Jacob Courtis' form & Gossage's interesting comment on it

[Brychanus]

Ehh, I'll continue to police language on poor descriptors that will get people hurt.

If people wanna use poor language to describe things, then... Whatever.

The language we should use should be less "hit things with stick" and more eloquent to try and get our brain to engage our body properly.

So, what we run into is this issue with trying to get people to connect with the message and understand. So we say things like "you need to arm the disc more."

What that actually TELLS your brain is "throw hard with arm."
But what you mean is "we need to assist the kinetic chain during the swing."

Well, which one makes more sense to say? well, the first one, but it gives the wrong ques.
So we need to actually talk about better ways to say it, and.. From what I can tell, nobody is really interested but me. So whatever.


I'm coming to find what people actually NEED to be doing is the beto drill more though. Because it will teach you to properly assist your swing in getting the disc out in a powerful fashion. Otherwise were going to do these really crappy pull through late release style throws. Which do generate a lot of power. But.. It's bad.

And when you really do watch these big dogs throw. they are not roudning into the power. They are presenting their arm in a fasion to sling it out from their chest in a powerful motion while they use fast twitch muscles to accelerate the disc into the hit.

I think part of what you are aiming to get at here are coaching cues to use to get people to apply better actions, right? And a concern that telling them to "arm" it carries poor action/injury risks? Is that consistent with Taylor's reply above, or are you emphasizing something else? Just trying to see where any consensus might be, or if people are disagreeing.

Beto: I still think that drill is still great. I always just add that if you don't have a good enough weight shift/transfer to lead the move out of the pocket, you can add (bad) torque to the joints in the lower body. I think that's part of why SW became deeply interested in shift mechanics and part of why I've benefitted from learning from him. Just something to keep an eye on if people try it.

 

[Sheep]

I think part of what you are aiming to get at here are coaching cues to use to get people to apply better actions, right? And a concern that telling them to "arm" it carries poor action/injury risks? Is that consistent with Taylor's reply above, or are you emphasizing something else? Just trying to see where any consensus might be, or if people are disagreeing.

Beto: I still think that drill is still great. I always just add that if you don't have a good enough weight shift/transfer to lead the move out of the pocket, you can add (bad) torque to the joints in the lower body. I think that's part of why SW became deeply interested in shift mechanics and part of why I've benefitted from learning from him. Just something to keep an eye on if people try it.

Yes, I'm really hard on good language to initiate good body actions.

Our body needs good instructions to perform well. If we keep giving it bad instructions and trying to do something that is different than the instruction, then we will struggle.

It's why things like "throw a ball" are so simple to our body.
cause we take the ball, we have a visual que of how to "throw" things watching others throw.

Disc golf mechanics are so unique that our body doesn't naturally do them, so we have to work extra hard to activate our body and our brains.

This is why guys like Gannon and others who started really young are going to be insane players like Simon. Because they were able to build into it at a younger age while they were still learning a lot of basic motor skills.

Malcom Gladwell talks about it in his book Outliers. Why a lot of prodigies of people are from a young age, because their body is still in the growth phase and is able to adapt in a way that compensates for so many things us lumbering oafs are unable to accommodate as easily.

So the verbal ques to them are also less important because their body adapted and figured it out when it was still in a space of being able to learn motor functions different.

Malcom also goes into the 10,000 hours stuff as well. At your and my age, its gonna be hard for us to hit those levels of practice in something that is a casual hobby.
I can hit 10,000 hours of thinking and study pretty easy, but throwing. my body is like "newp."

The part that is really scary though, and they noticed this.. oh.. crap 10-15 years ago. The motor skills of the upcoming gen z'ers is... bad. really really bad. Alright I can't easily find the article.
But in the tech world we entertain kids with ipads/tablets now. So they can swipe at age 3, but they can't stack blocks. And when they get older, from the study, they really struggle with a lot of fine motor skills. But they can swipe and operate digital devices better than most adults.

I wont get into my thoughts on that particular topic, but how we build skills, the practice and the learning of them goes a long ways.

We can take that level of information with us old crusties and provide far better input, to get far better output. And I'm so hard up about it because I've literally fixed peoples swings by giving them better verbal ques to focus on.

We can go look at an old phrase for learning "Garbage in, Garbage out." And that's what it is. But the idea's currently are "get content out, make it catchy." So, everyone is looking to try and connect in a really crude and rudimentary way, because its easy that way, but not necessarily correct.

