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My post above was more about some comments made a page or three ago, where my left arm sticking out was identified as an issue in and of itself, regardless of how it was used. I just wanted to throw (heh) the thought out there that the initial position is fine, which others have argued against.
I've been reviewing Tamm's 710' drive and I think I've been going off on a tangent with my left arm. You've been saying I need to keep it tighter, but every time I don't reach that elbow wide I lose 40-50 feet on the throw. That reaching out is a function of me pulling my left shoulder back to enhance rotation AND allows my left pec to fully extend. When I begin the throw, my left pec pulls tight, driving my shoulder in and accelerating the throw.
Look at Tamm in the video below and pause at 4:35. His arm is in an almost identical position - left shoulder rotated backwards, upper arm parallel with arm, and forearm also extended (mine is tucked). So I don't think that position is necessarily bad one.
His movement with the off arm as he begins the drive is better, with him getting the arm mass closer to the body than I do while also driving with the rear shoulder. However, I think my left arm reaching out like I do in prior videos is actually a correct starting point for shoulder drive.
My experience the field agrees - I can physically feel the throw going slower without the off arm drive, the discs don't turn as much (slower release velocity), and the final thrown distance is much, much shorter.
Hey man - you mentioned injuries - DG related, and if so where were they?
I'm going to say words like "lateral" and "rotation." Try not to get hung up on them and focus on the process rather than the words.
Problem 1. Crush/plant:
You still appear to not get planted ideally in the crush and some spinout - it's probably the exact same issue as when you last showed your One Leg Drill. You've got a lot of weight on your ball of your foot in the follow through. McBeth does that sometimes, but the mechanics he uses there are completely different from yours. Regardless of whether it's on the ball (Paul) or in the heel (most other top throwers), you never got good lateral resistance like Wiggins. Remember it's not really about the ball or the heel as much as it is about how your body swings in and lands overall. You cannot cheat this and it's a distance limiter because you are venting power into rotation without it. If ground slipped out from under you, you would rotate and fall back on your butt rather than sliding forward like Wiggins. I'm afraid to say that if you don't get the point and work on this hard you'll just be compensating for it forever. BTW, as a big guy I can attest that softening the blow with the ball of foot/plantar flexion and crushing in the heel is way easier on my knee at least, YMMV.
Problem 2. Off arm & missing the big picture:
Your off arm is compensating too. I'll try to explain this somewhat differently than last time, and perhaps more thoroughly and better.
I do not doubt that you are getting more velocity & distance from your current "off arm drive" relative to not doing it. However, part of the reason it works for you is that you are swinging it up and getting a gravity assist, but then when it swings in I agree with SW and Hampejo that it's giving you somewhat too much rotation in the throw and not enough drive and torque out directly on the desired trajectory. Part of what your off arm is doing in the backswing is counterbalancing your posture rather than the ideal action, and then when you swing in the context of your posture you get a too-rotational move. I think Drew Gibson actually had a version of this going on at various points in his form development until it settled down in his modern form. I used to do it too. You can still get a lot of power, but I think it's not ideal. When Paul's got out of whack, he corrected it. Gibson's evolved over years. Tamm's definitely not doing it there.
I am going to ignore the specific position of the off arm and focus us on how it works in the context of the rest of your throw. I still see evidence that there are issues in how you load the backswing against the rear side, and your body is tipping slightly into the brace and you end up with a too-rotational throw.
Even though I'm showing you a position, try to forget about the position and think about it works in motion in real time. If you don't get braced inside the rear leg without over-rotating the top line (compare your leading shoulder and orientation of your hips in the backswing to Tamm's), you will tend to get unwanted counterbalancing with the off arm and a too-rotational throw. It's subtle regardless of the camera angle. I think that's why you don't see it yet. Combining these issues with the plant issue in Problem 1, your body is squeezing things in when you plant for control and it's why your follow through doesn't look like Tamm's or similar pros.
I think part of the reason this is hard for you to feel, see, and do (other than many reps with your current form not doing it) is that you haven't felt the difference between the pure "elbow-to-hip" maneuver that drives your mass more laterally to the target into the plant. It's not about the elbow or the off arm position exactly - it's about the whole body move. That's why there's so much variability in off arm moves. But the best ones are all getting this right.
To me this is easier to see in Simon. Here is the exact angle I made that image from. This is one of the best angles IMO to understand how the elbow drive ought to work and how it relates to the rotation, which is more of an effect of the elbow drive, posture, and plant leg resisting the ground than you're getting in your current form.
This really didn't start to get better for me (the big picture posture stuff) until I threw heavier stuff, did various crush and one leg drills, etc. because it's super hard to micromanage. YMMV.
