Breaking Bad Timing Habit

[lostDoughnut]

you stop here and pause half way into your backswing. then when you start to fall towards the target you finish your backswing



watch how i , in 1 motion swing all the way into my backswing. then i get balanced on my left leg. then i slight lean towards the target and let my center of gravity pull myself (starts at 15 second marker, i do the preswings to get my body in sync to feel the weight of my body shift between my legs as a drill. to help get as deep as i do note how my right knee bends and my left leg gets straight)



i totally understand how balancing all this with timing is odd. looking backwards and falling forwards is not a natural thing, lol

 

[lostDoughnut]

you just twist at the waiste to do your backswing.


use your leg and create tension by using your left leg to turn away from the target

 

[Melonhusk]

you stop here and pause half way into your backswing. then when you start to fall towards the target you finish your backswing

View attachment 76356

watch how i , in 1 motion swing all the way into my backswing. then i get balanced on my left leg. then i slight lean towards the target and let my center of gravity pull myself (starts at 15 second marker, i do the preswings to get my body in sync to feel the weight of my body shift between my legs as a drill. to help get as deep as i do note how my right knee bends and my left leg gets straight)



i totally understand how balancing all this with timing is odd. looking backwards and falling forwards is not a natural thing, lol

Ah yeah, I've been doing that to get a bit more of an x-step feel in my standstills. If you watch people throwing full power, they typically won't be in their full backswing by the time their feet cross over. This isn't a perfect comparison, but this is roughly what I mean:

So my backswing really starts when I begin to shift forward. I'm a chronic early-backswing-starter, so that's helped fix that a little bit. Just something I've been playing around with!

you just twist at the waiste to do your backswing.
Attachment 76357

use your leg and create tension by using your left leg to turn away from the target
Attachment 76358

Yeah this may be part of where I'm going wrong in the kick the can drill. When I do it it tends to open up my hips right away, which is making me twist at the waist to accomplish a backswing like you said - whereas pros will leverage into their back leg as they're coming forward, and then start to open up after that. That first phase of the shift forward seems to be what I'm missing. Thanks!

 

[sidewinder22]

Looks pretty good except for the double clutch.

 

[Melonhusk]

Huh, yeah I don't know, I definitely could be wrong but it doesn't feel a ton like a double clutch to me, at least in the sense that I'm interrupting my motion partway through. To me it feels more like what Ezra does at timestamp 30:


It's just sort of a setup before the backswing, not an interruption of the backswing, at least the way I think I'm feeling it - really just an effort to maintain the taut "ball on a string" feel. I think it would look a lot more natural if I was doing an x-step, and reached that position dynamically. But I could be wrong!

 

[sidewinder22]

IDK, maybe, just looks weird to me.

 

[Melonhusk]

Haha, well that's fair. It's certainly not like I can point to any fantastic results it's gained me! Speaking of...

I tried to basically do the hershyzer drill in the field, really trying to leverage into my back leg moving forward instead of twisting at the waist only. I think I'm a little confused about things, about a lot of things, but mainly about how to get onto the front leg. I'm noticing more and more how when elite players get onto their front leg their hips are fully rocked back, so their plant is jammed into the ground diagonally. This sort of insane clip of Kevin Jones is a good example: https://youtu.be/nuEFQkxqBSc?t=147

And I think I understand how the kick the can drill gets you there! I think I've felt it. But then what I'm confused by is how to turn the upper body with hip rotation rather than twisting at the waist, while also kicking the can. Kicking the can seems to open up the hips, that's how it looks on film to me and that's how it's felt, I could totally be wrong about that but that's the way I've experienced it. So is it a matter of getting coiled up with the hershyzer, and then exploding from there into kick the can? Or something not at all like I've described?

Because I was lacking this feeling I was getting outside my posture a lot, balanced forward on my plant instead of braced behind it. I didn't blow past my brace completely, but everything is tilted forward it looks like and I'm sure I'm having to compensate a bunch to throw flat-ish. Here's a side and a back view:





Another thing I'm unsure about - I saw some discussion in the Technique forum about the weight shift feeling like rappelling, which isn't what it feels like to me right now at all. Again I feel like what I've been trying has been leading to hips more open at the the point of weight shift (while the shoulders stay closed hopefully), more side to side, whereas if I think of rappelling I think of sitting down backwards towards the target line. If I picture myself doing that I picture my butt going way past my knees and my plant collapsing, but clearly there's just something I'm not grasping. Is there a good drill for that feeling?

Thanks!

