Trying to learn snap and make it easier for others

[Trekari]

I think the one thing that all the articles and advice I've read are lacking can be boiled down into one simple suggestion:

Someone with a high-speed camera needs to film, from several angles, a professional disc-golfer with mega-snap during a drive/midrange and putt.

If we can't get a high-speed camera (think Mythbusters ), then a drawing/diagram would be very useful as well.

I for one am in the same boat as JR in trying to figure out when certain parts of my body should be turning/driving/powering through.

However given the price of a true, high-speed camera, it's understandable we don't have this yet - from this site or any other.

 

[Blake_T1]

i have a highspeed camera now (the videos on the main site were shot with a hi8), and something i can say for certain is that the frame rate of the video really doesn't matter as timing is at least 50% of throwing far.

there is an extremely subtle difference between someone who accelerates and someone who does not. if you know what you are looking for, it is as clear as night and day. if you don't know, it's really difficult to see.

it's easy to teach body placement. very easy.

understanding timing, finish power, acceleration, and how the body placement relates to that is difficult.

players generally have erratic footwork, balance, and poor body placement which makes finding these things difficult. however, most are unwilling to break their throw back down to the basics, building everything up from the end of the throw (where power is important) to the beginning of the throw.

 

[JR]

i have a highspeed camera now (the videos on the main site were shot with a hi8), and something i can say for certain is that the frame rate of the video really doesn't matter as timing is at least 50% of throwing far.

there is an extremely subtle difference between someone who accelerates and someone who does not. if you know what you are looking for, it is as clear as night and day. if you don't know, it's really difficult to see.

it's easy to teach body placement. very easy.

understanding timing, finish power, acceleration, and how the body placement relates to that is difficult.

players generally have erratic footwork, balance, and poor body placement which makes finding these things difficult. however, most are unwilling to break their throw back down to the basics, building everything up from the end of the throw (where power is important) to the beginning of the throw.

Blake stated most of the reasons why I am not yet comfortable in putting anything in an article. I have lots of details in technique to hone.

Blake how many pictures per second your camera takes.

Speed, acceleration and timing are however easier to specify. Preferably this would be done with a computer software that is able to overlay the videofile as transparent on top of a 3d grid. After this it is a matter of measuring. The best results would be with a computer program again. You could take thw wrist joint as example for the speed that the wrist is moving at. My friend has a video camera that takes 100 pictures per second for 3 seconds. What you do is measure the postiion of the wrist at one picture and measure the distance the wrist has moved in the next picture. This means you have 0,01 seconds worth of motion.

Let's say that an imaginary throw with imaginary numbers is moving at a speed of x at the point where the back of the disc passes the right side. You measure what happens a couple of hundreths of seconds later when the wrist is near the rip. If the speed there is x times something you know that the wrist either accelerated or deccellerated.

Something anyone can do is to measure the motinon your monitor. Tape measure is not the most accurate thing but moeasuring on top of the monitor screen introduces errors as well. The higher the amount of pictures your camera takes per second the more accurate the speed and aceleration measurements are. The faltter the monitor screen is and the larger it is the more accurate the measurement will be.

Thus everyone can do the measurements of the speed and acceleration of any body part from a high speed video footage.

Timing of the order of body movements is purely a visual process. You have to look back and forth between pictures to see when the next things is gonna happen. Like are you moving your arm before you plant or not.

 

[Blake_T1]

Blake how many pictures per second your camera takes.

i can do 1000, but anything over 250 fps needs too much light.

it doesn't matter though. still frames and slow motion provide body placement.

you can have perfect body placement and crappy timing and only throw 275'.

the timing factor/acceleration can only be seen full speed (or very close to full speed).

 

[JR]

Blake how many pictures per second your camera takes.

i can do 1000, but anything over 250 fps needs too much light.

it doesn't matter though. still frames and slow motion provide body placement.

you can have perfect body placement and crappy timing and only throw 275'.

the timing factor/acceleration can only be seen full speed (or very close to full speed).