And you must work on landing in the plant better.
Sincerely & with love,
- a tortured & dedicated form student
Off arm looks a little better/tighter, but looks like you are too focused on a downward and/or rotational motion, instead of forward motion with the left elbow to left hip which should create some side bend and the left foot to leave the ground.
So I worked on this idea, SW22, and it seems to have made some improvement. I tried throwing today while working to bring the arm to side and release the weight from the back foot at the correct time (rear arm and foot begin movement together when the front foot plants). You had also noted before that I tended to rise during the throw, with my knee "snapping" back and locking out during the throw. Focusing on this idea today seems to have helped with that, as I am pivoting without rising or my knee snapping back.
I've attached some pictures below for comparison (top row is old, bottom row is from today), with the second set of pictures showing the difference in "finishing" position after the throw. My knee is much more clearly bent now, and the angle from the base of my neck all the way to my left knee is much less vertical.
I'll keep working on that idea to solidify the movement, but I also noticed that the pros also tend to have more tilt in their axis. Any time I try to match that tilt I end up throwing way up in the air on hyzer. Is it more a matter of sinking back (hing at hip and knee to move CoG more eastwards) during the x-step rather than hinging at the hip (only hip hing, leaning upper body forwards to achieve the tilt)?
Sorry for making this a YT short, but wanted to check from the back angle. I think I need to plant a bit more staggered- during this throw my plant foot slides westward a bit and I rotate cleanly on my heel as a bit. Thoughts?
Carpet is revealing. I still think I'm on track with this but I'm going to adapt how I talk about it. I said "overrotating" into the backswing before and I don't think that was the best way to talk about it.
Your rear foot slips East when you leverage against it into the backswing. Your front foot slips West when you leverage against it in the plant - a tell that there's too much rotation in the chain and not enough lateral force. That also robs you of some of the torque force from the ground. It's not just because of the carpet - it's because of the action. Still not quite bringing maximum leverage lateral enough heading into the final stride at least. If anything you might want to first attack it using less stagger at first to mitigate the power-leaking rotation.
If you fell down on the carpet or on dirt, you would be dropping into a straddle with your plant foot skittering West. You want it to be skittering more North.
I think regardless of your final form/amount of stagger you still have to get more of that lateral component heading directly into the plant.
It reminds me of this the part of this vid SW shared with me of "the lid coming off the pressure cooker." Your backswing I think is pulling you up and behind your rear foot pressure rather than bracing you firmly laterally against it. So when you land (regardless of stagger) you aren't getting the shift and plant you want. That's why the feet are a little too slippy. https://youtu.be/2DMwiBkvrkg?t=508
Wiggins does get a bit of stagger in the final move but I think he's got the lateral component you see in SW's door frame drill above on elite lockdown.
Sorry, but I'm just not buying it. My plant is actually sliding in-line with my momentum, not directly westward. Second, the rear foot kicking back eastward is normal - in fact, it must happen with a tilted throwing axis to maintain balance. Look at Tamm's throw above. His rear foot kicks eastwards as part of his tilted throwing axis.
Hard to tell much with the feet slipping. They are slipping rotationally east-west(hard to tell if north/horizontally too) and your rear knee trails late around to the left, instead of coming forward closer to front knee.
Sorry, but I'm just not buying it. My plant is actually sliding in-line with my momentum, not directly westward. Second, the rear foot kicking back eastward is normal - in fact, it must happen with a tilted throwing axis to maintain balance. Look at Tamm's throw above. His rear foot kicks eastwards as part of his tilted throwing axis.
No need to apologize, and you can feel free to tell me to buzz off.
Not talking about the kick back or counterbalance with the foot/leg heading East, which I agree is part of a good tilted axis. I'm talking about the foot action against the ground and how you're leveraged into the feet, though I agree with SW it's hard to tell on that alone. But it's part of a pattern I've seen in your past several swing posts too.
Whatever the exact cause, your follow through balance pattern reminds me a bit of the consequences of the Clement timestamp I shared. Your tilted axis also has too much of a bend which is very obvious after the rear knee doesn't swing forward like SW just mentioned. You have more of a pirouette and you vent a lot of your momentum in a spin that takes you back toward the camera. Tamm vents his remaining momentum at closer to a right angle heading East like most top throwers relative to the trajectory.
I don't think focusing on stagger alone will fix it. But I'm following up because I care and I learn more when I'm wrong too.
Whatever you think of what I just wrote, I'd at least be looking at this:
Brychanus, I'm certainly not saying that! I appreciate all time and help you and SW22 are putting in to help me improve.
