Form critique request

[sidewinder22]

Anatomy makes all the difference. Yet, watching Simon and Gurthie from the back their form looks very similar and much simpler from the back. They appear to stride into the throw at a measured pace and use their front leg as a lever to throw around. And I wonder why I am not able to achieve the same power and control. Possibly because...

I am 66 years old and I will probably never again be able to move with the strength and flexibility of any of the younger players. I could have had a chance at moving like that 46 years ago. Has anyone written about how to adapt the mechanics of movement for an older or injured body? I was tall, still am, and no longer flexible like Simon. Once upon a time, I was, sort of at least, when I was in my twenties. Sigh!

I think the same throwing motor skill is still learnable despite the deteriorated body. The young are just able to move more athletic before the throwing part and during the throw and also learn much faster(neuro-plasticity). I think throwing from standstill is easier to learn and less stressful on the body and can still get good distance.

The backswing is where we see the main differences, although the motions are similar, while the sequence/timing is identical.

From the plant they are almost identical.

 

[RowingBoats]

Even when when looking in relation to the body to me it still looks level in that it's straight across the chest with the arm at shoulder height. If she stood straight up without moving the arm it would still be straight across the chest. But I guess you would have to change the arm height when standing up vs leaning for a hyzer since leaning for a hyzer usually sets you up more for a higher launch angle and so you have to have a higher reach back?

To me low means the arm starts shoulder high (since it's attached there) but ends up lower than the chest so there is a diagonal angle to it instead of level.

I'm not quite sure I follow lol.

You are saying it looks flat if she were to orient in another way making it flat? I feel like we have wildly different conceptions of the swing plane.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

I'm not quite sure I follow lol.

You are saying it looks flat if she were to orient in another way making it flat? I feel like we have wildly different conceptions of the swing plane.

It's one of those things that I know and account for intuitively when throwing but when seeing it looks surprising and then I get confused.

I've heard the advice so many times to lower your reach back if you want to throw higher but it never seems to be paired with the useful nuance of how a hyzer body lean affects this. And to me I interpreted lower reach back as lower the arm / less shoulder flexion.

If we say 0 degrees of shoulder flexion (how raised the arm is) is when your arm is hanging by your side, I thought of 90 degrees of shoulder flexion as a high reach back because when throwing a flat release angle (standing straighter without much hyzer lean) that amount of shoulder flexion gets you close to a 0 degree launch angle. So that's why that arm height in the pic looked to me to be high and it feels like my arm is high when I do it regardless of if I'm throwing hyzer for flatter.

However, if you raise your arm to 90 degrees of shoulder flexion with elbow extended but then lean forward 20 degrees without moving your arm, your arm is now pointing 20 degrees down, similar to if you were standing straight up but lowered it to 70 degrees of shoulder flexion. So for hyzer shots you have to negate that with more shoulder flexion if you don't want to throw that much higher it seems.

There's a hole I play with a pretty significant left curving tunnel with a low ish ceiling and then a long straight tunnel after and I throw a really flippy disc on like 40 degrees hyzer and throw it hard to curve left then late flip and go straight for a while and I always have to remind myself to reach back higher than I think because with that much hyzer it's so easy to throw high into the ceiling.

 

[RowingBoats]

It's one of those things that I know and account for intuitively when throwing but when seeing it looks surprising and then I get confused.

I've heard the advice so many times to lower your reach back if you want to throw higher but it never seems to be paired with the useful nuance of how a hyzer body lean affects this. And to me I interpreted lower reach back as lower the arm / less shoulder flexion.

If we say 0 degrees of shoulder flexion (how raised the arm is) is when your arm is hanging by your side, I thought of 90 degrees of shoulder flexion as a high reach back because when throwing a flat release angle (standing straighter without much hyzer lean) that amount of shoulder flexion gets you close to a 0 degree launch angle. So that's why that arm height in the pic looked to me to be high and it feels like my arm is high when I do it regardless of if I'm throwing hyzer for flatter.

However, if you raise your arm to 90 degrees of shoulder flexion with elbow extended but then lean forward 20 degrees without moving your arm, your arm is now pointing 20 degrees down, similar to if you were standing straight up but lowered it to 70 degrees of shoulder flexion. So for hyzer shots you have to negate that with more shoulder flexion if you don't want to throw that much higher it seems.