Makes me think of someone making a video and posting it like this. "Step on the gas to drive you car." And the video is about how you must always hold the accelerator to the floor while trying to move forwards. That sounds really really dumb doesn't it? But some of this "catchy content" being produced with bad language isn't that the concepts are bad, it's that the concepts being explained are "push it to the floor all the way the whole time." when they mean, "moderate the pedal to maintain speed and control." or whatever.

It's me being me and being critical. But... Part of building coaching is being more accurate with our words, being more accurate with how we teach and say things, and presenting the data in a far more professional way than 30 second tiktoks. If you are taking coaching seriously, vs basically a bunch of click bait, get the info out get the views make money.
I'd LOVE to make money coaching, and I do in person. But .. I'm not putting out content to make money or get subscribers, I'm putting out content because I've finally decided my stance on it and the video is me solidifying that stance. if people happen to like it, then cool.

The amount of feedback on my calvin form video in the other thread has been.. well, nobody responded.
So.
Nobody really is concerned about off axis elbow torque causing injuries i guess. Someone didn't like it though, they downvoted.
"how dare you talk poorly about my hero!"
Sorry, Calvins upper body form is terrible.

Ahh well.

Crap, free form thought gets you in trouble.

Beto drill.
So, my problem with the beto drill isn't the drill. It's how Dan presented the information and how to do it.

I teach my students to do it with a weight shift and a brace. Basically I teach them to do the beto drill with crush the can.

 

[Sard0nyx]

Yes, I'm really hard on good language to initiate good body actions.

Our body needs good instructions to perform well. If we keep giving it bad instructions and trying to do something that is different than the instruction, then we will struggle.

It's why things like "throw a ball" are so simple to our body.
cause we take the ball, we have a visual que of how to "throw" things watching others throw.

Disc golf mechanics are so unique that our body doesn't naturally do them, so we have to work extra hard to activate our body and our brains.

This is why guys like Gannon and others who started really young are going to be insane players like Simon. Because they were able to build into it at a younger age while they were still learning a lot of basic motor skills.

Malcom Gladwell talks about it in his book Outliers. Why a lot of prodigies of people are from a young age, because their body is still in the growth phase and is able to adapt in a way that compensates for so many things us lumbering oafs are unable to accommodate as easily.

So the verbal ques to them are also less important because their body adapted and figured it out when it was still in a space of being able to learn motor functions different.

Malcom also goes into the 10,000 hours stuff as well. At your and my age, its gonna be hard for us to hit those levels of practice in something that is a casual hobby.
I can hit 10,000 hours of thinking and study pretty easy, but throwing. my body is like "newp."

The part that is really scary though, and they noticed this.. oh.. crap 10-15 years ago. The motor skills of the upcoming gen z'ers is... bad. really really bad. Alright I can't easily find the article.
But in the tech world we entertain kids with ipads/tablets now. So they can swipe at age 3, but they can't stack blocks. And when they get older, from the study, they really struggle with a lot of fine motor skills. But they can swipe and operate digital devices better than most adults.

I wont get into my thoughts on that particular topic, but how we build skills, the practice and the learning of them goes a long ways.

We can take that level of information with us old crusties and provide far better input, to get far better output. And I'm so hard up about it because I've literally fixed peoples swings by giving them better verbal ques to focus on.

We can go look at an old phrase for learning "Garbage in, Garbage out." And that's what it is. But the idea's currently are "get content out, make it catchy." So, everyone is looking to try and connect in a really crude and rudimentary way, because its easy that way, but not necessarily correct.

Makes me think of someone making a video and posting it like this. "Step on the gas to drive you car." And the video is about how you must always hold the accelerator to the floor while trying to move forwards. That sounds really really dumb doesn't it? But some of this "catchy content" being produced with bad language isn't that the concepts are bad, it's that the concepts being explained are "push it to the floor all the way the whole time." when they mean, "moderate the pedal to maintain speed and control." or whatever.

It's me being me and being critical. But... Part of building coaching is being more accurate with our words, being more accurate with how we teach and say things, and presenting the data in a far more professional way than 30 second tiktoks. If you are taking coaching seriously, vs basically a bunch of click bait, get the info out get the views make money.
I'd LOVE to make money coaching, and I do in person. But .. I'm not putting out content to make money or get subscribers, I'm putting out content because I've finally decided my stance on it and the video is me solidifying that stance. if people happen to like it, then cool.

The amount of feedback on my calvin form video in the other thread has been.. well, nobody responded.
So.
Nobody really is concerned about off axis elbow torque causing injuries i guess. Someone didn't like it though, they downvoted.
"how dare you talk poorly about my hero!"
Sorry, Calvins upper body form is terrible.

Ahh well.

