DarwinDave
Newbie
- Joined
- Sep 22, 2011
- Messages
- 20
A thorough thought process on putting technique
I'd like to take a crack at an article on putting theory if you will, and maybe help some of you out there shake things up a bit.
If you're like i was at one point, while asking for advice and browsing these forums or endlessly streaming youtube clinics, people telling you 'it's all mental' and 'everyone's style is different, so find what works for you' probably just pisses you off lol. They're right, but it might just not be connecting. A bit like telling someone with anger management issues to calm down in the middle of a rager, or telling someone who just lost a love one 'i know how it feels'. The response is probably going to be more anger, and 'no, you haven't'. Everyone is unique.
So here's a few random thoughts for you, that hopefully differ from others and make some sort of connection… I'm not the greatest of disc golfers, not even by a long shot, but no one has been able to fairly accuse me of being a bad putter for years now, and these are what I believe to be the reasons and thought processes that got me there. I honestly can't remember the last time inside of 40 feet that I haven't at least hit metal, or that anything inside the circle even made me remotely nervous.
It's ok, it's the internet. You're not supposed to believe what I just said anyway.
1. Even in putting, acceleration through the shot matters. Now please note, that I'm not saying that you have to have a long, beautiful, picture perfect arm stretched directly to the basket. Look at the footage from the Glass Blown Open that Cam Todd won. His putting stroke is more like a quick jab performed by the stubby arms of a T-Rex, but it gives him enough 'pop' to be consistent, especially under pressure. To use an overused word in disc golf, but in another way that might click, something that is currently accelerating is stable. On the opposite end of the thought, an object that is decelerating (slowing down) is UNstable. You can think about this with driving a car as an example. Is it easier to drive on a straight line while your speeding up, or slamming on the brakes? If you're slowing down, its harder to stay on a stable line from point A to point B. Finding a putting style that you can repeat on a regular basis that undoubtedly accelerates the disc throughout the release will have your putter staying on a straighter line, and more often.
2. Speaking of straighter lines, ever heard the phrase, "The shortest path between two point is a straight line?" Let's avoid the quantum physics time travel sci-fi argument and take that as truth for now. Much the same way a bullet out of a rifle loses accuracy the longer it goes, the key to accuracy in shooting is the initial velocity. Imagine a circle in front of the basket, or a target like you would use at a shooting range. Now pretend that your shot will, 100% of the time, hit within that circle, but has the exact same chances of hitting directly on the crosshairs as it does the edge of the circle. Obviously, you want that circle to be as small as possible. My argument is that always putting at a hyzer angle, where you have to factor in a bit of side to side action, or putting with a lot of height on a softer style of putt, INCREASES that target circle.
3. PUTT IT FLAT. It's basic aerodynamics that a disc perfectly level with the ground is least affected by the wind. Check out Vortica Disc Golf's blogs for more on this-- I'll steal a snippet from it for now.
To help visualize this point, you first have to understand how the wind works. It's an accurate way to look at wind flow as the same way water in a river flows. Or if it helps you more, imagine something like a dam breaking and the water coming through. Even through the hills and valleys it would flow through, the water is trying to get forward and out, but always attempting to move parallel with the ground surface. (It's why a basket placed on a sharp ridge or mound can be absolutely brutal on a windy day... no matter what direction you're putting to it, air is pushing up from under the disc, causing all sorts of mayhem and score sabotage).
Now, take a disc and hold it directly flat and horizontal to the ground, and hold it at eye level, until all you can see is the rim. No flight plate should be viewable, or any of the underside of the disc either. Shouldn't be able to see the bottom of the lip on the back side of the disc either, unless your putter is warped, and if that's the case, you need new putters The point is, when the putter is launched flat, you're MINIMIZING THE SURFACE AREA THAT THE WIND CAN AFFECT.
4. I'm sure I'll get some arguments from this next statement by more than a few nose down and/or hyzer putter players, but here it goes-- To MAXIMIZE your chances of the disc hitting chains and going in, YOU MUST AIM FOR THE CENTER AND TRY AND HIT IT AS FLAT AND LEVEL AS POSSIBLE. Now, obviously, past a certain distance, any putter will begin to lose enough speed to tail out, but the goal should be to maximize the range you can putt and keep it level on it's entire flight as much as possible. The more acceleration into and through the putt you can muster, the straighter and laser-like your putter's flight will be.
