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I want to revive this conversation on head positioning, relative to the disc, when throwing. It seems to me with Kristin Tattar she does keep the eyes essentially looking at the disc from the peak of the backswing to the release of the disc. I do, however, think many/most pros don't do this. They appear to have the head turned more towards the direction they are throwing during the swing, though often the disc is released at the hit with such timing that the disc catches up with the eyes. Here's 3 sets of screenshots for 18 pros, as captured by the Rota website, that I compiled into 3 images. There are some exceptions there like Emerson Keith, who seem to look at the disc the entire time, or Chris Clemons (mirrored image) where the disc gets ahead of him. But it seems to me most of the pros are trying to ensure they're looking forward as much as possible, likely for accuracy reasons (hitting their lines). The main panels to look at are the ones in each Power Pocket column.In my form we're now trying to clean up my balance & tilted swing axis & SW went after my head again. When that heavy sucker gets too eager and swings out ahead of the hit it's bad news.
In genearl, one habit I've always found hard to completely kick is getting my head a little disconnected from my body or rushing my attention to look too early for the target & taking my head off my "stack" in the backswing and/or when I land to swing, which contributes to overall posture issues. Working on this with drills like Ride the Bull and Double Dragon are very helpful. Of course, sometimes converting the lesson into form is tricky so I went back to thinking about seabas head modules & form models & KT.
In general, pros will tend to take their head back all the way with the disc when "fully loading" the bow. The idea is that regardless of where your head is specifically, you never want to spoil the balance of your head in facilitating the tilted axis.
In that case, another lesson in KT's form is how well she integrates her head and posture to swinging on a tilted axis and "trap the disc with her chest." This concept helps & its relationship to head balance helps me simplify a few things at once for me.
One way I like to look for this is framing the disc as a triangle from the shoulder line or projecting out from the chest. If the player is in center balance, notice the disc (or really mass of disc + hand) is "trapped" near or at the midline relative to the chest during the backswing and swing.
By keeping the eyes and head with the disc from backswing to swing centered over this triangle (dashed line), it is easier to maintain both chest trapping and get the head fully stacked into the drive leg during the backswing and plant leg during the swing. If you look for some of the little parts of my swing that are out of whack from backswing to swing, using the head and "triangle" trapping to help yoke the posture together is a great tool.
Sometimes there is variability in how open the upper arm angle is heading into the hit so the disc exits the "trap" earlier, but at least from backswing into the pocket I think this is a helpful heuristic. You can look for and find examples all over the place.
Not entirely sure how I got here (was looking for thoughts on the DD Culprit maybe?) but occasionally I'll throw a BH shot that looks mechanically sound externally but internally the transfer of weight feels wrong. On the advice of some local pros I adjusted my bracing, which helped my throw overall, but the problem continued to crop up. I've since figured out that it occurs when I don't "ride the halfpipe" but how to correct that has eluded me.Of course it depends where the rest of your form is, but at a certain point messing around with the true crow hop and side shuffle vs. X recently became more instructive for me. I was having a hell of a time figuring out how to get my body to "ride down the curved ramp" relaxed in remotely good posture has been a battle...
So last, here's a deep idea about the X-hop that most people miss and I couldn't get for a long time. You need to learn to realize that the hop starts as he's leaving the ground, and is continuing after his drive leg hits the ground. His body is still "falling," getting more acceleration as he drifts over the drive leg building up torque. This is "riding down the halfpipe" and it really does feel like it. This is the neat trick of the drive leg that many (most?) players struggle with and fail to learn and why it's hard to hone. That's why I like to share this gif so often. Same thing, world record:
A lot of this stuff "just" involves getting your body out of the way of itself to move naturally.
She braces really, really well. Does a great job at not allowing her momentum to spill over forward too early. I think the slower, shortened walk up and X step helps one achieve this. Eagle does this so good as well. Perhaps it dials the distance potential down just a hair, but it makes hitting gaps and increases overall accuracy bigtime.Now at 5 majors including 2x World Championships, I'd keep learning from how KT is moving.
Notice how she takes a little step and pump a bit more East before getting closed off heading out of her second step. Gives a good feel for building up the leverage moving foot to foot. If you're really good at it and a few other things, you can dominate FPO.
I looked into her ratings history when she started playing in 2014 (first tournament in 2015), which would put her in her early 20's. She had a good 3 years of playing sub 900 golf. I wonder what she was doing outside of the usual stuff everyone does when they first start out, playing all the time. I know she was an athlete already at the time (ski instructor, I'd suffice she was probably skiing and doing the gym thing all the time). Swing coach? Or just hired/got a coach in general? Or learned everything organic? Questions!
Random quibble... is this really an example of a downtempo upshot? I recall throwing a flip-up high speed from the same range when I played WR in 2019. If the basket placement isn't any different from usual she's in position to rip something out there to reach the pin on her shot.Downtempo upshot form - the bow still appears "fully loaded":
Prrrobably not? She threw a Saint Pro perfectly off the tee to reach that spot, maybe 370-380'. Her 2nd (the throw in the gif) was a hyzer around the right with another fairway driver and she ended up like 180'-ish from the basket.
