As a 60 year old , I know a number of seniors who regularly play two day tournaments. They also are playing with injuries, unable to throw some shots due to past injuries, recently recovered from their last surgery and rehab, or planning for their next surgery and rehab. There are a couple who seem to be pain free but they are the exceptions. So let's be honest. Yes they're playing, but their playing through the pain and those pains sometimes sideline them for months at a time. I can swing a golf club comfortably but throwing a disc is more physically demanding.
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Old Farts Only 40+ (no kids allowed)
- Thread starter ThrowaEnvy
- Start date
Dcinmd
Double Eagle Member
Curious as to how much you still play catch with Annie? I know that you mention it as a positive influence for the 19 season.
I assume business is also pulling you away from practice? That is one of my biggest struggles.
Good description. We have nearly a double handful of 60+ tournament players around here. They rarely all get into one tournament, but they are out there pulling two day gigs. Some are healthier than others, a few are still 900+ rated.
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2009
- Messages
- 15,711
What was it they had on those Azltimers bag tags?
...or something like that.
< needs ginko biloba, more than he needs Motrin.
The trick is avoiding injuries. A couple of years ago, at 61 or 62, I played 4 rounds on a fairly grueling, hilly course -- plus co-TD'd it. Then my knees finally gave out (Orthopedist: "I'm surprised you walked in here...") and while I have the stamina, even for as many extra throws as I'll need, my knees won't take it.
But we have a Masters tournament soon, just one day, and there are 13 60+ players registered, including 6 in the MA65 division.
My advice for staying healthy as you age, is the same advice I give for winning tournaments:
Be Lucky.
But we have a Masters tournament soon, just one day, and there are 13 60+ players registered, including 6 in the MA65 division.
My advice for staying healthy as you age, is the same advice I give for winning tournaments:
Be Lucky.
Being reasonably smart helps too. I climbed a couple trees to get discs the first couple years I played. After 3 screws in my non throwing shoulder 2 years ago, I don't do that anymore. I also attack fences and rocky terrain differently than I used to. Don't wanna break a hip, ya know.
Clint Eastwood once said "a man's gotta know his limitations".
"Being reasonably smart" would have involved realizing at age 13 that football was going to destroy my body and doing something else. :\
I was encouraged by every corner of the greater culture surrounding me in my youth to play that infernal game because I was a bigger kid and ya godda be tuff and **** like that. I was discouraged from two things I had a keen interest in doing because they were seen as weak and effeminate (music and tennis). Instead it was a steady diet of football this and wrestling that.
I absolutely remember seeing stars on several occasions from big hits. That was my brain sloshing around in my skull, but it's okay; it's character building. Am I right?
In 9th grade we were the scrimmage team in practice against varsity because at my small rural school there weren't enough bodies for them to pummel kids their own size. It's there day after day for months that led me down my first path of true depression. We don't raise quitters around here. You want glory and muscular manhood, don't you?
I did quit. And I did face many moments of "You're a big strong kid and football is good for you" from more than one adult at the public school I attended.
A guy across the street from me today had several big time concussions and injuries from being a very talented football animal. He was a key linebacker of a very good high school program around here. He had all daughters, but told me he'd never allow his boys to play football if he'd have had them. The injuries and mental problems are still haunting him to this day decades later.
Youth contact football is child abuse.
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biscoe
* Ace Member *
Play catch with the dog almost daily- she demands it.
Right now I am recreating my putting from being generally staggered feet to being generally straddle because my left leg/hip gives me such an inconsistent push and also forces me to limit practice that way. Straddling works my core more but my weakest point (that hip) much less. Once the putting comes around I will be playing OK. Last year when I was playing the worst of my dg career I was getting simply no practice at all due to being crazy busy. I have stepped back my responsibilities at the Roost a bit for this year but am currently working on 4 different courses, an A Tier, a Silver Series, and 20 or so other events so still not a lot of time on the horizon. Eventually it tends to wear down your discipline when it comes to finding practice time.
- Joined
- Dec 19, 2009
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Aging is largely a result of accumulating insults to the body: Injuries, ingesting poisons, infections & parasites, irradiation.
....along with the body's diminished ability to repair itself.
I find myself more reluctant to risk injuries that once would have sidelined me for a couple of days, but could now take weeks or months or forever to recover from.
BillFleming
* Ace Member *
I have two bags for discs. One is my Ridge Roller as it holds lots of stuff, including discs. I will use that the first round of a tournament with all the discs I "think" I may need. If I'm lucky, the course is cart-friendly and I can use my Rovic to carry my bag for me. Using a cart is a big win. If the course isn't cart-friendly, I have a Rogue Irons sling bag that carries 9 discs, one water bottle, and a small pocket for a few other things. After the first round with my Ridge Roller, I will know what discs I really need for the course and put them into my sling bag for all the other rounds. Anything to reduce the weight I have to carry and bending down to pick up and put down a heavy bag.
Gotta be careful out there and do what I can to make sure my disc golf fun isn't ended too soon.
Gotta be careful out there and do what I can to make sure my disc golf fun isn't ended too soon.
