Discover new ways to elevate your game with the updated DGCourseReview app! It's entirely free and enhanced with features shaped by user feedback to ensure your best experience on the course. (App Store or Google Play)
It's not about gripping hard to throw hard. It's about gripping hard at the right moment to capitalize on all work you've done to that point.
You can do this without really trying. Stand somewhere you can throw 100', just do the right pec drill slow. Try once with a very loose grip and the disc should slip out and go a bit left. Then do it again slow but try to clamp down a second before you think the disc'll come out (should time up right). The disc will still come out, but more to the right and with a ton more energy going into the disc (more distance). The goal then is to learn to direct that force where you want, while also adding in more power from more speed, more steps etc.
I do this sometimes while throwing my dogs toy (narwhal). Hold it by the horn and redirect it's weight to fly much farther than if I just underhand toss it for him.
Its hard to tell if this is feel or real once you have a disc in hand, but, to me, the 'gripping down' part of the swing is part of what actually adds to the acceleration. I don't fully understand the mechanics of this move. I'm sure it has to do with the complicated arrangement of tendon/muscle in the hand and forearm.
I can snap my hand much harder when it is slightly open, compared to what I can do with an actual balled fist. It is a very small amount of movement, but also integral to throwing a disc with actual snap.
I don't think we need to be focusing on the gripping hard part until we get the timing of the Beto drill correct. I think once you can manipulate the disc to slip out early, you can then start to focus on gripping harder.
I also say this as a theory since I'm bad at going out into the field.
I don't think we need to be focusing on the gripping hard part until we get the timing of the Beto drill correct. I think once you can manipulate the disc to slip out early, you can then start to focus on gripping harder.
I also say this as a theory since I'm bad at going out into the field.
People can correct me, because a lot of what I say is purely anecdotal, but to me...the gripping hard part is integral to the Beto drill, or to Blake's secret technique.
If you have ever played with a yo-yo that can spin on a string, you probably understand this also. You don't just grip the yo-yo, there is a...thing...that you do, and most people know how to do it, I swear lol.
Do you consciously/unconsciously grip the disc super hard at the jab/hit/backfist (as Beato describes)? If so, is it really a last moment gripping hard, or a last moment wrist-pop-forward? Both?
Kinda both, though there's an honest aspect of "I don't know." Here's some feel stuff (general reminder about feel-vs-real and that's the role of form critique).
If I'm trying to throw from the right pec (or really, from my center of gravity), a swing that has a lot of force can slip out early, or if my arm tension fails it will swing it too much toward my chest. If I have the intent to swing or slash through to the target, I'll feel my grip clamp down hard. I do remember that there was a point that had to do it more consciously to begin with and maybe most people need to. In the present, if I consciously slow down to focus on swinging for snap I don't consciously think about the hand. Deep brain mechanisms (esp. basal ganglia) start to learn force control on their own but it takes lots of reps. Every time I add more force from working on form or one leg throws I have some arm tension and grip issues that settle down after a bit.
I do still consciously work a lot on the wrist and have had problems with that for almost a year. The wrist pop, tendon bounce, and levering out idea are all related. Focusing on the position and tension of the wrist sets up a lot of the swing's success in my case. On the best swings I feel the bounce. Neither too soft nor too rigid. The hand is clamped to hold onto the disc, but it also levers out nice and quick. I can even feel some variability in how much force is running through my pivot finger from swing to swing. Some of that's my arm, the rest is whatever else happened before the force came up the chain.
Jabs are similar in the sense that you're trained to be very loose and bouncy and quick, then make the structure (fist) rigid at the last possible moment to punch through the target out the other side. Hammers and sticks and similar objects help me to learn the leverage is actually coming from swinging the disc & ripping the nose around and through the target/toward the apex of flight like a hammer head.
I bet RowingBoats is right that all that drumming has helped him.
Both, because those two concepts are linked. Clamping down with your fist is just part of the physiological way our anatomy adds acceleration to that lever.
I also play drums, and have for my entire life...I wonder if that is part of why this particular aspect of the swing felt super intuitive to me as well, once I concentrated on it. There is a whole lot of crazy acceleration down the arm to the fingers playing drums.
Makes sense. I'm also a drummer for life, but don't get as much opportunity these last years. I've been so focused on body position that the hit factor has been forgotten. Seems like it should have been first.
