MrScoopa said:
This visualizations of "punching towards the target", "slinging the head of the hammer", and "snapping the towel" are helping me with the elbow stop.
I have a question though. There is a conflict in my head. MB says from the right pec go like hell and punch toward the target. Bradley says once the disc is coming away from the right pec and into the "apex" accelerate and sling the head of the hammer. With JHern it is sling the forearm out with the power created from the lower body and leave my arm muscles out of the equation. To make matters worse there is a post by Blake where he says don't accelerate the arm until the very last second.
I don't know if I am misinterpreting ,having major brain-fog, mixing throwing techniques, or what. But, I am royally confused!
I know from personal experience watching a guy at my local course you don't need much acceleration at all. He pulls straight across at his belly-button and snaps the ever living holly s#!t out the disc. He throws like Lundmark. Snap is all his throw is. and it glides foooreverr.
Don't let all the info frighten or confuse you. The exercise I'm talking about above is only about feeling the torso drive the whip, and getting used to that feeling, which is especially useful for those who are strong-arming and forever stuck at 300 ft. Because no matter what other details might be floating around, throwing well is all about feeling your core power, first and foremost. As Dave Dunipace's advice on Innova says: "...you have to throw, not recite."
And I can't emphasize this point enough: Previously (not too long ago) I was getting my body into all the right positions at the various times and such (after getting bogged down in details on this site, like yourself), and I was still stuck at 300'. Occasionally I would bust out much longer throws, and they would feel effortless, but I never knew why. The fact is that I was still throwing with my arm effort most of the time, and not harnessing the power of my core. If you watched me throw before I figured this out, and then watched me throw after learning to harness my core (too bad I lost my camera!), you would be hard pressed to tell the difference in how I was going through the positions and everything (except the speed result is different, of course). None of those details really changed at all. The difference is all feel. And no amount of information on positioning, starting this or that motion, when the arm is held here or there, etc., is going to make you feel the power of your core and use it to throw the disc instead of trying to use the arm.
The rest is details, mostly. Don't get too bogged down in this stuff, stick to the essentials at first. Strive for positions that give you the right feeling of power from your core. Mostly they will end up being similar to the things described here, sometimes not exactly. Other times you'll have a revelation and say "aha, that's what they meant by ....!" There are a lot of perspectives and ideas floating around here, and people can't always explain what they're thinking in the exact terms that will make sense to you at the moment. And many are speaking from hindsight.
A lot of advice here isn't meant to be construed as the holy script for how to throw, but rather are drills designed to get you into good habits. These drills are especially useful when those habits are not already incorporated, and you'll see dramatic improvements by using them. E.g., the hip-twist drill above is just a drill, designed to get the feeling for harnessing core power. This drill is designed for people who are strong arming their throw. There is no description of an ideal throw that has string arms...so be careful to not miss the point. The right pec drill is a drill, designed to help you get the most whip (after the elbow stop and torso neutral) possible starting from the disc in at the right pec, which helps your body remember the "feeling" of getting into the best positions. Do that drill too, I strongly recommend it, it has done wonders for me.
And even then, there are different throwing styles as well. Maybe 1000 different ways of throwing will get into the 400' distance range. The differences might seem small sometimes, large in other instances. But not all of them will work for you personally.
I played with a guy the other day who could crush his drives 450', and the whole time his throwing arm was held way far away during the entire pull. His elbow was nearly straight the entire time! Talk about a disconnect between what you might read here or there, and actual reality! What I noticed, however, is that he was throwing with his core. He wasn't throwing with his arm, and that's why he was able to get the disc out there farther than just about anyone on the course. This is an illustration, to me, of the supremacy of feeling over details about positions. Positioning may very well be important, but without the proper feeling of harnessing the core, it won't matter at all.
As for whip/punch, it may be possible for somebody to develop the fast twitch arm muscles able to contribute to a 50-60 MPH motion. But even if you have that capacity (which is genetic), it will take time for that to develop. And the only way this will develop is if you give your arm a great deal of help to get up to speed first, and get used to operating at those speeds. And the only way to do that is to get your strongest muscles (not your arm) involved to drive the whip. Period.
I've arrived at this perspective by looking into some well-known physical laws that govern how muscles work. There are two main principles...
-Position dependence of strength: The muscle can apply its greatest force when the limb is near its rest position.
-Speed dependence of strength: The force a muscle can apply diminishes rapidly as the speed of the resultant motion increases.
If you think about it, these make perfect sense. If they weren't true, then people/animals would be able to learn to run faster and faster without any limit from their muscles. The fact that the strength diminishes as the motion speed increases implies that there is a maximum speed.
Same with throwing: the faster your arm moves, the weaker it is. This isn't idle speculation, it is well-accepted fact of biomechanics. That's why you need to get the slower but more powerful motion of your core into it. Use your arms as levers and pivots that channel that power into various positions, instead of thinking of them as the primary instruments for achieving the throw.
Anyways, enough for now. Huge windstorm here, and my home sounds like it is about to blow away.