The Path to Pain-Free Throwing

[bbwrenn]

Hey all. Long-time golfer here.

I've been meaning to work on my form for a looong time. I've just never gotten around to it.

Finally though, the issue has been forced. The last year or two pain has begun to creep into my throws. Sometimes it's the elbow or back, more often it's the shoulder. Either way, it's gotten worse. The shoulder is the most common culprit, and it's often not until later that day after I play or even the next day that I really feel it. Not like a tear, but more of a soreness, an overworking. I'm pretty confident I'm using way too much arm and shoulder and not the body in my throw.

I'm thinking that a form that my body shrugged off at 20 is catching up with me at 30. So what I'm looking to do over the winter is get to where my game doesn't hurt. If it makes me better at disc golf, that's a bonus. Please help guide me in the right direction of what you think may be hurting me from my form.

This first video is terrible. Wrong angle, wrong orientation, bad quality. This wasn't meant to be posted, but then I said, hey screw it, maybe somebody can go ahead and let me know something obvious if they see it. If this video doesn't show you anything obvious, wait and I will definitely get a much better one up soon. For reference, I'm throwing an alpha speed 8 driver basically full power here.

I see some issues right off, but I'd rather be quiet and let others comment first. Thank you for any advice. It can't hurt (see what I did there) to try.

 

[slowplastic]

Number one thing with the arm, is you are reaching back with your arm rather than thinking of it as a "backswing" like in other sports. I used to do this too. I can see that you turn back, then throw your arm back with your shoulder. Your arm kind of snaps back at the end of the backswing because you are using your shoulder/shoulder socket to extend the arm. Then you make the forward transition, and your arm is isolated from your torso rather than staying firm in place where your hips will move your upper arm through the torso. Think of a baseball or golf swing, you turn your upper body back and your arms do go back...but not much relative to the shoulder plane. You aren't isolating your arm to try to push the club/bat far away from the target. Your whole upper body turns back and the shoulder socket should feel pretty firm in place.

Second, you are opening up on your plant step. You step with an X-step, then plant with your front foot in line with the target. You should keep the same stride direction, and be planting approximately so you can trace a line from your rear toes, through your front heel, to the target. You are opening up the front hip because you are spinning right while planting, to plant in line through your feet at the target. If you are throwing correctly you should be missing your line by about 15 degrees right or so every single time. You are essentially getting early releases in order to hit your line, and also this can throw off your sequence.

 

[sidewinder22]

Man, that is some terrible video, but good enough to see your stance is really wide open instead of closed. I agree with SP above. I'd watch More Snap 2009's, Power of Posture, and then start with some Door Frame Drills, Closed Shoulder Drill, and One Leg Drill.

https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showthread.php?t=119328

Closed stance shown in title pic below(your feet are almost lined up opposite to the board/line):

 

[slowplastic]

Man, that is some terrible video

 

[bbwrenn]

That video is hilarious. I laughed out loud when I read that line from SW22 as well.

Definitely just getting the video out there despite the quality, I figured why not. And boy am I glad I did. Pure gold guys, thank you very much for the tips. I noticed that my stride was HUGE on the x step, and that my arm whips through way too fast, isolated from the body completely. But you put it into actual technical analysis far better than I could, now I can actually work on fixing it.

I'm going to go ahead and get a good video of my throw BEFORE I start doing the drills, and then take another in a week or so to see if I'm fixing anything. Unfortunately it's getting dark early, but I can still get a lot done, especially drill wise.

Thanks again guys.

 

[slowplastic]

What helped me with that shoulder/arm reach back problem, was thinking about turning back my shoulders around my spine. And not concentrating on the disc in the "reachback", but instead thinking of my entire arm to my shoulder as one unit during a backswing. I don't let my arm get 100% straight at the reachback anymore, it's always kind of taught/extended enough during most of my X-step, and at near the maximum reachback point I'm concentrating on how my shoulder and upper arm feel rather than the disc/hand. The good news is once I did this properly for a day or two of throwing it was pretty ingrained and I never went back to my old ways, so hopefully it's not too bad of a fix for you either.

 

[bbwrenn]

So I wasn't able to get out and get anything done on the weekdays this week.

On the bright side, I watched all the drills and videos plus some extras and have been letting that marinate some. I definitely need less talk, more do though. It's not gonna fix itself.

I got a couple of better videos today, there are lots of issues and the drives themselves were TURRIBLE. (Which I understand, results are not the point at this early in the process, but they were still bad.)

The main thing I was trying to concentrate on in these drives was planting in a closed stance. I think I did better on that, to some extent, but obviously that's only part of the process. It looks like I was still winging the shoulder out there to generate speed, rather than uncoiling the body. The picture I attached shows how far I'm leaning over at the apex of the reachback, which shows that I can't possibly be rotating on the throw, because I'm too busy righting my balance.





I probably also need to ditch the runup and be throwing from a standstill. After 10 years of almost solely running up, I find it very hard to get used to not doing one. Baby steps.

Let me know what you think. For the time being, I'm planning to hit the drills hard this week since I probably won't get out to throw most evenings.

 

[sidewinder22]

Somewhat better. You are trying to lean back and really shift your weight to the rear foot and end up pushing off the rear foot too late or stuck with weight back on it - and into/through a braced front side. You want to keep yourself more balanced and centered inside your feet and turn more rather than lean, don't try to shift more weight back. Your rear foot should be done and weightless before you plant the front foot and brace so everything shifts into the plant from underneath you. You can see your rear heel is still flat/weighted on the ground in the second pic above. See Turbo Encabulator, Swivel Chair, and One Leg Drills.

