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On feel vs. real - IMO there are good feels, but they need to be felt in the context of good actions. E.g., drill moves can give you the feel for the preferred moves, but that's also why it's important to check that it's the correct action. If it is, then you can seek the feel in your swing.
I think it's probably worth your time to work on the "don't spill the beverage" and dingle arms in the same context. Getting the off arm naturally relaxed and working with the body is better than micromanaging it IMO (that can come later if it needs tweaks). Getting the whole body whipping the arm through as a unit with your mass can get easier doing moves like these. You should literally hold a beverage for now (I swear it works):
There needs to be an inward move before the outward move. I don't like starting feet together like you do and striding outward. I would rather see Elephant Walk or start wide open and end up closed, Open to Closed drill, similar to the Twirly Bird. Or just standstill in staggered stance and figure 8 motion.
Working with a hammer (cuz if I can't throw the hammer right, I assume I won't be able to throw the disc right?)
Focused on (a) figure 8 motion (b) falling into transition (c) not spinning out the hips (d) weight over front foot. First gif is one the first ones, second is the last one. In the moment and while checking the videos in between each throw I felt like I was improving on (b) and (c) but looking at them side by side they look pretty similar in that respect, but I do think (d) at least was improved.
Next improvement will be standing in the same place every time...
Here is me trying to get the same hammer toss feeling into the throw, and also working on adding an inward move before the outward move and doing it in rhythm.
1. Your hammer is over-curling coming forward from the top of backswing, so your handle is 90 degrees, instead of lagging straight back. I think this is because you aren't shifting forward...
2. Your mass is not shifting back or forth, it just stays in the middle. Your rear foot goes around to the left tee side instead of countering behind to the right.
I feel like the problem is that it's so unnatural for me to shift my weight to be stacked over my front foot/hip that I have to reeeally exaggerate to get there. I especially think I'm also not going forward (as in left of target) over my front foot enough. I did almost nothing but throw the hammer for like an hour today, I think it looks better?
Also after this I threw a few discs and got a couple out to ~250 throwing basically the same as in the hammer video (no step) so I feel like it's putting me in the right direction.
You need to work on doing Door Frame Drills leading with the butt. You are tipped over forward, reaching back high and pulling with just your upper body mass, instead of the butt/center of mass and upper body getting pulled/tipped back.
So first of all, right after my last post I went and played with my buddies and had one of my best rounds ever. Well, it didn't show up on the scoreboard because of a 3-hole stretch going +12 because I couldn't keep the disc in bounds. But besides that, I was hitting lines like never before and consistently getting the disc out to 250 without a ton of effort. (My putting was terrible and I probably took another 6 strokes missing 15' or less birdie/par putts but I never practice putting so that's to be expected at this point.)
Moving on, I practiced door frame drill a bunch at home yesterday, feel like I somewhat understand it. Took a bunch of video doing it and made adjustments, no posting because my place is embarrassingly messy.
Tried to incorporate it into throwing this morning. Throwing the hammer felt pretty good, this is the farthest I've thrown it.
Hadn't done E-walk in a while so decided to do some of that with the hammer this morning too
However, throwing the disc with more emphasis on the door frame drill... did not feel good. I was all over the place and could only get maybe 2 or 3 out of 20 throws to 250, and everything was coming out very anhyzer (might need to adjust grip again to account for the change). It's hard for me to get from peak reachback where my right shoulder is over my rear foot, to the hit of the throw where my upper body is stacked vertically over my plant foot, without toppling over. Instead I basically just stay leaned back too far like we were at a few posts ago. Something to keep working at...
Also I realize part of the problem is still that my left hand is flailing about again, I need to remember to bring something to hold on to instead of just trying to freehand the imaginary beverage.
However, throwing the disc with more emphasis on the door frame drill... did not feel good. I was all over the place and could only get maybe 2 or 3 out of 20 throws to 250, and everything was coming out very anhyzer (might need to adjust grip again to account for the change). It's hard for me to get from peak reachback where my right shoulder is over my rear foot, to the hit of the throw where my upper body is stacked vertically over my plant foot, without toppling over. Instead I basically just stay leaned back too far like we were at a few posts ago.
1. Slow waaaaaaaay down. I used to do a drill to see how slow I could throw and it was surprising to see how far the disc went.
2. You seem to be too turned back in the back swing. The over turning is probably a cause of the spin out which leaks all the power since you have no leverage.