I can relate. I had some form videos and SW22 suggested drills to correct - but I kind of determined it might take me years instead of weeks, so I kinda bowed out for now. Maybe something will click again. I always feel like after an hour of throwing in a field, the sensation only just starts to gel together. That sensation leaves by the next round.
I can relate. I had some form videos and SW22 suggested drills to correct - but I kind of determined it might take me years instead of weeks, so I kinda bowed out for now. Maybe something will click again. I always feel like after an hour of throwing in a field, the sensation only just starts to gel together. That sensation leaves by the next round.
I think years is a reasonable estimate and is consistent with the timeline for learning other advanced sports motions.
I'm finding that once the mechanics get encoded there's still a lot more training needed for rhythm and tempo. One leg throws can teach you a lot like we're saying here. Then, taking a single stride requires its own practice, as does striding or hopping in an x-step in terms of optimizing the form.
Especially for the time-limited persons, I think learning to throw from one leg to get the center of gravity to lead the swing and leverage from the ground up to evoke snap is where'd I'd aim them. You need all of that or the Beto drill won't work. It's meaningful that Beto and others took a ton of focused time to do it. Even if you get the image of the posture and balance and hammer leverage burned into your brain, doing it at all can take a lot of work (where I am), much less doing it consistently (couldn't put a percentage on it, but it's a lot lower than I'd like and that's why hammers and one leg throws are back on the menu).
I'm also noticing that things like the standstills and x-step are getting easier to sync up when I focus on the final disc snap - the body might start to figure out what to do to an extent when it knows the goal (though of course like RowingBoats acknowledges about learning histories, there were 10 months of mechanics training to help that too).
This is a big source of power for sure, but it also won't help someone who is clueless about the swing very much imo.
If someone has already grasped where the extreme acceleration happens, and can halfway snap a disc, they will be prepared to incorporate leading with the butt to add to this. At least that is how it seems to me personally.
This is a big source of power for sure, but it also won't help someone who is clueless about the swing very much imo.
If someone has already grasped where the extreme acceleration happens, and can halfway snap a disc, they will be prepared to incorporate leading with the butt to add to this. At least that is how it seems to me personally.
This matches my experience. I was focusing a lot on weight shift and leading with the butt and everything but not making much progress. I re-visited closed shoulder snap drill recently and was actually able to feel the snap and reproduce it to some extent. Once I had this I started working back from the hit and incorporating more of the body and things made a LOT more sense. I actually think I need to go back to focusing on the snap only because I think I have lost it in my rush to put a full swing together and it is slowing my progress.
Somewhere in one of those threads around the hammer drill or secret technique there is a quote along the lines of "get the snap/hammer feeling. Then incorporate more elements, if it adds to the feeling keep it. If not change it". That feels like a very succinct way of framing how to make progress. The challenging part is to first get a initial feeling to build on and then to correctly identify when elements are adding or subtracting to it.
Since this chat started about ways to develop players, I was looking for examples of when I have snap vs. not and what we can learn from it.
I define snap to be the effect of a highly efficient kinetic chain that puts peak acceleration on the disc. The point of this post is that player mileage may vary depending on where they started, and the development can be nonlinear.
Here's a real live example of the relationship between the hammer drills and snap. This is maybe one of the most important overall developments in my form. Notice how I'm maintaining maximum leverage on the hammer with ulnar deviation and a straight handle in the perpetual swing drill.
Then I throw a few reverse stride standstills. Notice how slowly it looks like each part of my body moves, and how the disc looks like it jumps off my index finger at high speed. Then watch the couple of X-steps and just focus on the disc coming out. The standstills have more snap because when I remove some of the shaky moving parts from my X-step, I can get the arm to maximize what it's getting from the body and put it into the disc.
As people have pointed out here for years, HOW it gets it into the disc is the important part. I am not trying to pivot the disc off my index finger. I am working on leveraging the nose around like - you guessed it - a hammer. That's why the late leverage matter so much and why I had more snap immediately after the hammer swings. When I x-step, the chain is lower quality overall, and the odds I catch and leverage out a good snap are lower.
IMO the snap camp and the posture camp could learn how to live in the same camp.
