• Discover new ways to elevate your game with the updated DGCourseReview app!
    It's entirely free and enhanced with features shaped by user feedback to ensure your best experience on the course. (App Store or Google Play)

Drive Leg Mechanics

It looks like you are forcing the knee into the valgus position which is weak and causes collapse.

i phrased my post incorrectly ( i wish i could update it so it wouldnt cause confusion). thank you for posting the additional information!! the purpose of my video was to show the incorrect movement that occured when initially trying to figure out how to correctly drive with the left leg. i figure it might be a common issue when initially practicing this movement

i have zero background in golf/baseball, all these movements are first time exp for myself
 
i have zero background in golf/baseball, all these movements are first time exp for myself


Me too. It is taking me a long time to understand the concepts and then to put them into practice and actually feel them. :)
 
Tried again today, came home, watched my videos, went through this thread and this time i got to this video



The gist of that video is be weary of squatting when performing the drift move. yesterday my drive leg was to straight :wall:, today i squatted too much :wall:, and hopefully next time i find the perfect blend. :D
 
Last edited:
This guy tries to explain it to the best of his ability. At 3:12 he does it incorrectly in an attempt to isolate the twitch resulting in "squish the bug" rotation in place. At 3:27 he does it properly moving forward at the same time. I like how he says "I don't move the hips with the hips".

Still Squishing the Bug at 3:27.
 
Still Squishing the Bug at 3:27.

What do you think about the rest of what he says?

Outside of your teaching, HUB, and Blake, I've been kind of curious to who you would recommend as a good teacher of disc golf. There have been more videos recently of people teaching throw mechanics and I am a little leery of some of them. Anybody you recommend that specifically pertains to disc golf?
 
id like to add another discovery of my practice. i noticed that when performing the leg drive sometimes i am not pushing into the ground hard enough with my post leg. im guessing now that my leg drive is pushing more momentum my post leg needs to push down harder (more knee extension)

note when im wearing my red shirt my post leg (right leg) gets straight (knee extension). im transferring the energy up through my body.

note when im wearing my black shirt my post leg(right leg) stays bent(not enough knee extension) and alot of that momentum im guessing is going and staying into the ground and not transferring up my body. since im lacking more knee extension im not forcing my right hip to move clockwise as fast as if i had more knee extension. also note in the black shirt my stride is longer than red shirt. this is my initial practicing of this movement and im trying to feel what works best as far as stride length goes.

red shirt = good knee extension
black shirt = not as good knee extension, could be better

if you are trying this leg drive and you arnt getting the distance or if you feel something is wrong, it could be your post leg needs to push harder into the ground. the timing of pushing with the plant leg is difficult to do.

Push plant leg.jpg

(this picture is just to illustrate the post leg (right leg) movement. i could be doing other stuff wrong but thats not the focus of it)
 
Last edited:
What do you think about the rest of what he says?

Outside of your teaching, HUB, and Blake, I've been kind of curious to who you would recommend as a good teacher of disc golf. There have been more videos recently of people teaching throw mechanics and I am a little leery of some of them. Anybody you recommend that specifically pertains to disc golf?
He makes some good points, but I don't understand the keep the weight back while squishing the bug and reaching out with the front foot(squish the bug has become an epidemic in disc golf recently among non-pro teaching), he starts complaining about his back hurting right after this around 4:50 and I can tell you I hurt my back doing the same thing long time ago. There should be almost zero pressure on the back when you properly shift to the front leg and hyzer should actually feel more natural on the back. When you get off the rear foot you can rotate freely on the front leg and no need to worry about keeping the head down.

attachment.php

EyVO0gq.png


 

Attachments

  • sling shot bug squish vs riding bull eversion.jpg
    sling shot bug squish vs riding bull eversion.jpg
    66.6 KB · Views: 292
I'm worried that I'm learning to aim with a weak brace and when I get a good brace it throws my aim off.

Don't even worry about that at all. If anything, you're playing the game on hard mode having a weak brace. Once you get that down aiming becomes a lot easier because your not falling forward. You'll adjust almost instantly.
 
One more note Jupiterboy, I too initially had a hard time not falling out of my brace. I thought that I had to just slow down or crush the can harder. Both of which are true and I needed to do that. But, for me at least, the most important part, that "aha" moment was slowing down the pull through/swing during the first part/first half, from the full reach back to the point the disc is about to cross your chest.

