Standstill & Figure 8 Motion Pattern

[Flyguy46]

I wanted to thank you all for this thread. As a player who is unable to do an X-step due to a physical injury I finally feel like I am able to really work on my throw now not learning by trial and error on my own. I threw a few discs in my basement for testing purposes and I am really excited about what I felt. I can't wait to see what the future holds.

 

[Brychanus]

Perpetual Motion drills are so good, yet I rarely see players doing them. Most players try to do the opposite freezing and getting static and tight and rigid.

I've been thinking about this a lot when considering how to communicate what I'm learning to others & what can help people learn faster.

I wanted to mention that there was a drastic change in my learning rate once I better understood the point of the pendulum drills & beginning and ending in dynamic balance, and feeling the difference. It binds the throw and puts drills into a coherent bigger picture. It can come and go during learning, but it is a (the biggest?) crucial reference point.

W/ his coaching, the SW22 variant of the perpetual pendulum drill was the game-changer for me. Every time I don't end in balance I know *something* is probably wrong, and that the cause just might not be obvious to me yet. Pendulum drills develop a sense of increasingly tightening connection between my upper and lower body, my lead and trailing side, and gravity. Timing becomes clearer and easier to triage when it falls out of whack because the pendulum system only works when the timing is close enough to ideal relative to the body positions and gravity. I have to trust that the pendulum is out there somewhere, and that it will be the guardrails and guide to good form.

Now, I always try to find the pendulum when I integrate new movements in the swing. Otherwise, I find I just kind of end up swimming in details and I have trouble understanding the new move's connection to everything else. I wish I'd gotten the point months ago and started there!

That being said, I'm fascinated that I keep finding surprising correlations across how parts of my body move and weird habits I've picked up. By problem-solving one issue, changes can throw another part out of whack and a reveal an underlying problem. Solving the underlying problem w/ a good expert diagnosis + tailored drills (SW22, I still don't know how you do it!) is the way from there. When I go astray, I try to rediscover the pendulum and it helps smooth things back out.

The last point was really hit home for me while retooling the "Swim Move". I still keep discovering all these weird habits that try to stretch or flex parts of my body, and they keep popping up when I'm first learning new moves. But now it's starting to sink in that no part of the throw should feel like that. You're just using parts of the body in a flow to maintain balance with optimal force imparted on the disc. The whole body can learn to transition those forces smoothly consistently with positional training that improves the compound pendulum system. It starts to feel easier and easier, and you say to yourself "it can't be or feel THAT easy". And that's because it wasn't until it improved your smooth pendulum.

Another thing many of you already know, but hopefully this can help some other confused players out there (and provide an opportunity to rebut this if I'm crazy!).

 

[azplaya25]

Been getting back to doing form work after a long break. This picture you posted for me a couple years ago makes so much more sense now

 

[Brychanus]

I have found learning Riding the Bull to be particularly challenging but transformative, and think it's a great drill to learn to enhance the fundamental Figure 8 action whether doing standstills or X-stepping. Here were a few takeaways I've been picking up for RtB drill. Cross - referenced from this thread.

1. Learn (including getting critiqued) + do the drill. You may have mechanical or posture issues blocking the ideal action.

2. IMO It is good to first learn the lateral part of the shift he shows at the beginning without worrying about the swing.

3. You then need to add the correct counterrotation through the upper body that creates the Figure 8 action moving in both directions.

4. As an analogy, "Riding the Bull" is about how your body would move to stay on the ground and not fall while moving with fast shifts - like if a bull were trying to buck you. To me (martial arts & some boxing background) dynamically it feels similar to a boxing "bob and weave". It's a very athletic, fluid motion. The posture puts you in a position to absorb or dole out quicker, high-power movement. Riding the bull isn't exactly the same as any one boxing move, but the feel for the motion in a Figure 8 was noticeable to me.

Watch Ali. You can bob and weave standing tall. How's he moving like this? Hint: it's not pictured in this gif, and it's not about his hands on the ropes. Hint 2: Notice the taunting hip jiggle at the end.