The throw is a system. The reason you can get a good snap in a one leg and lose it in an X-step is a combination of variances in coordination, rhythm, posture, and so on. The reason many people don't have it on one leg is because they lack the correct leverage and often one or more of these other issues. And I now understand the difference between swinging a hammer into the hit vs swinging the hand into the hit.
I can find the snap because of all of that coaching on my mechanics and posture. And a lot of patience. It's still about seeking and growing the snap, but I needed a lot of help set the stage for it in my case.
The reason I'm loving the reverse stride right now is because I know that bringing in the weight shift adds onto a good snap. The snap is even snappier with more force. That's why people bother to learn and benefit from strides and hops. To get the snappiest snap. You can ruin your snap with any little break in your chain. That's why a high-level x-step is so hard to achieve. And why it's always worth working on snap.
Am I working on my snap more than anything else? Absolutely yes, now at 90% of my time in standstills when I can see it so clearly on camera and feel it when I get it. It's maddening now when I don't get it. Am I working on my posture, rhythm, and balance when I stride? Also yes, because they will only harmonize more quickly as I connect the dots, and every improvement in that category makes it more likely I get a good snap. They are fundamentally linked. Even in standstills like those above there are lots of important variances that contribute to whether I get no snap, good snap, or great snap.
If you spend enough time on the form critique thread, you'll realize that (1) people who don't have snap and are told they can benefit from hammers don't spend enough time with it, or ignore it entirely or (2) if they do swing hammers and do show it to you, they have numerous fundamental posture, sequencing, rhythm, and balance issues that prevent them from getting snap and need feedback to correct it. I have ****ed up how I swing a hammer dozens of times. This time I've started to get it. It's not just the hammer. It's whether everything is working well together.
Some people get it early on and throw far mostly from the front leg without learning ideal weight shifts from foot to foot. They could throw farther if they did as long as it maintained and improved their snap.
It's worth keeping in mind that Dan Beto has incredibly advantageous levers for disc golf. I don't know how tall he is (
), but this is him compared to a learning Joe Shmo scaled to roughly the same size.
Some of you are taller, more limber, faster, and have longer limbs and narrow shoulders than others. Assuming we had equal snap on one leg, your throw will always be farther than mine or SW22's or other stocky people.
Adding mechanical advantages is always valuable. For the disadvantageously levered it is especially important for their distance and maximizing what they get from their snap. It's probably why SW22 got so deep into form mechanics in the first place.
People can correct me, because a lot of what I say is purely anecdotal, but to me...the gripping hard part is integral to the Beto drill, or to Blake's secret technique.
You can do this without really trying. Stand somewhere you can throw 100', just do the right pec drill slow. Try once with a very loose grip and the disc should slip out and go a bit left. Then do it again slow but try to clamp down a second before you think the disc'll come out (should time up right). The disc will still come out, but more to the right and with a ton more energy going into the disc (more distance).
Tried this, didn't quite work as described. My idea was that very light grip, slow swing, disc should rip out without releasing. Hard grip, needs hard swing. Customize your grip force to match your swing force. My very light grip pivoted and hung up on the ring finger and didn't rip out. My tight grip late clamp did come out far right and went impressively far for a slow swing but was grip locked.
When I look at video of Paul et al, it looks like their "grip hard at the hit" is only with the thumb and forefinger, and the other fingers are no longer in play. Maybe a thumb and one finger grip is one way to get the feel of this.
I'm getting the impression that the kinetic chain doesn't work unless you understand snap, and snap doesn't work unless you understand kinetic chain, depending on who you ask.
I'm getting the impression that the kinetic chain doesn't work unless you understand snap, and snap doesn't work unless you understand kinetic chain, depending on who you ask.
Count me among you until recently. The answer IMO is "it's both." They're inextricably linked because a good kinetic chain generates snap. It really is just like smashing with a hammer or jabbing through the target to the other side or swinging a tennis racket or golf club through the ball.
The fundamental problem IMO is that a disc isn't a hammer or club or fist. It's a dinky little circle you want to pop like a frisbee and swivel off your fingers. Most people really struggle to get in the positions and chain of motion to swing the disc exactly like swinging a hammer and lever out like smashing with a hammer head. And most people are really not good at swinging hammers either. In hindsight I am surprised at how many wrong ways I could do it and I am still discovering them. I can barely do right without significant reinforcement so I'm after it hard now. Some people evidently get it faster as this thread seems to indicate, and I agree that focus on training it is justified. If I'd had the time and stamina for daily work in a two-week session like Beto, maybe I would have found it. Or maybe I just would have gotten hurt and frustrated. I'll never know.
