Plant leg straight or bent?

[HyzerUniBomber]

So my brother shot some footage of a guy in our group who was throwing some huge rips. This shot was 550 and not his longest of the day.



As I watched it, I noticed that he appears to be locking his knee out, which is something that it LOOKS like a few of the pros are doing at various moments in the slow mo video below.

I'm definitely NOT locking my front leg out, but keeping it bent even as I pivot through. It seems like I could be losing some power by not locking out.

 

[davistd0]

Big picture: for the plant to generate maximum power, it must cause the transfer of all foward energy into the disc.

When the plant foot comes down, your arm should be in the full reach-back position and your hips should be turned as far away from the target as possible. This is the fully "loaded spring" postition, and the "Big Drive by Jake" video is a good example of this.

In order to unload the "loaded spring", you need a solid point to push off from. If you doubt this, try throwing while in mid-air...no power at all. The solid base in golf is your plant foot/leg. A bent knee is more likely to give a little, thereby absorbing some energy that could otherwise go into your throw. A locked knee will transfer the most amount of energy into the throw.

A good analogy would be a bouncy ball. If one is dropped from 5' to rebound off a tile floor, it will bounce much higher than if it is dropped from 5' to rebound off a soft carpet. Bent knee = soft carpet, locked knee = tile floor.

Of course, throwing with high power on a locked knee is much more likely to injure that knee, since you are putting an extreme load on it in a directin it is not meant to bend.

 

[b-mart]

^My timing is way off then. When I land on my plant foot, the disc is already passing my left pec. Which is probably why my distances suck so bad. Other than "slowing down", is there a good way to fix timing issues? Planning to slow way down for some field work, but if there's anything else I should know?

 

[emiller3]

Going from a bent plant leg to a straight plant leg can feel really awkward. It'll likely throw off your accuracy completely at first, both left/right and up/down. But you're definitely pulling too early, so it'd be a good thing to work on while you work on your timing. Don't be afraid of slowing things down, if you have good weight transfer you can throw over 400' with just a slow walk-up.

My recommendations for timing: reach/lean back (weight over the back foot), transfer weight to your front foot while still reaching back, pull through after the plant leg lands, straighten your plant leg as you pull through, possibly as late as when you hit the left pec and you clear the hip. You can tweak the exact timing of each of those events to try and maximize your distance, but they should stay in that order.

 

[sidewinder22]

The knee should never lock out if there is weight on it. It should stiffen/straighten up some to brace your momentum though. It may look like some of them lock out the knee, but they are either weightless at that point or there's some flex still in there and sometimes the camera angle can play tricks or wearing pants. There's really no way to brace yourself dynamically on a locked out knee. All you need is the slightest flexion in the knee/hip though.

 

[b-mart]

Awesome. Now I'm going through slow motion drives in my office holding a highlighter. Good thing my employees already know that I'm weird. Thanks for the clarification even though I was jacking this thread.

 

[nicfit]

Hey, I know Jake. Small world. Yea, he is really good too.