There's a hole I play with a pretty significant left curving tunnel with a low ish ceiling and then a long straight tunnel after and I throw a really flippy disc on like 40 degrees hyzer and throw it hard to curve left then late flip and go straight for a while and I always have to remind myself to reach back higher than I think because with that much hyzer it's so easy to throw high into the ceiling.

You are way, way overcomplicating a very simple concept.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

You are way, way overcomplicating a very simple concept.

is it not true that keeping the same shoulder flexion angle will result in a higher launch angle if you add more hyzer body lean? That's basically what I said boils down to.

 

[sidewinder22]

is it not true that keeping the same shoulder flexion angle will result in a higher launch angle if you add more hyzer body lean? That's basically what I said boils down to.

Which is why severe hyzers are called spike hyzers. This is also assuming you are tilted back away from target on the same angle. If you are tilted forward then it's reversed.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

Your right shoulder is externally rotated

Tested the suitcase carry today and it seemed easier to keep the shoulder internally rotated on the reach back. Also helped bring the nose down more easily due to the dynamic supination instead of me just trying to maintain the supination.

At 1:25


As always though, other things started to regress while focusing on this, my back leg started opening more than I'd like during the X and I was leaning over the back leg too much for a while when warming up. Also some toe dragging again. I think sometimes my back leg would have naturally come up but I have muscle memory to push it down and toe drag because toe dragging is extremely common in pickleball and climbing as a balancing aid.

 

[Brychanus]

Tested the suitcase carry today and it seemed easier to keep the shoulder internally rotated on the reach back. Also helped bring the nose down more easily due to the dynamic supination instead of me just trying to maintain the supination.

At 1:25


As always though, other things started to regress while focusing on this, my back leg started opening more than I'd like during the X and I was leaning over the back leg too much for a while when warming up. Also some toe dragging again. I think sometimes my back leg would have naturally come up but I have muscle memory to push it down and toe drag because toe dragging is extremely common in pickleball and climbing as a balancing aid.

General advice
If you are not so far, would recommend getting in the habits of (1) sharing the average or median throw of a session and (2) if using your own camera to do form work in a session, watch your form every 1-5 throws for now to isolate what you're working on.

Toe drag
I wouldn't be too terribly concerned with toe drag specifically as long as the weight is collecting targetward in an abrupt shift. You'll see toe drags or near drags in high level moves. It might be optimal to have that toe up like walking or running, I just want to emphasize the Figure 8 shift mechanics overall.



Arm stuff - gotta load & coil in proper sequence:
Notice the pattern building tension before exiting the backswing heading into the release. You still want to be coiling/heaving the arm back as you shift into the plant (Seabas22 Door Frame Drills and Load the Bow). You are instead planting with slack still in your arm and then everything is mostly rotating through together. All of these crushers are allowing all of the slack out of their arm coiling back against the drive leg in transition before planting abruptly and committing the shot.

Notice some prefer it more wing down, wing neutral, or wing up relative to their posture - start with what seems natural and let's see what you get.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

I wouldn't be too terribly concerned with toe drag specifically as long as the weight is collecting targetward in an abrupt shift. You'll see toe drags or near drags in high level moves. It might be optimal to have that toe up like walking or running, I just want to emphasize the Figure 8 shift mechanics overall.



Arm stuff - gotta load & coil in proper sequence:
Notice the pattern building tension before exiting the backswing heading into the release. You still want to be coiling/heaving the arm back as you shift into the plant (Seabas22 Door Frame Drills and Load the Bow). You are instead planting with slack still in your arm and then everything is mostly rotating through together. All of these crushers are allowing all of the slack out of their arm coiling back against the drive leg in transition before planting abruptly and committing the shot.

Notice some prefer it more wing down, wing neutral, or wing up relative to their posture - start with what seems natural and let's see what you get.

View attachment 333460

Thanks.

I'm less worried about the toe drag when I can see my weight is transferring well, but how much it drags can sometimes be an indication of poor forward weight transfer / leaning back over the back leg too much. So I'm not concerned about it when I can see / feel it's a light drag and still wants to come up after because that happens when I transfer my weight forward better.