For really high frame rates one needs additional lighting then. That makes sense from a technical standpoint.

It is completely another thing to be able to measure somebody else driving and seeing when they begin to accelerate and how fast each body part moves in the beginning and how fast they accelerate to which speed in which amount of time than to be able to perform similarly yourself. There's no question about that.

Many people probably can't accelerate as fast hence start accelerating as late as a top pro if they want to delay beginning of acceleration as much as possible. I'm not saying that the pros even do this. That's just the recipe for theoretical maximum rate of acceleration near the rip and thus maximum acceleration as well in the proper place.

The possible benefit of measuring how a top pro or yourself are performing is that you know what's happening, when and how fast. This allows you to conceptualize the order of events and how much effort you should do with each muscle group and when to do the work and how(powerful vs quick). This gives you a framework against which to try to compare what you are actually doing. Then you can check if you think some other way or performing things might be better on a theoretical level and concentrate on changing to the new version.

Once you have footage of yourself performing in a different way you'll know with higher confdence that you've done everything the way you meant. Then you'll hopefully have a slightly higher probablility of making a correct appraisal of which version works better for you. Repetitions are always necessary in order to make higher confidence evaluations. If changing only one thing in your form results in for example 3 mph more throw speed with 1 mph/s/s of more acceleration at the rip and 15' more D consistently go for the new version. Or take the change even farther and see if you can get more D and see when you loose too much accuracy and consistency to determine when you're gonna take things to extremes and when you need to maximize accuracy and consistency. The numbers were arbitrary but you can get rough estimates of velocity and acceleration by measuring the changes in position between frames.

If a wrist moves an inch in 0,01 seconds (two consecutive pictures with a camera that takes 100 pictures per second) you have the speed of 100 inches per second -about 6 mph. Let's pretend that 7 pictures(0,07 seconds) later the player accelerates so much that two consecutive pictures show a difference of 3 inches -about 18 mph. Then you know roughly where the player started accelerating and now the speed is much higher. How do you determine what an inch is? Without computer aided programs there are several factors that mess up the estimations. If you know how tall a person is in inches and have a picture of them standing up or showing a measuring tape that you can see an inch of you have that. Measure that on your monitor screen and use that and you can estimate everything.

Knowing these tidbits allow you to plan a training regime and if you're inclined you can plan and prioritize a research plan. IMO it is more important to identify what you are doing wrong or differently from theoretical best practises or good players. Then just change. Just is easy to say but when you get down to changing things you'll have to know what you're trying to change and concentrate on it.

If you don't know exactly what you're trying to change into which direction and how much and what it takes from your body to achieve that it's a matter of luck and trying to do things with as many ways it takes for you to identify what you did in the moment of performing and guiding your body. Nigh impossible if you're not really concentrating and making several attempts at each version.

 

[Blake_T1]

JR:

the process you are describing is one that someone would use to say, go from 475' to 500'.

yes, those little things make a difference, but two factors:
1) they are only important IF someone already has the timing down.
2) only about 1 in 10 people yield enough body awareness and coordination to actually make said adjustments.

the problem is that people put too much weight on these little things when they do not have the timing down.

the more important body placement factors are like getting your weight forward, keeping the disc tight to your body, etc. those will build a solid 380' of technique. learning to accelerate and pull through the rip adds a 50' jump. other factors such as ripping later, will add slight distance jumps. e.g. if your rip occurs 4-6" later in the throw (assuming this player had the disc rip when their arm was still bent), this will add 20-30' of d.

if someone can't go 360'+, then messing with minute adjustments will not be of any benefit.

 

[rehder]

I very much agree with Blake on the above statement.

