Common Plateaus, Issues, and Breaking Through Them

[Kennets]

It wasn't meant in a elitist way, at all. English not being my first language might cause some confusion.

The more I focus on stuff, specially my upper body, things go sideways. If I freewheel it, I'll usually be more loose and not so rigid in my movement.

 

[Nick Carroll]

Kennets: "Stop trying."
Me: (just sits on the edge of the tee pad)
Kennets: "Not like that!"


Seriously though, there needs to be a consistent method of just teaching people the basics, and I wish it were easy enough for people to do that with the backhand throw. I've never played a sport with this complex a movement, that's so easy to get it disastrously wrong.

If you think about martial arts, often people do katas or forms or whatever to get certain positions and movements. But that's all fairly standardized per discipline. We just don't seem to have that for disc golf.

The popular coaches have their own drills, or variants of existing drills. There's different way of teaching like top-down, bottom-up, in the middle, chronological order, etc. But online and free there's not a really good program out there that is standardized and works. I hope we get there one day.

 

[Kennets]

Kennets: "Stop trying."
Me: (just sits on the edge of the tee pad)
Kennets: "Not like that!"

Lmao! English can be hard at times!

All in all, we should just play to have fun and enjoy that we have good buddies to play with (and that our health allows us to play).

 

[TiltedFlipCurves]

Well I can't find my hammer but I have a couple of cast-iron skillets. I didn't throw them but I did swing them around some. I kind of get it but actual skillet or clawhammer throws for distance wouldn't look like disc throws. Still they're heavy enough swinging them around correctly (correct plane to launch a disc) could be helpful, if only because I have no upper body strength.

Still can't be sure any "defined release point" will be created either...

 

[sidewinder22]

Well I can't find my hammer but I have a couple of cast-iron skillets. I didn't throw them but I did swing them around some. I kind of get it but actual skillet or clawhammer throws for distance wouldn't look like disc throws. Still they're heavy enough swinging them around correctly (correct plane to launch a disc) could be helpful, if only because I have no upper body strength.

Still can't be sure any "defined release point" will be created either...

2m35s:

 

[Waddball]

Well I can't find my hammer but I have a couple of cast-iron skillets. I didn't throw them but I did swing them around some. I kind of get it but actual skillet or clawhammer throws for distance wouldn't look like disc throws. Still they're heavy enough swinging them around correctly (correct plane to launch a disc) could be helpful, if only because I have no upper body strength.

Still can't be sure any "defined release point" will be created either...

I never had much luck with hammer drills; my arm had to be too rigid to keep it safe. I throw discs with a much more relaxed arm than I could ever throw a hammer. Not that it's a bad drill, but it just never resonated for me.

My best early breakthroughs were from using Sidewinder's elephant trunk/arm drill. Sway that loose, dangling arm around with your body and feel what it takes to move it without using any upper arm or shoulder muscles. You have a dead weight hanging off your trunk: how do you move it? Answering this really helped me a lot. Don't even use a disc. Just figure out how to move that arm.

 

[Brychanus]

I still find it interesting who does and doesn't respond well to hammers.

I still suspect martial arts background + an initially way too wimpy forearm/floppy wrist are part of why it worked well for me. Plus maybe throwing anything with significant weight and leverage was better than not in my case. I was also doing a couple home projects hitting things with mallets and sledges one summer and it probably did more for my movement overall than many things before it. After that more drills seemed to become more intuitive and effective to me - the intent at the end of the move was missing for the first year or so because it was confusing how it related to a disc.

Elephant walks and dingle arms remain top tier concepts IMO if you want to develop full-body synergies, rhythm, harmony with gravity, and smooth action.