I think whenever I start working on other stuff I tend to lean back too much again, perhaps as a subconscious way to try to buy myself more time before the brace to remember to do the other stuff I'm working on, lol, but standstill work helps with that.

For the elbow being somewhat bent, how much power do you think is reduced from that much bend? I don't want to develop a habit of accidentally locking my elbow with too much force and increases risk of in elbow injury, so that's why I've been a bit hesitant to fully extend it.

For everything rotating through together, I plan to address that with practicing driving the elbow more first and letting the rotation happen after. I worked on that a bit but not enough for it to persist while working on other stuff.

For the wing angle, I think the reason I developed it to have more hyzer look to it from supination + external shoulder rotation wasn't because it was natural, it feels more natural and less tense to be pronated with some internal rotation than holding the supination in addition to external rotation. Hyzer is my default throw and I wanted to keep the disc on that hyzer angle instead of adding complexity with more moving parts (pronation having to switch to supination) but at some point I accidentally added external shoulder rotation, trying to keep it simple by staying supinated probably made external rotation more likely since they both rotate the same direction. There was a period where I was accidentally standing up out of my hyzer body lean during my power pocket and losing my hyzer, so I probably tried to overcorrect in multiple ways to be able to hyzer again and since externally rotating the shoulder makes the disc look like it has more hyzer on it, that's probably another reason why it started happening.

 

[Brychanus]

Thanks.

I'm less worried about the toe drag when I can see my weight is transferring well, but how much it drags can sometimes be an indication of poor forward weight transfer / leaning back over the back leg too much. So I'm not concerned about it when I can see / feel it's a light drag and still wants to come up after because that happens when I transfer my weight forward better.

YW! Correct.

I think whenever I start working on other stuff I tend to lean back too much again, perhaps as a subconscious way to try to buy myself more time before the brace to remember to do the other stuff I'm working on, lol, but standstill work helps with that.

Correct.

Leaning can also potentially get worse because you have a net in front of you.

For the elbow being somewhat bent, how much power do you think is reduced from that much bend? I don't want to develop a habit of accidentally locking my elbow with too much force and increases risk of in elbow injury, so that's why I've been a bit hesitant to fully extend it.

It is more about the sequence of the actions than the bend specifically. If you allow your arm to go fully slack and feel its mass behind you, it is more likely that you will learn the "trick" about how the backswing coils & loads/stretches you out through the lat counter-rotating the upper body back while you are shifting into the plant.

Door frame drill and load the bow allow you to work on that mechanic without hyperextending or locking the elbow.

For everything rotating through together, I plan to address that with practicing driving the elbow more first and letting the rotation happen after. I worked on that a bit but not enough for it to persist while working on other stuff.

Maybe part of it, but would still recommend door frame drill and load the bow drill to work on the rear side/backswing sequence and counter-rotating upper body back before shifting forward.

For the wing angle, I think the reason I developed it to have more hyzer look to it from supination + external shoulder rotation wasn't because it was natural, it feels more natural and less tense to be pronated with some internal rotation than holding the supination in addition to external rotation. Hyzer is my default throw and I wanted to keep the disc on that hyzer angle instead of adding complexity with more moving parts (pronation having to switch to supination) but at some point I accidentally added external shoulder rotation, trying to keep it simple by staying supinated probably made external rotation more likely since they both rotate the same direction. There was a period where I was accidentally standing up out of my hyzer body lean during my power pocket and losing my hyzer, so I probably tried to overcorrect in multiple ways to be able to hyzer again and since externally rotating the shoulder makes the disc look like it has more hyzer on it, that's probably another reason why it started happening.

I follow what you're saying but I worry you're wading into weeds here (and this is coming from someone who co-wrote 107 pages on it!). Briefly, here are strategies that seem to work here in your case:

1. I will never take your hyzer away from you. For the most part, it's easier to find a form that works efficiently with gravity, and it is still heavily used in pro form.

2. Yes, you can start with wing down and move through a hyzer plane to throw as long as you don't let the shoulder collapse and the rest of the posture is functional. Sometimes people need to make additional tweaks but...