To get a basic good throw, its not all that complicated.
1) Solid grip
2) Good weightforward

Most people I see play lack no. 2. If your nose is up, its hard to get long throws.

after this:
acceleration and finish power (These arent hard to learn, but can be difficult doing. If Im not thinking of smacking that wall/face/fly with the back of my hand, I wont get the acceleration needed. I really have to FOCUS on that factor from the beginning of the throw.)[/quote]

 

[Steezo]

The biggest thing is timing. Once you undestand timing then you can feel the
" hit "- this is where dreams are made of.

 

[discmonkey42]

I've got ot agree with Blake whole heartedly here. When I watch videos of myself, or I play with Open players and ask for feedback, I get a lot of "I really don't know what to tell you, your throw looks really good."

Basically this boils down to my body position is correct and the throw is smooth. My issues lie directly with timing and accelleration. Even the 960+ rated players I play with can't pinpoint what I need to do better because it's really hard to see.

A while back, I played with some people I had just met on the course. In the group was a 14 year old kid throwing 450+ with ease. Just for giggles, I asked him what he thought I was doing wrong. He immediately said, "You're not accellerating through the finish right. I don't know how you could fix it, but your timing just seems a little off."

That's when the light bulb went off that the solution was really that simple. Tinker with timing and learn to feel accelleration late in the hit and all would be well. I still haven't quite figured it out yet, but I'm done trying to dissect the movements of my throw as they were all where and how they needed to be. This is where alot of my frustration came from as I watched vid of myself. I was trying to change the elements of my throw when the elements were already there. It's the timing of those elements I need to work on and video doesn't seem to help me with that. (although I've always had a sneaking suspicion that some one on one time with Blake would fix everything 8) ).

 

[deaddisc1]

These posts make me think of the most informative post i have ever seen here on dgr. The post basically said to think of the arm acceleration in terms of a parabola. What you would want ideally is to have a sharp peak to your curve, with that peak coming directly after you release the disc. What most people have is more of a plateau shaped curve where they are accelerating, but the fact that their timing is off is causing them to reach their max speed too early.

 

[JR]

1) they are only important IF someone already has the timing down.
2) only about 1 in 10 people yield enough body awareness and coordination to actually make said adjustments.

the problem is that people put too much weight on these little things when they do not have the timing down.

the more important body placement factors are like getting your weight forward, keeping the disc tight to your body, etc. those will build a solid 380' of technique. learning to accelerate and pull through the rip adds a 50' jump. other factors such as ripping later, will add slight distance jumps. e.g. if your rip occurs 4-6" later in the throw (assuming this player had the disc rip when their arm was still bent), this will add 20-30' of d.

if someone can't go 360'+, then messing with minute adjustments will not be of any benefit.

I totally agree with point 1. I'd be overjoyed if I could get help from this method. I wouldn't wonder if less than 10 % of people would benefit from this. But I'd be happy if anyone learned from this.

All of your points are true as far as I've experienced them. I just don't yet have 430' of technique/power. I think I'm closing. I'm learning quickly and advancing in technique and D. Thanks in great part to you Blake. All of your points have come up previously. It is good to gather them in one place.

 

[JR]

Rehder, steezo, discmonkey42 and deaddisc are all in accordance with my experience. I agree with everything they wrote prior to this post.

Currently I think I have my form mostly down. And grip regarding 9 o'clock grip. I've yet to try the grip described in the Brinster analysis thread. I've actually refining the normal form by adding a Greenwell/Yeti and whoever uses this technique of tilting the disc at reach back and keeping the disc close to the chest until it passes the right side. Then turning the disc to the necessary angle.

Today I got a jump in forehand accuracy and D by learning to control my muscles differently. I get faster acceleration by being quite lax and accelerating very late and really whipping the wrist forward as fast as possible. While I go from loose muscles to quickly tensing my muscles from my shoulder to the wrist slightly.

Once I can do the same backhand I think I'll see real benefits. I have already moved the beginning of arm acceleration later several times but think that I need to accelerate even later. Every time I've started later I've gotten better results. I think that muscle control like with my forearms also help in acclerating faster and beginning the acceleration later. My now confirmed suspicion of having too low apexes in my throws also has hindered my D.