 

[bbwrenn]

Hey all. Dragging myself back to where I should've been a long time ago.

So being the stubborn 30 year old male I am, I posted this in 10/17 and spent a couple of weeks working on door frame and one legs and saw no progress, and quit. Now, I have no choice. Basically every time I go to play, I leave the course with everything between my elbow and the back of my shoulder hurting. It's fix my form, or quit playing DG.

I love the game and I'll continue to watch coverage / work on my home course even if I quit. But, I'd really like to continue playing. I don't care how good I am, so steps backwards on my results don't bother me. So, it's time to do what I could have done 3 years ago if I wasn't so stubborn and thought I'd just keep shrugging off the pain.

For today all I have is a little footage of practicing some one leg hammer tosses. I don't have a lot of room in my yard so I just practiced this for now but wanted to try and get to a field tonight to include a disc as well.

This is as much a record keeping exercise for myself as anything, but I'd love to hear anything you all see that I could improve. The first thing that stands out to me is that I need to keep my off arm tucked in instead of swinging it all around. But, that doesn't have anything to do with the pain from my throw, I wouldn't think.

And no innocent bystanders were harmed by the second toss aka the WTF Richard.

 

[sidewinder22]

https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showthread.php?t=136487

 

[bbwrenn]

So it was raining cats and dogs here today and I couldn't video myself, but I still went out and did some elephant walking in the rain. I'm sure I looked the fool.

So is it normal to just about be falling over at first on the elephant walk? I.e. you need to develop the balance and coordination? Or does it likely mean I'm doing it wrong? Because with the rain, I only spent about five minutes out there, but I'll be darned if I didn't just about stumble over two or three times, haha.

I know, I know, useless without video. Probably hard for you to advise without seeing me, but I figured it can't hurt to ask.

 

[sidewinder22]

Maybe a little of both. Have to brace up against the pull of the swing trying to take you out of posture.

 

[bbwrenn]

Gonna try this one more time. Attempting to drill and practice my swing in 2020 actually resulted in more pain than before, and lower accuracy and distance. That's right, I consistently made myself worse and more in pain... permanently. Rather unfortunate... but also something I can laugh at now that it's in the rearview.

The last two years I've basically transitioned to not playing. I play an occasional tournament, not to compete, but to hang out with my dad and all my old friends. And then I test all the new Mint discs when they come out because I really enjoy them. It's very rare I play at all other than that, due to the fact that my arm and shoulder hurt for days afterward.

That said, I miss the game a lot and hey, it's gotta be worth another shot. I literally don't care what I score, so I can't really mess it up. My only goal would be to play without hurting. I picked up a tripod yesterday so I can get better footage than before, so maybe that could help. Any advice is appreciated.

This video is where I'm starting from. This was from last week. I was attempting to get more body turn into the throw, but upon review, it looks exactly like my video from 6 years ago at the top of the thread. Muscle memory is a hell of a drug.



This is from today. I know you can only do so many things at once, so my goals were:
- attempt to use "the power of posture" and stay on the front foot
- rotate my "belt buckle" (that was my mental image) towards the target, forcing my arm to swing through rather than manually swinging the arm, as I have always done



I think I was "somewhat" successful in these goals, it definitely "looks" a little better. Still didn't feel like the arm was being pulled through by my body as much as I was just "timing" the rotation. The other problem is, it felt weaker than my normal throws, and I had trouble holding on to the disc without also grip locking it. As a result, two of the four throws are worm burners, and one was a huge torque/grip lock that faded to the right for a few miles. (Maybe exaggeration... but not by much ) I imagine part of this is a matter of practice and adjusting to a new way of doing things, but I'm sure it's also that I still have much of it quite wrong. Any critique is appreciated. For what its worth, it didn't hurt too badly, which is a huge plus.

 

[sidewinder22]

Move your body in a figure 8 pattern.
https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showthread.php?t=139973

 

[bbwrenn]

Thanks SW22!!

I was working on incorporating the figure 8 momentum today and while I think I'm still working off the rear foot too much, I can definitely feel the power that the shift gives you. I can't imagine how much easier it would be to throw effectively if one actually shifts correctly. No wonder most people don't go home with their arm hurting. :doh:

In the interest of time (I'm back to work now), here is a single throw that flew well. I am aiming at a basket 284 feet away. This one was parked <15' long, which means I threw this 5 speed understable mid about 300'. That is well above average for me, and it felt like less effort than it takes normally even with a runup! Mainly though, nothing hurt, even the couple of worm burners and wrist roll turnovers. That's what's really important here.



One of the things I obviously need to change is my fixation with grabbing the disc before my shot. Here I do it at 2 seconds, and 6 seconds. I'm not sure when I developed that habit. I usually don't even notice when I do it. But here, it clearly breaks up my weight shift back to the back foot. So I'll work on that, for sure. Please let me know what else you see!

I'm very cautiously optimistic that if I could somehow tame this beast maybe I could get back to playing regularly...

 

[Brychanus]

People develop all kinds of waggles for tempo, rhythm, posture, etc. But I'd keep that rear arm more relaxed in general for now.

In your setup I think you should have the dingle arm move through a distinct hit/release point on a plane more perpendicular to your spine. Right now it's a little too vertical and in my experience it makes it hard to get the correct side bend coiling back and swinging through the release point forward.