3. Also need more side bend. But I think the bigger help would be to post the door frame drill videos. You can use a lamp post or something like that at a park.
If you turn back in a standstill that far/fully loaded it either needs to be more like Reverse stride - patient and letting your mass go all the way back with the backswing - or like seabas Bh where he shifts forward in unison with the backswing. Right now I think you're kinda shoving off your rear leg too fast into the plant.
I also don't think you're ever really getting on top of either leg during the E-walk drill. There and in the hammer toss it looks like you're standing pigeon-toed and squeezing your knees in trying to keep your balance and power the swing.
In e-walk don't walk in that zig-zag pattern - just stride more directly ahead of you like naturally walking. Be more patient and swing loose all the way before you take the next step. The power from the swing comes from landing on the ground and resisting/leveraging off of it when you land.
I am seeing (and have seen previously) that my hips are turning too far back which probably doesn't help with any of these problems, although I also may suffer a flexibility issue of having a hard time getting into the reachback without doing that. Something to keep working toward.
Also I find that feeling the weight shift and the plant foot crush/leverage/etc. is significantly easier for me when making a full step (like reverse stride, or open->closed hammer throw, or starting in an X-step position, etc...) than full standstill. I know it's obviously possible to do it in a standstill, but wondering if I should use a little more footwork to get the feeling down better and then try to translate that back into the standstill.
I finally practiced putting for ~20 minutes at the end of my last field work session, it was not pretty...
Probably overdid it this weekend with all the playing/fieldwork, still sore a couple days later so decided not to throw today. Brychanus's video "Expectations and Pushing Your Limits" always comes to mind in these situations - hard not to always get out there though.
Based on all of your guys' recent comments and some more video review, I realized a big error I was making - I am turning my hips back and then reaching back to get over the rear leg, then attempting to shift to the plant leg in that fixed position, which basically forces my upper body to rotate long before I ever make it to the plant leg. I living-room-practiced doing the hip turn/shift simultaneously, and the reachback simultaneously, and it makes a lot more sense and feels more natural. Hopefully this will translate in the field.
Until then, here's some door frame with that thought in mind (enjoy the house crocs):
You are kind of doing the drill backwards, as you are setup in a static stance and trying to make an arm backswing to the door frame. The West one looked like you got much better shoulder turn, but anyways....
1. Grab the door frame. This should be the starting point of the drill. Don't much care where your feet are at this point.
2. Walk away from the door frame while holding on to it.
3. Play around with your rear foot placement while holding on to the door frame. Play around how the foot placement affects your leverage. Also hand placement - high/low/med.
4. Relax/hang from the door frame, let it pull your body back deeper into backswing as you shift forward.
Long morning in the field, extremely long blog post incoming
Hammer elephant walk - I have a hard time not "pigeon toeing" my right foot, kinda just naturally turns inward. Flexibility issue?
Here I tried really exaggerating the compression/decompression as my feet struck the ground, I felt like I was really "getting it" although I had a hard time slowing down while exaggerating it that way.
A bunch of hammer throws later:
Here is me attempting, largely unsuccessfully, to slow down
After a while of throwing, I felt like I was getting very mechanical, so I tried to reset into a more "free wheeling" natural throw, similar to how Brychanus recommends building it up in his backhand form videos. When I was doing practice swings like this, I felt like my plant leg mechanics were more in line with what I wanted and it like I was generating a lot of power from the plant foot through my upper body.
However, when I actually go to throw, I have a hard time replicating that same feeling. Maybe just need to drive out the muscle memory? I can see here that my lower body mechanics look totally different.
Of course the first one might just be bad anyway, because I end up with my upper body backwards instead of over the plant leg.
Anyway one thing I have also consistently noticed is how my throwing shoulder keeps getting raised up, I believe it is from opening up too early, which SW22 pointed out a little while back where my shoulders were basically forward when the disc is released. I think I've improved since then but still having issues.
Given that I tried doing some OLD throws kind of, where I focused on keeping that shoulder down (swing thought that I like for this - "shoulder is the battering ram"), and compression/decompression with the plant foot/leg (which is why I say OLD "kind of", because I was bouncing in and out of that compression. or maybe that's what I was supposed to be doing all along)
Also was trying to keep the peak of the backswing out and away from my body a bit more. A related issue is that my hips are just turning back way too much still, they're almost 180 to the target pretty often. Some combo of flexibility/bad habit ingrained.
