Brychanus
* Ace Member *
I see what you mean, yeah. It almost doesn't even really make sense to me right now, how to push my hips forward enough without turning my hips like I do there. I mean maybe freak athletes aren't always the best example, but positions like this:
remain pretty elusive to me. When you say center, where is that exactly? I'm guessing somewhere around the hips or the core, but I'm curious.
For most people the "center"/"Center of gravity"/CoG is near the belly button.
I think it's tricky to understand static positions without understanding the mechanics and dynamics. And all of these players are very well developed so they can adjust their postures to be more extreme to use the same mechanics we talk about here to greater effect (due to lots and lots of practice with good mechanics)
Simon's always been interesting to me because his lower body is a bit hard to understand in static images - I think his hips are more naturally externally rotated due to his anatomy, and he has found a way to hinge in on a pretty tilted approach. He stays higher on his rear foot w/ the heel off the ground than most players. I think it takes a particular anatomy and/or very strong legs to get proper leverage like that.
In that particular drive, his weight is hanging a bit toward the camera, and as he strides into the plant he'll swing in and out like seabas22 Crush the Can like Lizotte.
This will put his plant stride moving toward the northwest part of the tee, and he will release on a hyzer power shot angle. But his feet are still in a neutral stance relative to each other.
I think that's also the trick for understanding Calvin's footwork:
Does Calvin turn back too far?
It seems like he gets his hips turned back pretty far pretty early, but he also clearly has a ton of momentum down the teepad. It's interesting, he and Seppo have pretty similar forms in a lot of ways.
I've started looking at Calvin a lot since his body is so different from mine. I'm still wondering why he doesn't get a bit more juice on the disc (he's throwing like 73-74 mph which is obviously world class, but could he get to 80 with that body?). He's got a very sharp "knife edge" plant and almost looks like he's risking rolling his ankle on his line low power shots. But working backwards from that, look at the angle of his plant foot relative to the drive foot - he's still got a very neutral relationship between the two feet, which is why he's still levering well enough to get a clean weight shift. Exactly what you see in Simon etc.
Calvin also comes in pretty hot with a forward bend to his posture before that harsh knife edge plant. He's hopping/skittering over the drive step only very briefly, getting just enough spring off that rear foot. So there's some efficiency to that in some ways, but I bet it's hard on that plant ankle, and I wonder what would happen if he adjusted his posture and drive side just a bit. It might smooth the swing out in the front side and maybe there's a little more power to be found there. Monday morning speculation, of course.
By the way, I saw the "Thriller arms" dilemma above - I started to clean that up by doing extreme vertical pumps/mills, then bringing it more horizontal with my posture and pumping it more like you see McBeth and others do. McBeth has talked about having trouble controlling his drives and actually looks like he has recently let a bit more pump back into his swing, which I found interesting.