One question I haven't had answered is the throwing axis. I seem to be quite a bit more upright during the throw (standing too straight?) and when I throw my rear leg kicks up. The pros seem to "leave it behind", with their rear leg nearly straight - as in the Tamm photo above - even going so far as to have that rear foot kick down again. I see this quite often in Paige Pierce and Eagle's throws. Right now, trying to deweight my rear leg any sooner almost feels like hopping onto my front foot. Looking at the videos, I'm not sure that some of the other issues aren't just a function of me standing too straight during the throw. Standing most upright means all my rotational momentum is directly horizontal, while the pros seem to tilt 30ish degrees, translating some of that momentum to the vertical plane, and thus forwards. Am I off base with that thinking?
This may be a bit exaggerated, but should the tilted axis and rear leg look more like this? Again, sorry for the YT short, but it's just a quick snap while I'm thinking of it.
Sure thing man and of course reject whatever is nuts. I think learning the "ideal" tilted axis is really hard. I'm starting to believe it just can't be forced & it's just a result of what happens when everything is working well together. E.g. you might have seen SW just gave me a tip about how I lead with my elbow and my body needs to make a ton of important adjustments just to start pulling it off. Not sure yet if there's wisdom in that for you but I have an eye on it. In any case:
That looks a little better and I think it's helping reveal part of the issue. Some of this looks similar to things I've been struggling through recently. Here's what I see fwiw:
1. Relative to Bazooka, I think you may still have a little s-curve sneaking in your spine w/ anterior pelvic tilt. That always seems to **** up players' axis. When you drop off the rear side into the plant, you start to get too outside posture/head pitching Northwest and you don't get as stacked as well as he does onto the front leg - compare the leg angles relative to (a) the ground and (b) to the upper body angles. I know the camera/shot type aren't identical but if you watch in real time I think your head is pitching over as you drop off the rear leg rather than helping you shift more directly onto your front leg like the big guy. Bazooka's plant leg is already giving him a lot of fast, strong leverage directly against the ground while he swings "inside" his posture (seabas22 inside swing).
2. Since you weren't quite stacked and are out of posture, it becomes clear that your plant leg isn't giving you the juice and leverage vector into the front hip that Bazooka's is. Notice how far his plant hip has cleared to lead the swing. I think your swim move looks like that at this moment because of how you pitched too far NW with the head/body.
3. Since you didn't get the full leverage & hip clear in the plant, I think your upper body is swinging "over the top" (If I understand how SW uses that term). So as you enter follow through notice how Bazooka's upper and lower body look more like a unit, whereas yours is going over & around the front hip too much. Your plant hip is left behind a bit due to the process starting when you shift off the rear leg (1).
So I might be working on getting the spine more relaxed out of the s-curve more like "hugging the trash can", and how you shift diagonally to drop onto the plant leg swinging "inside" your posture.
Okay, I think I'm done with posting interior videos - I'll leave indoor practice for drills. The separation between my chest angle and hips isn't there during a normal throw. I think phantom-throwing inside with no disc in-hand is causing some unconscious issues that aren't present with a real throw. I'll wait until I have some better time to film actual throws.
Okay, I think I'm done with posting interior videos - I'll leave indoor practice for drills. The separation between my chest angle and hips isn't there during a normal throw. I think phantom-throwing inside with no disc in-hand is causing some unconscious issues that aren't present with a real throw. I'll wait until I have some better time to film actual throws.
Okay, so I tried two different things today with interesting results.
#1. First throw in the video below (bottom row on the 1st picture). Really focused on getting off the rear foot during the plant and falling onto the plant foot. Result: The pivot was cleanly on the heel for this throw. I was still very upright, with very little tilted axis. I was also off-balance at the end of the throw.
#2. Second throw in the video. Deliberately reached back "lower" and hinged at the hips more. Result: A better tilted axis during the throw, but still nowhere near Tamm's tilt. The pivot was not on the heel, but still had weight on the outside of the foot. I was still off balance to the left (west on the teepad) at the end of throw.
Note: Though the camera was in the same position, the second throw run-up was about 15 degrees off of the first throw. It looks like I'm more staggered in my first throw, but in reality my plant is about the same distance/offset; it's just my run-up angle is different between throws.
One thing that I noticed today that keeps a tilted axis when throwing is ensuring my right shoulder drops during the reachback and my left shoulder rises at the same time. Previously I was keeping them more or less level.
This seems to help my throwing speed as well. I'm still doing the elbow-to-hip drill, but today's practice had lots of throws in the 475+ range, with the best throw below.
No wind, 6' elevation drop on the throw. Noticeable difference with a tilted axis.