The moment my arm and wrist aren't doing the right thing, I lose the snap. The moment my posture gets sloppy or I'm out of rhythm, I lose the snap. The moment I overthink anything, I lose the snap. The training for me is starting to take over from my brain, but it has taken months.
Once you have generated snap, you can use it as a cue to continue tweaking the form. The people who generate snap without mechanics-focused training somehow themselves into a kinetic chain good enough to do it. Otherwise we're talking about magic that only exists in disc golf relative to other sports and even when I jest about it, I don't believe in it.
I think Beto and it sounds like RowingBoats etc. found it without the full-bore analysis people like me and SW22 like. I did it once accidentally 10 months ago which is what set me on my obsessive chase. Then, I needed tons of form work to get it through my thick skull and body even one time. Hammers didn't help until I sorted out a myriad of other issues. But levering it out with maximum force like a hammer is exactly the right idea overall even if the details will vary a bit across people. Levering optimally requires at least a good front leg kinetic chain.
On the other hand, in hindsight that's why I'm saying I do think a specific focus on snap is important, and I wish I'd been more patient with the hammer. To be fair to myself I have no idea that I ever would have gotten it without the months of work on everything else.
I do understand why this topic sometimes devolves into people taking sides like POSTURE! or SNAP!, but these things aren't separate. I know that is mostly what you are saying above, I just think this is a silly separation of concepts.
I think it comes up because...it is quite hard to have a perfect disc golf swing. I certainly do not have one. We all make progress in different ways, and as humans, we are prone to attaching to revelations that offer any kind of success. Most of us probably throw a disc 100' our first time. It is easy to get excited bringing that up to 300', and easy to extrapolate that into a belief that whatever we did to get there, is IT. The PATH.
I really think that is part of the problem lol. You can throw a disc 300' any which way. You can be totally ignorant of snapping the disc, concentrate on emulating postures, and get your arm moving fast enough to do it. You can be totally ignorant of posture and develop a VERY short chain that does have a decent snap, and throw a disc 300'.
For me, I agree with something mentioned up thread. If you keep snap in tact, adding to it with better upper and lower body mechanics will absolutely add power. This is the point of the Beto drill, really.
I have gone through many completely different mental conceptions of the backhand swing. I fell hard into the trap of early acceleration for a while, which I think is what happens to most people who try to copy what they see when they watch the full x-step swing of a good player. There is a fundamental change of pace required to hit those positions in a way that is actually building up to the snap that I had to undergo. Once I did this, I started making actual progress away from the 300-330' throws.
The game also got a lot more fun when I started really focusing on the final snap. Aiming became way easier. Angle control, all of it. For me, it just makes me able to feel like I am throwing an object, rather than performing a series of poses.
Who knows, I could be talking nonsense, and I don't at all deny that lol.
Tried this, didn't quite work as described. My idea was that very light grip, slow swing, disc should rip out without releasing. Hard grip, needs hard swing. Customize your grip force to match your swing force. My very light grip pivoted and hung up on the ring finger and didn't rip out. My tight grip late clamp did come out far right and went impressively far for a slow swing but was grip locked.
When I look at video of Paul et al, it looks like their "grip hard at the hit" is only with the thumb and forefinger, and the other fingers are no longer in play. Maybe a thumb and one finger grip is one way to get the feel of this.
I'm getting the impression that the kinetic chain doesn't work unless you understand snap, and snap doesn't work unless you understand kinetic chain, depending on who you ask.
Snap requires a kinetic chain, but it does not require a long one. You can totally achieve 'snap' with just some slight torso movement sent down the arm.
I don't 'release' my 200' upshots. Those still have plenty of snap to pop right out of my hand.
Grip can totally help with this. I started to get it way more when I switched to a two finger power grip for some reason. It just made the disc feel more like a tomahawk or hammer that I could really get some leverage on. Lately it has crept into a three finger grip, but it has the same feeling.
