Seems like another season of ruining my game overthinking technique.
I can replicate the "falling/dropping" into the plant and what not when just doing these drills but once I am actually playing/throwing it becomes way more natural to just brace into my leg horizontally and thinking about pole vaulting / ice hockey slap shot instead of doing the "falling move". Just...Letting the body take over.
It feels natural, gets the results done and best of it all its way more automatic and I can concentrate on the lines Im looking to throw and stepping safely on uneven surface
Like SW and despite appearance I actually believe thinking too much is usually a bad thing. I just think a lot and write fast. FWIW, I actually think a lot less when throwing now. From a coaching POV, learning and teaching how to move is the goal. I've built up so much automatic memory from drills and throws that my own burden to improve is starting to skew to fitness and smart practice and pushing around one piece of form at a time and then tweaking again (with help, of course). But for whatever reason I find the optimizing problem even more fascinating than ever intellectually. I just vent what I'm thinking about between throwing sessions on the forum to save myself from throwing too much and in the hopes that at least 1 other person is either entertained or benefits haha.
instead of treating disc golf as rocket science.
To me that is what happens when Calvin Heimburg is throwing.. Or Eagle or...Well, most pros.
If we look at Albert Tamm throwing here, to me it looks as he is just "running into his plant and coiling"..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozMnUC5txFU&t=59s&ab_channel=TicklingChainsDiscGolf
Or as we can see from Calvin, to me it seems more like just stopping the forward momentum, nothing else.
I throw my best at the very beginning of a season, because I just throw and play disc golf. Then I start wondering if I could throw further by doing changes to my technique and disc golf stops being fun for me.
I think there are more than a few differences between rocket science and disc golf mechanics. Whatever the case, I do think it's hard to find any given player's "ideal" form. People like me and Sidewinder (whose coattails I mostly ride) appear to be so obsessed with the details that we can save you some of the thinking part. I was prepared for Tamm or Calvin to come up.
Tamm is what you get when you take a lot of Bradley Williams and a little of
Drew Gibson and put it in the body of a Titan built like a trebuchet. Tamm is something like
6'4'' or more, is exceptionally long-levered, looks physically very strong, and moves incredibly agile and coordinated for someone his size. Calvin is still getting the drop despite an even more closed off, nearly full-tilt sidesprint approach. Remember that what these long guys have in legs means that their hops usually look like a smaller proportion of their height, and unlike Gurthie they can get more of a leverage multiplier off their drive leg without hopping as much relative to their height or leaning back as much (like Gurthie) to extend the transition move. But what they all have in common is a nearly free-flying transition move through the X, and they have found their optimal horizontal/vertical drop. If you look at my little green bars on Calvin and Heimburg, that's at least several inches apiece. All of these smashers are finding their sweet spot gravity, momentum, + leverage multipliers.
There is a bit of downward movement on Alberts throw sure, but that happens naturally as his brace leg is on an angle thus shorter than his last step on his left leg. Or is there something I am missing here?
I understand the concept of door frame drill, I can feel the force but how does it translate to actual throwing when the brace leg is way ahead of your butt?
The thing that many people might be missing is that the brace leg is actually not way ahead of your butt if you think of it as a dynamic posture alignment and not just the leg and the butt. The reason that Tamm or Heimburg or Gibson etc. look like that is because there's still a horizontal momentum to brace against - it's never just purely vertical. Personally this was easier to understand once I started to do it, and it changed my entire perception of the throw mechanics. Basically what you want to learn to do is exactly what happens against the door frame, but take it dynamically to find that sweet spot for your own horizontal/vertical momentum. But how do you do
that?
This started to get a little easier for me doing things like the seabas22 Kick the Can Drill learning to move and drop my entire body in on the braced tilt - which is exactly what all these big guns are doing. This is a deceptively dynamic, powerful move. It still feels like leading with your Ass even though it looks less like it. It feels much less effortful than jamming the brace leg into the ground like a spear and trying to swing around it. You are landing directly on it (briefly) and swinging - in the braced tilt.
I was surprised how many bad posture habits popped back immediately when I started doing that Kick the Can drill - most of our bodies
do not want to accelerate that fast in aggressive posture to abruptly plant and throw. My old tip and lean came back almost right away resisting the change and does as soon as I start to tire. But however you learn it, you need to get everything stacked up in a way to "ride down the ramp" and commit that swing force not blowing body parts out.
My advice if you want to master it is to take it slow, but there is such a thing as
too slow too. I am still only throwing at 70% again working to optimize this part of my swing. I have more power than ever at that level of momentum while it feels like I'm not working at all. I tried only a couple swings at 80% and every one of them was the most powerful I've had at that level. But I've made the mistake of getting ahead of myself and backed up to keep massaging it at 70% - with changes in potential power I also constantly find that I have new body conditioning to do, and I don't want to get hurt again. On the other hand, if I only throw at 60%, I don't have enough acceleration to force myself to learn the new move. My target is to be scaling the move up to 80%, and whatever power I get there is what I'll do for golf rounds. If I want the occasional Hail Mary power I can reach for it but I fear I'm getting "too old for that ****" already.
I throw my best at the very beginning of a season, because I just throw and play disc golf. Then I start wondering if I could throw further by doing changes to my technique and disc golf stops being fun for me.
- The "off-season" is the best time to work on things. If you are committed to working on your form, then you can not worry about scoring/performance in competition short term - be prepared to suck or be wild for a few months. If you go back into "competition mode" too early you will likely revert/regress back to old bad habits. Your "training mode" must be settled in before you can go back into "competition mode" and progress.
I really do understand what you're saying here. I have been in the "off-season" for 1.5 years now. Ezra Aderhold took 2 years to work on his form before going on tour. I have been only committed to taking the "red pill" so far, but I might like to see what I learn from competing this summer. My advice: I have completely separated "scoring" rounds from "mechanics" rounds and it helps.
