The 'Feeling'

[TheBeardedFatGuy]

Normally I'm a backhand player (RHBH), but I decided it was past time to work on my sidearm. Like most people, sidearm is closer to the non-DG throwing technique I'm most used to, from throwing a baseball, football, rocks or whatever. While I was practicing my sidearm drive about a month ago I started noticing something interesting. The moment when I'm 'cocked' and ready to pull through, if I've positioned everything correctly, is accompanied by a definite feeling. It's like all the lines and pulleys of the body have pulled tight and are ready to exert the force of the throw effectively. If I don't do it right, something feels 'slack', and I know I'm not going to have as powerful drive as I could. Now, with my backhand drive, I've never really gotten that feeling that everything was ready to pull through, but I'm going on the assumption that the same sense of everything's in the right position at the right tension that I get with a forearm drive should be there for a backhand drive as well. So, I've been trying to feel for that moment on the backhand, and I'm starting to get a bit of it with regards to my shoulders, though not with my hips. Before I noticed this 'feeling' of everything being ready to throw, I'd always just tried to get the motions and timing down, but that never created this feeling, and maybe that's because I was focused on position and timing and not including that taking up of slack to where I'm right at the point where a powerful pull through from legs, hips, shoulders and arm are cocked and ready to go.

Can anyone else relate to what I'm talking about here? Working just on position, movement and timing doesn't seem to have done that much for me. Maybe I should have been looking for the correct feeling that says I'm optimized for a powerful pull-through instead?

Thoughts?

 

[slowplastic]

I think the Door Frame Drill is great for that, it teaches you to X-step and reachback at the right tempo, and when you drop that plant foot heel down you should feel that weight shift forward and the tension in your torso. You'll feel like you just want to let go of the door frame and your arm will go flying around.

Although I'm a bit advocate of stand still throws and simplifying things for lots of situations, for some people they lose the tempo and rhythm. Sometimes there's a minimum pace or effort you need to try things at, and just search for the right "feel". When things feel right, you can analyze it afterwards and realize you were actually in the correct positions. When things aren't going or feeling right...that's the time to analyze and make a change.

 

[Kodachrome]

The feeling is created by the positions. Have fun chasing your tail. At least positions give you a place to start trying to find the feeling. Notsomuch the other way around. It doesn't help to try things position by position though, in a frame by frame way. A minimum speed is required to feel it imo. That speed is quite slow, but fluid.

 

[sidewinder22]

Drills put you in a position to feel specific leverage. You must link them up in sequence and rhythm within your own personal body dynamics and posture.

 

[TheBeardedFatGuy]

I'm not proposing that position and process can be abandoned, I'm just trying to detect their correctness based on how they feel, especially in relation to each other. The door frame exercises are a great example. When you reach back and grasp the door frame and pull against it, you feel muscles engaging that you don't feel just loosely reaching back with a disc in your hand. Suddenly ground up segmenting and leverage makes sense from a physical sensation perspective in a way that just making the motions without a load to pull against doesn't.

 

[Putt for D'oh]

Can anyone else relate to what I'm talking about here? Working just on position, movement and timing doesn't seem to have done that much for me. Maybe I should have been looking for the correct feeling that says I'm optimized for a powerful pull-through instead?

Its normally a sequential process, in that the first work is getting the position and movement and timing down to develop the correct feeling then refining from there.
I'm speaking more from a perspective of sports in general where I have a ton more experience than with throwing discs.

Shooting a basket ball and kicking a soccer ball, swinging a bat. I have varying levels of experience but also have been coaching my daughters on them. The first steps are to get the form and movement down. Then the timing and THEN I can start asking for feedback on "how did that feel?"

Also pretty individualized. I'm getting there with discs, like pretty well know as the disc is leaving my hand if its going to be a good throw or not. Unfortunately still not practiced enough to be able to stay consistent with it.

 

[sidewinder22]

The moment when I'm 'cocked' and ready to pull through, if I've positioned everything correctly, is accompanied by a definite feeling. It's like all the lines and pulleys of the body have pulled tight and are ready to exert the force of the throw effectively. If I don't do it right, something feels 'slack', and I know I'm not going to have as powerful drive as I could.

I'm not proposing that position and process can be abandoned, I'm just trying to detect their correctness based on how they feel, especially in relation to each other. The door frame exercises are a great example. When you reach back and grasp the door frame and pull against it, you feel muscles engaging that you don't feel just loosely reaching back with a disc in your hand. Suddenly ground up segmenting and leverage makes sense from a physical sensation perspective in a way that just making the motions without a load to pull against doesn't.

Right, I like to call it "String Theory" (really the physics of strings and springs) and say the tension is always taut to the amount of force and the direction of the intended force. I think of the body/arm as the string attached to the disc/ball swinging around in a circle and tossing it in a targetward direction using the rhythm to change/flatten the bottom of the swing arc and speed it up directionally instead of rotationally. Too much slack and the ball bounces around and you can't throw it's momentum in decent aim because it will have a huge jerk force that is not very predictable(this is where most "grip-lockers" have issues). If you try to keep the string too tight/keeping the arm in tight to make the ball or disc spin faster you can't create much rhythm to aim the release momentum and likely release early and on a shorter less powerful swing arc with less forward speed (strong armers/trying to spin the disc).

In the backswing everything is relatively loose and pivoting easy back(while you move forward) but still remaining taut enough to maintain aim into the transition/door frame drill. So you are pushing the bow forward(your body/posture moving forward) and keeping the arrow/disc aimed and loading back against the increasing tension of the string from the bow pushing forward(Long Bow Archers actually shoot this way because the bow is so heavy and it's easier and more accurate to push the bow forward with the front arm than it is trying to pull the string and arrow back with the rear arm). That's when the torque really increases and pulls the string from rear toe to finger tip taut from the ground up through your posture making your forward move out of the transition. Your weight shift triggers the release of the string by bending the bow(your posture) which shoots the arrow forward. The load and unload of the string/spring is more like a compound bow going through your joints/muscles.