Once I get remaining basics down and see what the grip yields I believe I'm set. I'm nearing my current technical goals quickly. Luckily my ailments have liked the stress of playing

I've compared my technique agains many top players, videos here and the comments of the videos. I think that other parts of my form are ok by now. With luck I'm set for writing of my article this summer. Knock knock

 

[Steezo]

JR,
sometimes you can think too much. There are alot of mechanics involved. You really need to slow everything down until you can feel the x step, feel the reach back, feel the botom of your ass and back coiling/uncoiling, feeling the upper body follow your torso, feel the "hit" , feel your arm accelerating past your chest, feel your power compeletly leave you body and into the disc. Thinking and feeling are different. You need both. When in doubt-play a putter round.

 

[Blake_T1]

Basically this boils down to my body position is correct and the throw is smooth. My issues lie directly with timing and accelleration. Even the 960+ rated players I play with can't pinpoint what I need to do better because it's really hard to see.

yep. i run into the same problems (i have yet to regain my 2002 timing for more than 1 day). most people have no clue what to look for. that is also why they do not throw far.

That's when the light bulb went off that the solution was really that simple. Tinker with timing and learn to feel accelleration late in the hit and all would be well. I still haven't quite figured it out yet, but I'm done trying to dissect the movements of my throw as they were all where and how they needed to be. This is where alot of my frustration came from as I watched vid of myself. I was trying to change the elements of my throw when the elements were already there. It's the timing of those elements I need to work on and video doesn't seem to help me with that. (although I've always had a sneaking suspicion that some one on one time with Blake would fix everything 8) ).

the timing becomes really easy to see once you know what to look for. it's the whistling/in love thing all over again. it's very conceptual and step 1 is in the attempt. that doesn't ensure success, but it does aid in it.

how does one break a board using martial arts. you don't hit the board, you hit beyond the board. this doesn't make someone able to break a board, but it puts them into the right conceptual mindset needed to perform such a task.

 

[JR]

JR,
sometimes you can think too much. There are alot of mechanics involved. You really need to slow everything down until you can feel the x step, feel the reach back, feel the botom of your ass and back coiling/uncoiling, feeling the upper body follow your torso, feel the "hit" , feel your arm accelerating past your chest, feel your power compeletly leave you body and into the disc. Thinking and feeling are different. You need both. When in doubt-play a putter round.

Been there done that and learnt my lessons. Thank you I've already gone back to higher speeds because I don't suffer in my form from it. Not highest possible speeds though. I just can't get every part to move at max speeds when I need them to.

 

[esip]

Blake/JR,

thanks for the info...it has been very helpful

upon reading this info i now consider myself a "little snap" player (my average max drive is around 570- 380 and my goal is to break the 400ft barrier...with this new info i can take a good crack at it

 

[JR]

Blake/JR,

thanks for the info...it has been very helpful

upon reading this info i now consider myself a "little snap" player (my average max drive is around 570- 380 and my goal is to break the 400ft barrier...with this new info i can take a good crack at it

There's a great deal more good info about the specifics of different parts of form spread around in many topics after this thread became inactive.

I'm still honing the brute force way to see what I can achieve with it. I wanna have a stable platform in having a solid and consistent form that gives me greatest possible speed when needed so that I can concentrate on snapping alone.

I can snap all day long at low speed throws which is nice for putting and short approaches. I just need to get more experience with the nose down angles I just learnt. And get comfortable with it before I can really attack snapping with wrist that's been my achilles heel. I want to only change one thing at a time to see the resutls from snapping only. Although I probably do need to train with less than maximum speed to get the timing and tightening of the grip right at first. To get a feeling of how that works. I tried for the fun of it to snap at high/full speed and got some parts right but not everything and the flight lines didn't change nor did the distance. I didn't lose distance which is ok at this point IMO. So there's a lot to do before I can make Cliff's notes out of this.