Tried this, didn't quite work as described. My idea was that very light grip, slow swing, disc should rip out without releasing. Hard grip, needs hard swing. Customize your grip force to match your swing force.
This part jumps out at me too so I just wanted to reply to it.
The grip is not static during the swing, not even close. So if you are describing a grip that you are trying to 'set' and maintain, that isn't it. You have to be pretty loose up until you aren't.
Tried this, didn't quite work as described. My idea was that very light grip, slow swing, disc should rip out without releasing. Hard grip, needs hard swing. Customize your grip force to match your swing force. My very light grip pivoted and hung up on the ring finger and didn't rip out. My tight grip late clamp did come out far right and went impressively far for a slow swing but was grip locked.
When I look at video of Paul et al, it looks like their "grip hard at the hit" is only with the thumb and forefinger, and the other fingers are no longer in play. Maybe a thumb and one finger grip is one way to get the feel of this.
It's possible you didn't grip loose enough to start with. With a light grip and slow swing the disc should still slip out left of target. Then by gripping tighter you feel the redirection and additional acceleration the disc has at release. But you're right that it is a scale.
Allow me to go on a tangent not directed at anyone. Grip lock is just a mis-redirection of force too far right. Throwing a hammer for the first time, we throw it to the right a couple times before we learn the swing path. Redirecting weight and force is tricky because we think "pull in a straight line." That's not how the throw works well. Hammer drill is perfect for feeling this.
Watch how Jakub's disc looks like it could go straight at the orange banner from his reach back, but then ends up pivoting out right and to where his eyes are looking. He's correctly redirecting. What I was trying to emphasize with an admittedly mediocre drill is if your grip is loose enough (you would never throw a shot this loose) the disc will go toward the extention point aka the orange banner. But once you grip it tighter and redirect the disc, it follows the arc and comes out more right, which also includes a power boost. I believe this is most of the secret technique along with making the arcs the disc is redirected from as tight and therefore fast as possible.
To reinforce this, Beto came out with a new video not too long ago and he makes a point of showing "come in to the right pec, come out to the hit," and extends his arm similar to Jakub's above.
HUB "If you're grip locking, you're getting some part of the magic wrong." About 4 minutes in.
I agree that grip-lock is not what most people seem to think it is, and also agree that it does imply 'some part' was wrong, but...
It also results in some people absolutely bombing 45 degrees right of where they intended, so sometimes they actually get more of the 'magic' part right when it happens lol.
I agree that grip-lock is not what most people seem to think it is, and also agree that it does imply 'some part' was wrong, but...
It also results in some people absolutely bombing 45 degrees right of where they intended, so sometimes they actually get more of the 'magic' part right when it happens lol.
It's possible you didn't grip loose enough to start with. With a light grip and slow swing the disc should still slip out left of target. Then by gripping tighter you feel the redirection and additional acceleration the disc has at release. But you're right that it is a scale.
Allow me to go on a tangent not directed at anyone. Grip lock is just a mis-redirection of force too far right. Throwing a hammer for the first time, we throw it to the right a couple times before we learn the swing path. Redirecting weight and force is tricky because we think "pull in a straight line." That's not how the throw works well. Hammer drill is perfect for feeling this.
Watch how Jakub's disc looks like it could go straight at the orange banner from his reach back, but then ends up pivoting out right and to where his eyes are looking. He's correctly redirecting. What I was trying to emphasize with an admittedly mediocre drill is if your grip is loose enough (you would never throw a shot this loose) the disc will go toward the extention point aka the orange banner. But once you grip it tighter and redirect the disc, it follows the arc and comes out more right, which also includes a power boost. I believe this is most of the secret technique along with making the arcs the disc is redirected from as tight and therefore fast as possible.
To reinforce this, Beto came out with a new video not too long ago and he makes a point of showing "come in to the right pec, come out to the hit," and extends his arm similar to Jakub's above.
HUB "If you're grip locking, you're getting some part of the magic wrong." About 4 minutes in.
It's very funny that you posted this. After watching this week's GK Pro Skins match I saw that his form was very similar to Beto. I've been watching more to see how he gets the magic to happen. It almost looks like he's not putting in that much effort either.
It's also interesting as you watch his throw a few times that the disc sort of jumps as he's leaving the power pocket then ejects at a fast speed.