 

[sidewinder22]

It is hard to describe, kick the can does open you open into the plant, but the shift is still happening from behind.

 

[Melonhusk]

Ah ok yeah, I do see how it's the double dragon drill. I think I get that the "shift is still coming from behind", though it's confusing for me because the more I watch the more I see hips opening before weight is fully transferred. But obviously the momentum is still trapped behind the brace leg, you don't see pros' back legs swinging around the front like when someone is really opening up. Just something I'm still trying to wrap my head around! The most intuitive way for me to see it is that twisting up on the back leg is to "coil up" for the kick out, but both the coiling up and kicking out happen while moving forward. I'll have to play around with it, thanks again!

 

[Melonhusk]

Ok, gave the double dragon a try, or really just a "single dragon" with the Jarvis left hand on the quad thing. I think it got me somewhere! I was getting onto my front leg better I think, and the balance when I finished felt different, like I was rocked backwards and stopped fully by the brace, instead of flying over the top of it. That's what I felt the good part was, but definitely some issues as well.

For one, not really all that much juice on these, and I do notice my arm-shoulder angle was a bit narrow? It doesn't really seem like for lack of a better phrase the disc is getting very "deep into the power pocket" - not sure how to correct that. I was trying to stay really closed off and really loose, but maybe either it wasn't enough, or there's some other problem.

One other thing was every other shot went very high and right, so I've got a video of one of those, and then a straight one. I think I can see that on the pulled one I come through maybe a hair quicker after planting, but when I slow it down they both look fine to my untrained eye - something was going on for sure.





Thanks!

 

[sidewinder22]

Plant looks pretty good. Little too much targetward tilt on the kick back. My right shoulder ends up swinging back behind the left foot. You can't swing your right shoulder back that far.

 

[Melonhusk]

I took another crack at the same thing today - I don't know looking back if I un-tilted my posture on the kick back as much as I needed to, but I definitely tilted less. I also tried to fix the narrow shoulder angle by trying to cue myself to not let my head or body turn towards the target until my forearm pulled it around, seeing if I could get the disc out to the side of my body more like GG. I definitely did not look or throw like GG but I think it helped! Overall, felt a lot more powerful today.

There were still a lot of whiffs, where the movement felt powerful but the disc seemed to not quite catch the flow of energy, and I noticed all the best shots were pulled to the right, an experience I'm all-too familiar with. Usually I'd diagnose that as a symptom of opening up too early, but was I opening up too early? I can't tell, it feels like this is almost but not quite clicking.

Here's probably the best-looking one (to me):




and here's one that actually felt the best out of the hand, and flew the furthest, but it looks a bit sloppy.



Like I mentioned before, both of these were yanked about 15-25 degrees right, not quite sure why.

Thanks!

 

[sidewinder22]

Turn your stance 20 degrees to the left.

 

[Melonhusk]

Haha, I see the wisdom in that - does everything else look in alignment then? I used to plant more diagonally, but I've worked on striding more in a straight line. Is about 20 degrees worth of stagger the sweet spot?

 

[Melonhusk]

I've got my first tournament in a long time coming up, so I've been trying to throw from an x-step again, especially as I'm feeling like I'm starting to get a hang of the standstill. I knew I would feel very uncoordinated, and I did! My main focus was trying to get my legs moving a bit more, try to get my second step underneath me instead of putting the brakes on. It seems like my body doesn't quite know how to do that, but maybe I came close. Everything looks a bit leaned back to me.

 

[sidewinder22]

Push off right foot harder. Note how your right knee is barely ahead of your ankle compared to the rest.

 

[Melonhusk]

Gotcha, right, I think that's part of the issue is my legs aren't used to working hard enough. At the same time, is there a way to downtempo that feeling? I started today trying to get as much momentum moving as I could, and everything was just all over the place, moving way too fast, so I slowed down. Should it still feel like the right leg is doing a lot of work, even on slow controlled shots?

Thanks!

 

[sidewinder22]

More of a targetward lean going slower.

 

[Melonhusk]

That helped, but it was tough. Really hammers home the whole idea of "catching yourself" with the plant! I felt like I was falling over, and I think on most of these I still wasn't leaned over enough.

Is my timing off between my backswing and my lower body? It seems my backswing was peaking a little late maybe.

It was also tough not to try too hard with my upper body. It's not enough that with the "falling over" feeling everything felt like it was happening too fast, on top of that it's like my arm couldn't wait to throw the disc. Anyway, maybe some progress!

 

[sidewinder22]

Looking much better. First one backswing peaked a little early, the other two were better.