Crap, free form thought gets you in trouble.

Beto drill.
So, my problem with the beto drill isn't the drill. It's how Dan presented the information and how to do it.

I teach my students to do it with a weight shift and a brace. Basically I teach them to do the beto drill with crush the can.

Do you have an explanation or video on the Beto drill? I don't care how the presentation is. My issue with the drill has always been getting my arm to move powerfully away from the chest.

 

[Sheep]

Do you have an explanation or video on the Beto drill? I don't care how the presentation is. My issue with the drill has always been getting my arm to move powerfully away from the chest.

I think that's really the point of the drill is to build the muscle memory to push out vs trying to curl around.

Does that make sense?


Because when we focus on a "pull" type throw, we curl around. When we focus on a out in out throw, we are looking to get the shoulders and arm in time while pushing out.

So maybe the issues is shoulder engagement.
Because I generally use a bit of shoulder swing when doing the beto drill.

When I practice it solo, I suck at it.
When I show/demonstrate it to students I rip 300 foot bombers. and.. baffle myself. And I think a lot of it is learning to use the weightshift and hips to fire the shoulders better, but not in a fashion where youre in a full backswing and have to keep everything in time.

I came to some of these conclusions a few weeks ago playing with a friend who throws far.
And I was like "I'm really gonna watch what he does" cause he's not quite as musclar as I am, but about the same body lengths.
And.. watching him throw Stiletto's 500+ is pretty cool. And he doesn't put the disc super deep into the pocket. He's back by the rear peck, but he's able to fire the disc out powerfully from his chest almost like he's rounding the disc around. But if you just swing the disc out like that, its not very powerful, unless the shoulders are in time also dragging the arm in some way. Which, I think when people talk about "lag" that is really what they mean.

Because when the shoulders hit a certain angle and the arm is firing out, there is going to be a lag snap like a whip.

This is a weird concept I can explain and show, but not actually demonstrate in a real throw.

But I think some of what happens with people trying to run the beto drill is they start arming the disc, vs just practicing the push out motion.
Because they want the drill to feel powerful.
And its not always the case of how a drill works. We set this expectation for what the drill should do because we watch dan launch them out there, because he's not really explaining everything his body is doing while he performs the drill.
So I believe that when people are trying it, they end up just learning to half round the disc in a pull motion, vs a push out practice thing.

 

[Sard0nyx]

I think that's really the point of the drill is to build the muscle memory to push out vs trying to curl around.

Does that make sense?


Because when we focus on a "pull" type throw, we curl around. When we focus on a out in out throw, we are looking to get the shoulders and arm in time while pushing out.

So maybe the issues is shoulder engagement.
Because I generally use a bit of shoulder swing when doing the beto drill.

When I practice it solo, I suck at it.
When I show/demonstrate it to students I rip 300 foot bombers. and.. baffle myself. And I think a lot of it is learning to use the weightshift and hips to fire the shoulders better, but not in a fashion where youre in a full backswing and have to keep everything in time.

I came to some of these conclusions a few weeks ago playing with a friend who throws far.
And I was like "I'm really gonna watch what he does" cause he's not quite as musclar as I am, but about the same body lengths.
And.. watching him throw Stiletto's 500+ is pretty cool. And he doesn't put the disc super deep into the pocket. He's back by the rear peck, but he's able to fire the disc out powerfully from his chest almost like he's rounding the disc around. But if you just swing the disc out like that, its not very powerful, unless the shoulders are in time also dragging the arm in some way. Which, I think when people talk about "lag" that is really what they mean.

Because when the shoulders hit a certain angle and the arm is firing out, there is going to be a lag snap like a whip.

This is a weird concept I can explain and show, but not actually demonstrate in a real throw.

But I think some of what happens with people trying to run the beto drill is they start arming the disc, vs just practicing the push out motion.
Because they want the drill to feel powerful.
And its not always the case of how a drill works. We set this expectation for what the drill should do because we watch dan launch them out there, because he's not really explaining everything his body is doing while he performs the drill.
So I believe that when people are trying it, they end up just learning to half round the disc in a pull motion, vs a push out practice thing.

So it's supposed to feel weak? How does he do it so strongly? Or do we need bigger biceps to throw far haha? I do arm the disc a lot when trying to figure out the Beto drill.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

I think there is at least two parts to this: 1 - what is actually going on and 2 - what it feels like, what I cue to get the correct motion.

For 2 - thinking about the arm has resulted in me strong arming the disc and I get noticeably more power the more I can just whip and keep the arm loose.

