Please help me get over 300ft!

[mrlizard]

I've been playing for a few years now, but only started working on my form a few months ago. I have a lot of bad habits to unlearn. I've tried to work on everything, footwork, hips, shoulders, grip,... but even though I feel like I'm getting more consistent, I barely gained any distance. Even if I hit a good shot my discs all hit an invisible wall at 295ft. Most of my drives (Teebirds and Leopard3s) are in the range of 265 to 285ft (measured with a rangefinder). Maybe one in 100 drives will go further than 320ft and that's a total fluke.

I know there is something off with my balance / timing, since I have a hard time to rotate on my heel and follow through, and probably with my backswing as well, since I often throw nose up.

I took a video yesterday, unfortunately only from the side, but maybe you can already see some obvious mistakes to correct and then next time I will also film from behind the tee.

My medium term goal is to reliably hit 330ft with a fairway driver. Any help appreciated!

https://youtu.be/zZOgaNP3cJQ

 

[txmxer]

The "wall" is a definite sign of nose up.

The X step isn't doing anything for you right now, go back to a standstill and work on just that part of your throw. There's no brace in your plant foot and by trying to x-step it's messing up your throwing mechanics.

There are a lot of techniques/videos that you can look at for drills and such that would be helpful--sidewinder/seabass has all kinds of video links in these help threads.

But the first one I'd look at is the towel snap drill (just one example video of towel snap, there are others, but he makes the point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NqHc51LD_o&ab_channel=DiscGolf101 )

Sidewinders hammer drill and elephant walk would be good ones to start with as well

 

[mrlizard]

Thank you for your comment! I'll give those drills a try. That's for weight shift though, right? Or are you suggesting towell snap drill for nose up?

 

[RistoS]

But the first one I'd look at is the towel snap drill (just one example video of towel snap, there are others, but he makes the point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NqHc51LD_o&ab_channel=DiscGolf101 )

I stopped the video even before he got to the actual towel, because I already disagreed with the stuff he says and knew where it was going. I'd expect sw22 to also disagree on firm grip and forearm tension (tendonitis alert), and he generally recommends other objects over towels as well.

 

[jupiterboy]

I'm not one anyone goes to for advise, but I work on my form from the ground up. I'm still learning to see form and still learning what common terms mean. You'll hear terms like "athletic stance" or "open hips", which were kinda head scratchers for me at first. Open hips is a fundamental issue for me, and it refers to your stance with your toes pointed out. If you look at your release you can see that when you throw both feet point outward, which prevents you from "engaging your hips". I'd suggest, like previous, that you cut the run up for now and practice from a stand still, but close your hips—or point your toes slightly inward. Compare the feeling of your hips closed vs. open and you will immediately get the difference. I think you'll largely be able to match your distance standing still with this change. When you add the run up, it becomes more complicated keeping your hips closed. The key to keeping this closed stance for me was footwork drills with a healthy offset of the plant foot and a very short X-step with a little hop. This allows my trailing foot to land with toes pointed a bit forward. All-in-all, I've spent most of the spring and summer trying to rework all this. It was disruptive and I lost some distance. Now my footwork is better and I'm moving into keeping my thought on my aim.

 

[txmxer]

I stopped the video even before he got to the actual towel, because I already disagreed with the stuff he says and knew where it was going. I'd expect sw22 to also disagree on firm grip and forearm tension (tendonitis alert), and he generally recommends other objects over towels as well.

Yeah, I started to look for a different video, just a bit lazy.

What other objects would you use for the snap?

 

[sidewinder22]

What kind of throw/disc are you doing there? You hold the disc at the start like a hyzer with the wing up in power pocket, but then when you go to throw it looks like a massive anhyzer or roller swinging the arm downward/disc nose up.

I would forgo the x-step for a bit and work on the fundamentals from a standstill or one-step or reverse-stride.

https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showthread.php?t=137985
https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134415