3. Sidewinder might weigh in on this point, but I think it's usually easier to evaluate additional tweaks to backswing when the door frame/load the bow part of the move is intact

 

[sidewinder22]

In general you look a bit tight and robotic.

You land very crouched/flat footed/quad dominant on rear leg. Note how Paul and I are standing up taller on rear leg and then getting lower striding into the plant.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

In general you look a bit tight and robotic.

You land very crouched/flat footed/quad dominant on rear leg. Note how Paul and I are standing up taller on rear leg and then getting lower striding into the plant.
View attachment 333461

Hm, interesting, thanks. Not sure why I'm doing that here, I don't always do it, sometimes I'm on my toes a lot more without the rear foot's heel touching the ground. It might be because I was just seeing footage of my leaning back too far prior to this and was trying to think about pushing forward off the X step more.

I think the rigidity will improve naturally as I get more used to the form changes without having to focus so much on it.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

1. I will never take your hyzer away from you. For the most part, it's easier to find a form that works efficiently with gravity, and it is still heavily used in pro form.

Hah, don't worry, I never thought you'd do something so evil. I was just trying to square the comment about finding what wing angle feels natural with how I ended up externally rotating, because the briefcase carry felt more natural that day even though I don't normally do it because of how it relieves tension in the wrist. When I was trying to regain my hyzer in the past, I mistakenly thought seeing the disc on more hyzer during the reach back would help me get my hyzer back and external rotation makes it appear like it will be on more hyzer, so I think that's how it developed, not because it naturally felt better.

Door frame drill and load the bow allow you to work on that mechanic without hyperextending or locking the elbow.

Maybe part of it, but would still recommend door frame drill and load the bow drill to work on the rear side/backswing sequence and counter-rotating upper body back before shifting forward.

I've watched the bow and arrow video and tried it before, it feels really familiar because I used to climb a lot and you frequently sink deep into your lats before pulling and when you climb an 'arete' it's literally like climbing up a doorframe where you have to push your self away sideways with your foot on the doorframe to counter balance so you can climb in a 'lie-back' position.

However, I had to work a lot to stop finishing my reach way too early, so I think that's lead me to be hesitant to fully load the bow because I start to feel like I might start pushing the disc back too much while trying to load deeper, but I should just try fully committing and not worry about that for a while since I now have muscle memory to start the reach back later than I used.

Re-watching loading the bow, I forgot about this part:

I was always checking for too much leaning back at full arm extension close to the brace landing so I was thinking about having to shift my weight forward more from the X to the brace to avoid that issue, but trying to do this instead seems like it will help a lot because you can't chicken out of the forward momentum or forget to shift more forward after the X if you are already 'drifting' forward before the brace.

On a side note, I wonder why Eagle's X got so much bigger:

 

[Brychanus]

Hah, don't worry, I never thought you'd do something so evil. I was just trying to square the comment about finding what wing angle feels natural with how I ended up externally rotating, because the briefcase carry felt more natural that day even though I don't normally do it because of how it relieves tension in the wrist. When I was trying to regain my hyzer in the past, I mistakenly thought seeing the disc on more hyzer during the reach back would help me get my hyzer back and external rotation makes it appear like it will be on more hyzer, so I think that's how it developed, not because it naturally felt better.


I've watched the bow and arrow video and tried it before, it feels really familiar because I used to climb a lot and you frequently sink deep into your lats before pulling and when you climb an 'arete' it's literally like climbing up a doorframe where you have to push your self away sideways with your foot on the doorframe to counter balance so you can climb in a 'lie-back' position.

However, I had to work a lot to stop finishing my reach way too early, so I think that's lead me to be hesitant to fully load the bow because I start to feel like I might start pushing the disc back too much while trying to load deeper, but I should just try fully committing and not worry about that for a while since I now have muscle memory to start the reach back later than I used.

Re-watching loading the bow, I forgot about this part:
View attachment 333468
I was always checking for too much leaning back at full arm extension close to the brace landing so I was thinking about having to shift my weight forward more from the X to the brace to avoid that issue, but trying to do this instead seems like it will help a lot because you can't chicken out of the forward momentum or forget to shift more forward after the X if you are already 'drifting' forward before the brace.