HuB spoke about this on YouTube and gave me the idea. He basically said that the first half of your swing, the speed doesn't matter at all, and slow is better because it allows your body and hips to get into motion. I'll try and dig the video up. But what I found most important for me is that I was pulling too fast initially, which had me coming forward waaaay too fast that no amount of bracing could support. Once I slowed that down bracing became easy.

It was as if I had been driving a car around a corner 70mph and handling it was hard, but then once it was slowed down to 35 handling it was a piece of cake and I could do it with ease.

So focus on the initial half of your pull. Really slow that part down and you'll find that your body and hips catch up then get in front of you, so to speak, then whipping the disc out is a lot easier.
 
Here is the video I was talking about above. This one was a big help recently on really helping with my brace and to not blow through it, even though I don't think that was the initial focus of the video, I found that it was a help to fix another thing I was doing.

 
So focus on the initial half of your pull. Really slow that part down and you'll find that your body and hips catch up then get in front of you, so to speak, then whipping the disc out is a lot easier.

i believe this is the concept late acceleration? i did exactly as you described too and it helped me learn better movement. i had to REALLY exaggerate going VERY SLOW into the hit and then i added the beans.

https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showthread.php?t=109677

https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showthread.php?t=112483
 
i believe this is the concept late acceleration? i did exactly as you described too and it helped me learn better movement. i had to REALLY exaggerate going VERY SLOW into the hit and then i added the beans.

https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showthread.php?t=109677

https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showthread.php?t=112483

Yep, that's it. It's interesting that when you figure one thing out that it inadvertently fixes another. I was working on this just because I was trying to get more spin on my disc, and it's basically what you're supposed to be doing anyways, but interestingly enough I also found that it helped with my brace BIG-TIME.

I didn't realize that one of the problems with my brace was that I was pulling through waaay too fast during the first half of the swing. That had my momentum coming through too fast, ahead of my hips, making a really strong brace impossible. I had chalked this up to perhaps bad footwork, my plant foot, or just timing issues and had it on the back burner.

But once I started doing what HUB mentioned in that video I noticed right away that my brace felt WAY stronger. I was also video taping and realized that by slowing down that first part of the swing I also slowed down my forward momentum just enough to allow my hips to get ahead of me and really helped to get that plant leg down firm and really crush the can into a strong brace.
 
Day three of practicing the drive leg and i think im at the point where im thinking about it too much.

From this timestamp it mentions external rotation, turning the leg counter clockwise to help with stability

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V5CmleRaoI&t=94s

I think my issue is im turning the leg counter clockwise with too much strength as it causes me leg to do as shown below. i am on my toes (tall grass makes it hard to see). im guessing i need to put a little less counter clockwise rotation during my drift and press the gas pedal more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09nxgrotbPE

in the video im just standing there showing the movement of what my foot does sometimes when i try to push off of it. when i go into my drift and put my plant leg out i go to drive with my left foot and it spins out like that sometimes.
 
Last edited:
Day three of practicing the drive leg and i think im at the point where im thinking about it too much.
I think this is key. I get into my own head too much and try to think my way through the movement (esp. The Move™). And I wind up, as another user here helpfully pointed out, trying to execute a series of yoga poses instead of a fluid athletic motion.

I'm in a similar situation as you are, trying to isolate that x-step feeling (a drive? a push? a glide? an ankle flick?). Still not there yet, but more promising results when I think of it as a glide, where I'm really just using it to maintain form and balance. I give maybe a little shove but just from my ankle, not a heavy push from the thigh. Best thing for me is to think about my left butt going as far as it can behind me and targetward; if you do that you can't turn your leg and push, as your hips will then go too soon. So it helps. But yeah, work in progress.
 
its so easy seeing this movement sitting here. but so difficult when practicing it. this is where im getting stuck :wall: . i need more gas pedal movement.

https://youtu.be/L4WDyZ_7azc?t=317

IMHO the x-step footwork is easy to overlook. Try a very small crossover step, plant foot in front of toes of off foot, all while keeping weight off the heels. This encourages better hips and torso. I'm just a bit ahead of you in the journey.
 
Top