossing a hammer with your upper arm angle narrow vs wide. The wider your upper arm, the more leverage and speed you can create, IMO your natural/wide bench press position is ideal for your hit - I feel like I'm in the extended bench press position at the hit probably around 135 degree upper arm angle you can see KJ about there and me in the video thumbnail above as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5xfv9jPqZs#t=8m26s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQYGzTlVetQ#t=7m
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U00VMoYnJQ

Great stuff all the way through - use your firmly planted feet as the foundation to power/turn the body/swing!

 

[akray21]

I like to decrease moving parts personally. When I am stepping up to the tee pad and lining up my shot I like to lock my hand, wrist, and elbow in the way that they are supposed to be aligned at the top of the back-swing (reach-back). I keep these joints "locked" all the way to the top of the back-swing. For me, this eliminates moving parts, and in turn eliminates some possible errors that might surface when having a limp hand, wrist, and elbow during the back-swing.