For 1 - I think it is mostly about shoulder protraction (retraction will invariably result in bad rounding). When loading the disc behind you like in the door frame position while keeping the shoulder protracted the disc is gonna whip into the pocket and out of it without rounding going on.

However, maybe something else is going on, thus the question to which degree he might be driving the elbow forward consciously (arming it) vs. just keeping it loose and it whipping around. The screenshot below shows Courtis in the doorframe position, do you think he drives the elbow forward from that position or is he whipping it while keeping his arm loose?

View attachment 335223

I distinctly remember watching one view of cupcake in this tournament (can't remember which, not the linked ones) where it looked like his arm moved really fast during the power pocket between the left pec and across towards the right pec and my first somewhat inexperienced instinct was, "wow, he really drives the arm across the chest fast".

However, after going frame by frame in the two shots linked originally, I think sometimes it's easy for the eyes to play tricks on you / with the camera angle. For example, when the disc comes in to the left pec initially and then more upper body rotation starts happening, the chest is rotating away from the camera and bringing the disc in that direction and for a moment it looks like the disc is being dragged across the chest (as if by the arm) but it now looks more like the disc just moving with the upper body rotation than what I recalled.

 

[koiyote]

Yes, I'm really hard on good language to initiate good body actions.

Our body needs good instructions to perform well. If we keep giving it bad instructions and trying to do something that is different than the instruction, then we will struggle.

The thing with this is that it varies from person to person.

Person A has a collapsed pocket because their arm isn't assisting enough inside the closed kinetic loop. The language that gets them properly using their arm in that situation might very well be "arm the disc" while using body recruitment language may put them further down the hugging themselves route.

Person B has no proper sequencing and is overusing the arm entirely in which case saying "arm the disc" is a misstep and a focus on body recruitment may get them to the correct positions.

 

[Sheep]

So it's supposed to feel weak? How does he do it so strongly? Or do we need bigger biceps to throw far haha? I do arm the disc a lot when trying to figure out the Beto drill.

Might help, might make it more complicated, i duno. I'm goign to take a nap once this other video uploads and i post it.

 

[Kennets]

Might help, might make it more complicated, i duno. I'm goign to take a nap once this other video uploads and i post it.

I've had my issues with understanding the Beto drill, this helps a lot!

Good video sheep

 

[HyzerRoc]

IMO, the term "arming" is used to describe too many varied motions. With proper deep pocket timing, there is much less inertia on the arm and body and the arm movement can feel almost weightless. The load (or feel of "arming") on the system happens when the elbow begins extending early due to miss timed shoulder/horizontal abduction timing adding considerable inertia to the upper arm. (Think ice skaters extending their arms to slow their rotation.) With proper upper arm timing, the upper arm is in a position to be accelerated by the shoulder rotation instead of lagging behind and causing early elbow extension. Try not to conflate a perfect power pocket elbow position with the negative connotation of "arming", they are two completely different animals.

Yeah im also really skeptical on the cue of arming, thats why I put it in cursive. At least wanted to throw the OT video in here to engage with the idea for a bit instead of just discarding it. Framing it as acceleration makes much more sense to me.

 

[Brychanus]

Disc golf mechanics are so unique that our body doesn't naturally do them, so we have to work extra hard to activate our body and our brains.

This is why guys like Gannon and others who started really young are going to be insane players like Simon. Because they were able to build into it at a younger age while they were still learning a lot of basic motor skills.

Malcom Gladwell talks about it in his book Outliers. Why a lot of prodigies of people are from a young age, because their body is still in the growth phase and is able to adapt in a way that compensates for so many things us lumbering oafs are unable to accommodate as easily.

So the verbal ques to them are also less important because their body adapted and figured it out when it was still in a space of being able to learn motor functions different.

Malcom also goes into the 10,000 hours stuff as well. At your and my age, its gonna be hard for us to hit those levels of practice in something that is a casual hobby.
I can hit 10,000 hours of thinking and study pretty easy, but throwing. my body is like "newp."

I wanted to pick up the thread at 10,000 hours - Anders Ericsson talks about this: his work was a big basis for Gladwell, who popularized that number. Ericsson was talking about "deliberate practice." I've said that somewhere around here before. Some of this also depends on how you measure it (time vs. repetitions).

But on aging, expectations, and time: part of my furious tear through this site and obsession with mechanics was because I knew I wasn't getting any younger and was starting to get hurt.