On a side note, I wonder why Eagle's X got so much bigger:
View attachment 333469

Will try not to distract you from the coaching points above (please heed them!), but if we're agreeing to just nerd out:

1. I look at James Proctor sometimes for one of the more extreme briefcase forms - note he goes wing up supinating into the backswing and then immediately reverses the action moving forward.



That pattern can be more complex to learn than relaxed/wing down in backswing, and in some ways is fighting gravity a bit and may also be fighting your own natural patterns. On the other hand, one thing to know about the door frame/load the bow and backswing concepts is that it's as much about how you coil and build up torque that releases when you plant as it is the action of the arm and not collapsing at the shoulder. Sidewinder just had me try another tweak just this week that probably wouldn't have worked if I hadn't already spent so much time with the door frame drills. It's more like the Proctor pattern but less aggressively so - a little more natural for me to move like PP or Gibson through the arm. One reason I'm pointing you back to DFD and load the bow there is that I could immediately tell your body isn't getting the full action coiling back, so you need to fix that for the rest to matter or be easier to work on.

2. I get what you're saying about load the bow and reaching back early/leaning away. I think fishing around in Hershyzer and Door frame drills were the most productive for me. I also am careful not to do too many net sessions before throwing at targets outside (even if I only have time to do it during rounds these days and let my front 9 suffer for it lol).

3. Eagle's still in my top 5 forms to watch even though I can't do anything remotely like that lmao. I have a hobby obsession with watching pro form development and watched a lot of younger-to-modern Eagle over the past year. Some of his X- looks exaggerated relative to the camera angle/stride pattern, but I do think it got longer over time. I think (guess) it's a combo of

(1) tons of his own form attention to detail that started out more meticulous then got more relaxed and more natural over time. You can really see this when he was around 15-17 years old when his move looked more like he was engineering all of the angles in a lab before it smoothed out a lot by 20 years old;

(2) posture & stride adjustments to the shot/intended apex;

(3) developing increasingly horizontal momentum and leverage off the drive leg and better and better leverage from the plant over the years;

(4) still has a lot of hidden vertical force in his move that works well with gravity when he plants which only incredibly long and flexible people can pull off. He has some of the best hip and thoracic mobility we've ever seen. When he throws power hyzerflips down the fairway even on a low trajectory his plant hip clears almost vertically back toward the sky, which you don't see often.

Responsible coaching tip: work on what was said above & please don't go destroying your front hip trying to do this today

 

[disc-golf-neil]

Will try not to distract you from the coaching points above (please heed them!), but if we're agreeing to just nerd out:

1. I look at James Proctor sometimes for one of the more extreme briefcase forms - note he goes wing up supinating into the backswing and then immediately reverses the action moving forward.



That pattern can be more complex to learn than relaxed/wing down in backswing, and in some ways is fighting gravity a bit and may also be fighting your own natural patterns. On the other hand, one thing to know about the door frame/load the bow and backswing concepts is that it's as much about how you coil and build up torque that releases when you plant as it is the action of the arm and not collapsing at the shoulder. Sidewinder just had me try another tweak just this week that probably wouldn't have worked if I hadn't already spent so much time with the door frame drills. It's more like the Proctor pattern but less aggressively so - a little more natural for me to move like PP or Gibson through the arm. One reason I'm pointing you back to DFD and load the bow there is that I could immediately tell your body isn't getting the full action coiling back, so you need to fix that for the rest to matter or be easier to work on.

2. I get what you're saying about load the bow and reaching back early/leaning away. I think fishing around in Hershyzer and Door frame drills were the most productive for me. I also am careful not to do too many net sessions before throwing at targets outside (even if I only have time to do it during rounds these days and let my front 9 suffer for it lol).

3. Eagle's still in my top 5 forms to watch even though I can't do anything remotely like that lmao. I have a hobby obsession with watching pro form development and watched a lot of younger-to-modern Eagle over the past year. Some of his X- looks exaggerated relative to the camera angle/stride pattern, but I do think it got longer over time. I think (guess) it's a combo of

(1) tons of his own form attention to detail that started out more meticulous then got more relaxed and more natural over time. You can really see this when he was around 15-17 years old when his move looked more like he was engineering all of the angles in a lab before it smoothed out a lot by 20 years old;

(2) posture & stride adjustments to the shot/intended apex;

(3) developing increasingly horizontal momentum and leverage off the drive leg and better and better leverage from the plant over the years;

(4) still has a lot of hidden vertical force in his move that works well with gravity when he plants which only incredibly long and flexible people can pull off. He has some of the best hip and thoracic mobility we've ever seen. When he throws power hyzerflips down the fairway even on a low trajectory his plant hip clears almost vertically back toward the sky, which you don't see often.