Yeah, there was this fun thing my high school did where the freshmen would scrimmage against the varsity in the afternoon during the varsity two-a-day practices. It was supposed to be helmet/shoulder pad walk through practices, but when I was a freshman the varsity hit us hard and the coaches laughed. The sam linebacker that year was Bo Sherrill; he went on to play at Mizzou. He was a mean SOB; any time I came back to the huddle from the "walk through" without having been laid out flat on my backside was a moral victory. A guard on offense had asked my sister out and she turned him down, so when I got sent in there on defense he would fire out of his stance full speed and knock me over. He would do it on plays where he wasn't even supposed to block me; the coaches would laugh. It was all just an exercise to see which of us were dumb enough to take the abuse.
I broke during wresting. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas I ended up in the hospital; we had to ride a bus over from the Jr. High to the High School to go to wresting practice and I stepped off that bus and vomited every day until my parents (thinking I had some sort of stomach problem) took me to the doctor. None of them ever thought to question the fact that the wresting coach every day let the light weight varsity wrestlers kick my ass while he yelled at me for being slow and no good and the rest of the team laughed at me. It was so humiliating that I had a panic attack and threw up every damn day.
My sophomore year of football was significantly worse than my freshman year; we got abused the entire season instead of just during two-a-days. By the time it was over I was done; psychologically I was as beaten down as you can get. Depression was an understatement; I could barely function. I alternated between rage outbursts and weeks of just not doing anything. I failed to appear for wrestling. I was going to stop playing football, but the wresting coach stopped me in the hall to chastise me for not wresting and he said "You're no good a football, you are never going to play. When you graduate, you are going to wish you had lettered in a sport. The only way you are going to do that is to wrestle." Which...dude, you yelled at me for an entire season about how I sucked. Anyway, he pissed me off, I played varsity football the next season and made sure to hang out in front of his class wearing a letter jacket a lot. :|
Somehow this was supposed to build my character. It was complete B.S.
Now I'm mid-50's and my back is so messed up I can barely walk most days. My shoulders are destroyed. My ankles are shot. All so I could play football in high school? Not worth it at all.
I also only had daughters, but if we had a son he would NOT have been allowed to play football.
Also when the wresting coach retired there were articles in the paper about what a wonderful man he was and all this volunteer work he had done. I wonder if the volunteer work balanced off all the damage he did to people like me on his wresting team. :\
And another aspect of the same train of thought is limiting time spent on really strenuous activities. 69 here. Only 3-5 years ago I thought nothing of spending six or eight hours with the chainsaw cleaning up trees fallen on fairways, or on our mile long gravel driveway or helping a neighbor do the same. I found that the chainsaw work on the front end wasn't where I hurt myself, but on the back end when I was tired and dragging the heavy stuff off... twisting, falling, lunging to catch myself, etc.... in other words learning to pace myself pays dividends. It's a hard lesson to learn for some of us. Last Sunday I spent a couple of hours with the chainsaw working up the top of a hickory tree that fell across our power line and drive, then did something inconceivable a few years ago. I moved what needed to be moved out of the road, put the saw in the back of the truck, opened a beer and sat down. Headed back out there in a few for another couple of hours. [emoji106][emoji41]
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I'm 64. When I don't know the course I use my cart with my bag that has about 24 discs in it.
Most times I carry my 12 disc Innova bag and I always carry my 3 legged stool. My bag is always set on my stool (as long as the ground is cooperative in that area) for every shot I make. A lot easier on your back.
Last year I had a significant drop off in my disc abilities because of age, I assume. My signature turn over shot isn't there like it was because of a weird finger thing on my throwing hand. I'm not taking that too good. I took all expensive discs out of my bag because of the lost of confidence in my shots.
On the up side I was gifted a 150g 86 Softie that is saving my putting woes once I figured out the difference in flight because of the lighter weight.
I wrestled at 89 lbs when I was 13. I was small but made up for it by being slow. Decided at that point it was prudent to give up football and focus on baseball. Actually grew into a normal sized dude in highschool.
Played baseball into my early 40's. Minimal coaching trauma seems to have left my character intact, but that probably depends on who you ask.
I had a really weird coaching scenario: the head football coach didn't really hide the fact that he was dating high school girls, our defensive coordinator used to drink with players, and we were taught to cheat. When I went to college my O-line coach was like "What the Hell are you doing?" and had me play straight up. Until then I didn't think I was good enough to play straight up. We beat a top ten rated school in our state and found out later that they had hooked up their headsets wrong; our coaches were listening to their play calls and calling our defense based on them. So we cheated. A lot. :| So much for character-building.
Fortunately I had my dad; I didn't need a bunch of clowns on the public school payroll to build my character. I found out in college from talking to my teammates that my high school was nuts and that's not how most schools do it; I just got lucky, I guess. :\ I don't think any of that crap did anything to me psychologically, I just managed to destroy my back.
`cjc
Eagle Member
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Yeah. I had a similar experience. We also had horrible high school football coaches.
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Is it black? I had a buddy that only used black 150g 86 Softies back in the day. He was fun to play glow with. :|