This morning, I was thinking about how my average field session goes after a winter on hiatus. I warm up, then I have a "sweet spot" period of drives before I peter out. On the one hand, the work I put in the winter added some resilience and static and dynamic strength and mobility. That's hopefully going to help me do more of what I want to do and get less hurt doing it. Despite a ton of offseason work on my body, some part of the body tires out routinely by drive 40 or 50. That has always been the case for me as someone who can only get out a couple times a week (at best) for dedicated field work, which is always better than my basement. This time it was my calves while trying to get more athletic on my feet. So my gym time shifts to focus a little more on that.

But what I find funny is that I have always petered out at maybe 40-50 shots at 80%+ momentum/effort even when I was in worse shape. It's just that my ability gradually improves with practice. I know from experience I'm going to need 2-3 days recovery between drive practices to get the most out of them.

So given that, what's the math on "mastering" the skill? Fortunately in motor learning the repetition volume and quantity matter a little more than just the time. If I do that math, optimistically at 2x drive practice per week at 50 meaningful shots apiece, it means I would need roughly two years to become "expert" at that form/task if I simply count the number of shots to 10,000, plus whatever slop there is due to throwing poorly. Realistically if I also want to play, waste time on DGCR, do my job, and see my family and also have enough energy to play a round or two, it's more like 1 drive practice a week. So that's more like four years of distributed, deliberate practice. Worst case, if it were really just the time that matters, it would be more like 100 years!

 

[Sewer bill]

I wanted to pick up the thread at 10,000 hours - Anders Ericsson talks about this: his work was a big basis for Gladwell, who popularized that number. Ericsson was talking about "deliberate practice." I've said that somewhere around here before. Some of this also depends on how you measure it (time vs. repetitions).

But on aging, expectations, and time: part of my furious tear through this site and obsession with mechanics was because I knew I wasn't getting any younger and was starting to get hurt.

This morning, I was thinking about how my average field session goes after a winter on hiatus. I warm up, then I have a "sweet spot" period of drives before I peter out. On the one hand, the work I put in the winter added some resilience and static and dynamic strength and mobility. That's hopefully going to help me do more of what I want to do and get less hurt doing it. Despite a ton of offseason work on my body, some part of the body tires routinely by drive 40 or 50. That has always been the case for me as someone who can only get out a couple times a week (at best) for dedicated field work, which is always better than my basement. This time it was my calves while trying to get more athletic on my feet. So my gym time shifts to focus a little more on that.

But what I find funny is that I have always petered out at maybe 40-50 shots at 80%+ momentum/effort even when I was in worse shape. It's just that my ability gradually improves with practice. I know from experience I'm going to need 2-3 days recovery between drive practices to get the most out of them.

So given that, what's the math on "mastering" the skill? Fortunately in motor learning the repetition volume and quantity matter a little more than just the time. If I do that math, optimistically at 2x drive practice per week at 50 meaningful shots apiece, it means I would need roughly two years to become "expert" at that form/task if I simply count the number of shots to 10,000, plus whatever slop there is in throwing poorly. Realistically if I also want to play, waste time on DGCR, do my job, and see my family and also have enough energy to play a round or two, it's most like 1 drive practice a week. So that's more like four years of distributed, deliberate practice. Worst case, if it were really just the time that matters, it would be more like 100 years!

I think most people would get gassed after 40 or 50 80% throws. When I came back after a 10 year break I would drag my wife to the field on weekends and throw 100-200 at low power, maybe 50% tops. looking only for the cues from the sensation of the weight shift and clean follow through and the forearm trying to collapse then getting pulled by the elbow. Not that you need any swing thought cues you know more about the swing than I do.

 

[Brychanus]

I think most people would get gassed after 40 or 50 80% throws. When I came back after a 10 year break I would drag my wife to the field on weekends and throw 100-200 at low power, maybe 50% tops. looking only for the cues from the sensation of the weight shift and clean follow through and the forearm trying to collapse then getting pulled by the elbow. Not that you need any swing thought cues you know more about the swing than I do.

That's reassuring lol

I usually spend the most time now trying to figure out how to make the 80% more efficient than mash above that. That seems like it has done ok for me in the long run lifting the "floor" of performance.

Though I do think the few I spend above 80% are part of where distance gains (pushing the "ceiling") come from and probably a huge benefit to starting young. Seems that way anyway. Dunno what the ideal ratio would be but I'm spent pretty quickly throwing a handful at 90%-100%, so I've learned to take what I can from it, then go home lol.

Those 100-200 shots at ~half power are incredibly important too. When I feel good and have time I like to throw bunches of those before practicing drives. I like the "game" where I try to hit C1 as many times on as many lines as I can generate and give myself 2x points for parked and 5x points for every volleyball/net pole hit I get.