Responsible coaching tip: work on what was said above & please don't go destroying your front hip trying to do this today

Thanks, for loading the bow I kind of know what to look for from watching the video on it, but at the same time when looking at my actual throw as I work on it I'm sure it's not going to be super easy for me to identify. Do you have any additional tips for what signs to look at since you said you could easily see? Otherwise I'll just be comparing to the video to see if it looks similar.

 

[sidewinder22]

On a side note, I wonder why Eagle's X got so much bigger:

The older one was just a short throw, so he's moving much slower.

Here's a younger eagle, around 16 before he ever starting touring.

 

[Brychanus]

Thanks, for loading the bow I kind of know what to look for from watching the video on it, but at the same time when looking at my actual throw as I work on it I'm sure it's not going to be super easy for me to identify. Do you have any additional tips for what signs to look at since you said you could easily see? Otherwise I'll just be comparing to the video to see if it looks similar.

I would do the drill and post the video. Much faster ;-)

Nerding: Part of Eagle's action through the hips/"post up" evolved over time. Compare ~1.04 in the vid SW linked above to more recent videos. Trying to find an analogous angle.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

I would do the drill and post the video. Much faster ;-)

Nerding: Part of Eagle's action through the hips/"post up" evolved over time. Compare ~1.04 in the vid SW linked above to more recent videos. Trying to find an analogous angle.

Is the part of the loading bow drill about getting your upper body over the disc / pole prop something that would increase the amount of hyzer? it looks like it would, but it's not the same as leaning forward from the hips so I'm assuming that leaning-esque move naturally unwinds

 

[sidewinder22]

A little bit over the disc, but still inside posture. The camera angle on Eagle is a little skewed. You don't want to be too over the toes like Mr D below.

 

[Brychanus]

Is the part of the loading bow drill about getting your upper body over the disc / pole prop something that would increase the amount of hyzer? it looks like it would, but it's not the same as leaning forward from the hips so I'm assuming that leaning-esque move naturally unwinds

I found it easier to take the posture LtB trains and throw on hyzer/hyzerflip at first. Then you can use the "same" posture adjusted to each shot.

SW's image might have addressed what you meant by leaning-esque specifically & it's easier to critique you doing the drill (you should share the side and rear view), but I wanted to orient your attention to a couple mechanics that most people struggle with right about now. IMO the more control you develop over the following, the easier it gets to make more subtle and faster changes later.

Compare Eagle's power hyzerflips to the posture he teaches in the video. SW tends to stand more tall & relaxed, but he is still hinging at the hips and coiling back with sidebend to achieve the move. The depth of the hinge hip is related to the "forward lean" - basically, the deeper the hinge, the more the upper body looks like it's leaning. Some people hinge incorrectly and develop weird leans.

I have a lot of body mass through my core and shoulder line/chest. I was a curious cat so I played with other things, but I eventually conceded that SW was right (again) that I would find it easier to throw standing taller, which means I have less hip hinge depth, but it also keeps my mass centered and allows it to rotate faster and commit power through my leading shoulder when I plant. On the other hand, I and most people usually need to experiment with deeper movements past what was "ideal" for their body to know the difference between good and bad actions. Your move will look necessarily somewhat different due to your body type, but use the same posture principles. Trick for Load the Bow is you what to use it to learn the mechanics Eagle uses "retrofitted" to whatever is best for your body.




Also mess around with this clip SW shared with me a while back to get loose before you Load the Bow. Notice how Kevin hinges back at the hips to set up his drill move. You want to continue that loose move in the hip hinge as you "load the bow". If Kevin kept swinging his throwing arm all the way back away from the intended trajectory while stepping his plant leg forward, that's basically most of the way to Load the Bow or Door Frame Drill!