You can also bob and weave low:

And you can bob high to low and back again:

It doesn't feel effortful to do this once you learn it. But the muscles & coordination these guys use to do this so well just happen to be the ones that get weak with deskbound life.



Relevant learning notes:
-I said three things that aren't about feel first because there are just too many things that "feel right" that are wrong. Sometimes the wrong move feels right because it's less effortful than what you did before, but is still not mechanically ideal. Usually the best move feels even more effortless than what you were doing before because it helps your body move more easily. This notion pretty much sums up a lot of form development overall.

-Ride the Bull is a pretty good example of an "effortless yet athletic" drill move IMO. The shift feels effortless. But SW warned me that it might make me sore overdoing it. Even when I was doing it wrong (moving and landing out of posture & loading up my quads too much) it was tiring out the glutes/hamstrings/support muscles. Once I started to get deeper and more fluid it made it very clear that I still had physical weakness in those areas that were contributing to my posture issues in my drills and throws. The good news is that as a standalone drill it's also a great exercise! But remember to take breaks as necessary.

-Remember that if the drill move is a big change, the permanent change in your real throw usually lags it by at least a few days after you fully mastered the move (often 2-3 weeks). I think it's normal that the move might tend to come and go in your real throws in the meantime. Since I record so much, I find it interesting to watch this process happen over and over again when I learn new moves.

-In the drill video (Turbo Encabulator) - and most of his videos - I think SW/seabas has very tight control over the movements. It was really hard for me to connect various parts of the motion together & the drill revealed several problems at once. I usually find that exaggerating the move, getting it critiqued/fixed, and then learning to shrink it down from the exaggeration is most effective. The RtB move was such a big difference for me that I even exaggerated certain things again away from the preferred move to check if I was actually on track before, and SW was able to point out what specifically was wrong again, which helped me understand what I should aim for in the drill.

-I also did Ride the Bull while making dinner and holding my daughter (25 lbs). Doing it with a bit of weight helped reinforce which motion pattern is effective and sturdy. Fun for the whole family! Don't worry, I did not sling her at the end.

 

[sidewinder22]

I saw a little snippet of Wiggins doing a standstill in the 3D motion capture and pressure plates and you can clearly see the figure 8 motion pattern on the pressure plates.

He shifts at least 95% to the front foot on the forward pump/address, (the video starts there)
and then he shifts 98% to the rear foot by mid backswing,
and then he shifts 80% forward before his arm straightens at the top of the backswing,
and then he is 99% forward before the disc reaches the left shoulder.

His standstill looks quite similar to mine here without the little stride/step.

 

[navel]

I saw a little snippet of Wiggins doing a standstill in the 3D motion capture and pressure plates and you can clearly see the figure 8 motion pattern on the pressure plates.

He shifts at least 95% to the front foot on the forward pump/address, (the video starts there)
and then he shifts 98% to the rear foot by mid backswing,
and then he shifts 80% forward before his arm straightens at the top of the backswing,
and then he is 99% forward before the disc reaches the left shoulder.

His standstill looks quite similar to mine here without the little stride/step.

Where can I watch this little snippet myself?

 

[Sheep]

I saw a little snippet of Wiggins doing a standstill in the 3D motion capture and pressure plates and you can clearly see the figure 8 motion pattern on the pressure plates.

He shifts at least 95% to the front foot on the forward pump/address, (the video starts there)
and then he shifts 98% to the rear foot by mid backswing,
and then he shifts 80% forward before his arm straightens at the top of the backswing,
and then he is 99% forward before the disc reaches the left shoulder.

His standstill looks quite similar to mine here without the little stride/step.

Yea SW. What gives.
We wanna see the reference video. we see you all the time.

 

[Brychanus]

What this fascinating video of a legendary bomber's golf swing reveals

In today's Play Smart, we're talking to a GOLF Teacher to Watch about Jamie Sadlowski's golf swing, and what you can learn from it.

golf.com