I think I'm looking better than a couple weeks ago, but I still need to work on getting the plant leg mechanics down. It probably doesn't help that I change something every time I go out.
I am able to get discs out to ~250 often but not regularly at this point, although right now the consistency of where they land laterally is totally gone lol.
One other note - after a round last weekend my buddy asked me to help explain how the X-step is supposed to be done. I was trying to explain and demonstrate what coming out of the X-step should accomplish, and I had a disc in my hand, and when I did this I accidentally winged the disc easily north of 300 feet (albeit on a horrible hyzer line). Up to this point my goal has been to hit 300 with a standstill before I work on the walk up/X-step, but I'm wondering if I should be putting a little work into this just to get that added distance off the tee when I actually play rounds...
Re: reverse pivot - I think I went from the bad form of "swing arm back, then turn rear hip, then shift" to the overcorrected bad form of "turn left hip/shift then swing arm back" kind of.
I had two recent revelations:
1. I need to actually play more instead of only focusing on throwing in the field and then just playing once a week with my buddies. While my distance and ability to hit a line off the tee is improving, everything that happens after that is a disaster. (Doesn't help that I keep making changes to my form every other day...)
2. This one is the big one - foot alignment. Somehow I had gotten in my head the following two things:
- I. Stand with body facing 90 degrees to the target
- II. Plant foot should end up closed, e.g. 90 degrees to the target
In order to accomplish this, I had to actively turn my plant foot inward, which put my right leg/foot out of alignment. I believe this was a prime factor leading to the pigeon-footing, and also was generally putting my out of balancing in the plant.
I realized the issue while I was reading this thread by HUB about shifting in the correct direction. I started turning my whole body ~20 degrees to the left, which meant I was shifting slightly more diagonally and my plant foot was landing 90 degrees closed to the target while still being neutral to my body. This felt much more stable and balanced. Unfortunately I still have the muscle memory of actively turning my foot inward that I need to drill out, but this revelation has made a big difference to the feeling.
For kicks I made this fun graphic showing the difference to help explain.
Hopefully someone smarter can chime in and let me know if I have anything wrong here.
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Moving on to some fieldwork.
So first, hammer drills. Also inspired by the aforementioned HUB post (although I've seen his windmill videos plenty of times before), I started off doing some windmill drills to try and get the feeling of coming up on the drive leg and then down onto the plant foot. Second throw here felt more powerful, but I can see there was more spinning and less decompression after the plant.
Hammer windmill x2
Then I tried to do a hammer toss but with an over emphasis on the windmill/dingle arm. These felt powerful, I am getting some interesting action with the extension of the plant leg/driving through the heel during and after the release. However something is happening late because in the first two throws here I am very open by the time the hammer comes out, and in the third throw I lose balance.
(However analyzing the third throw, I feel like my positioning looks very well leveraged into the throw, before I fall over after releasing the hammer lol)
Hammer dingle arm throw x3
almost looks like a proper finish, if you didn't know what was gonna happen next
And then here is trying to do a full hammer toss, which felt pretty good/effortless and went fairly far
Once again I had a pretty tough time translating the hammer throw learnings into throwing the actual disc. Here is me trying to windmill, where I end up twirling like a ballerina.
At some point here, I had the thought that I am still spinning out a lot regardless of what I do. I think, over the last few weeks, I got too caught up in trying to make my spin-throw look like what it is "supposed" to look like, and stopped trying to capture the feel. I suppose that is the danger of over-analyzing static pictures. I know I know how to feel the brace, or at least feel me "hitting the breaks" on the leg/hip, because I can do it in my living room without a disc. So I started focusing on really just nailing that one feeling and then trying to throw the disc that way.
As per usual, I can get the correct action with the practice swing, but when I actually go to throw I tend to lose it.
Side note: Sometimes when I do this, I feel like I may be hyperextending my plant leg too forcefully, definitely don't want to take an injury.
I tried a few different ways of "feeling the brace". Here is with the "battering ram" swing thought:
And here is with the "front splits" similar to how SW22 shares here
Finally, here is one of like ten successive throws where I just tried to do standstills after all of this. Again, hitting the brakes fine with the practice swing but spinning out hardcore with the real throw. I can see that I am pulling through well before my heel is in the ground here, so not surprising that it wasn't working out for me.
but I never practice putting so that's to be expected at this point.)