5. So how do we generate this power that transfers into precision? You may think that with the Cam Todd reference above and all this talk of flat and straight lines that I'm going to advocate for a lot of wrist and a spin putt motion… NOT THE CASE!
You have to realize the importance of bigger muscles versus smaller ones when it comes to athletics and human anatomy. A motion with any part of the body will ALWAYS BE EASIER TO REPEAT if you're using the big muscles instead of the small ones. The power must come from your legs and your weight transfer, and the two are infinitely intertwined. The glutes, hamstrings and calves are some of the biggest muscles in your body, and your hands are full of numerous tiny ones. Also important to realize is that when it comes to nerves and playing under pressure, the small, twitchy muscles in your hands are the first to be affected! Ricky Wysocki is obviously our prime example here, with that massive rock backwards and low center of gravity at the furthest back part of his reachback. All his power comes from the rear foot pressing into the ground, causing a powerful ripple effect of energy transfer from the ground up, and into the weight shift, that transfers into a straight pendulum type arm motion, causing a massive amount of acceleration into the disc. You'll also notice his relatively quick release for such a big move…. Almost as if his disc goes from 0 to 100% speed in about 6 inches of actual arm movement. This creates that powerful speed, and you'll constantly see him drill 60 to 70 footers with a line drive that barely gets above the top band on the basket. EVEN WHEN HE MISSES, HE CAN CONFIDENTLY BE AGGRESSIVE, BECAUSE HIS TARGET AREA IS SO SMALL THAT HE'LL AT LEAST HIT METAL.
This leads me to the greatest benefit of all ...
WHEN YOU'RE ABLE TO PERFORM THIS STYLE OF AGGRESSION WELL ENOUGH TO START AT LEAST HITTING METAL NEARLY EVERY TIME, YOU DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT BLOWING IT BY THE BASKET!!!! Giving a shot a 'half-go' or 'half-run' is terrible course management. Much like the ball golf adage that says, 'you miss 100% of the putts you leave short." Any good golfer knows that this game is all about maximizing your percentages. If you shouldn't be running it, then a half-run is just pitiful shot selection, and you need to be attempting to leave your shot directly under the basket. Does Ricky make every circle 2 putt? Of course not, although some days it might seem like it. The true advantage in the aggressive line drive putt is that over 18 holes, those seemingly small percentage chances on long putts add up when compared to the soft half-go mentality, and that equals multiple strokes the people too scared and soft to run equals multiple birdies they had a zero percent chance in getting, all while not increasing his chance to 3 putt at all!
I'd like to take a crack at an article on putting theory if you will, and maybe help some of you out there shake things up a bit.
If you're like i was at one point, while asking for advice and browsing these forums or endlessly streaming youtube clinics, people telling you 'it's all mental' and 'everyone's style is different, so find what works for you' probably just pisses you off lol. They're right, but it might just not be connecting. A bit like telling someone with anger management issues to calm down in the middle of a rager, or telling someone who just lost a love one 'i know how it feels'. The response is probably going to be more anger, and 'no, you haven't'. Everyone is unique.
So here's a few random thoughts for you, that hopefully differ from others and make some sort of connection… I'm not the greatest of disc golfers, not even by a long shot, but no one has been able to fairly accuse me of being a bad putter for years now, and these are what I believe to be the reasons and thought processes that got me there. I honestly can't remember the last time inside of 40 feet that I haven't at least hit metal, or that anything inside the circle even made me remotely nervous.
It's ok, it's the internet. You're not supposed to believe what I just said anyway.
1. Even in putting, acceleration through the shot matters. Now please note, that I'm not saying that you have to have a long, beautiful, picture perfect arm stretched directly to the basket. Look at the footage from the Glass Blown Open that Cam Todd won. His putting stroke is more like a quick jab performed by the stubby arms of a T-Rex, but it gives him enough 'pop' to be consistent, especially under pressure. To use an overused word in disc golf, but in another way that might click, something that is currently accelerating is stable. On the opposite end of the thought, an object that is decelerating (slowing down) is UNstable. You can think about this with driving a car as an example. Is it easier to drive on a straight line while your speeding up, or slamming on the brakes? If you're slowing down, its harder to stay on a stable line from point A to point B. Finding a putting style that you can repeat on a regular basis that undoubtedly accelerates the disc throughout the release will have your putter staying on a straighter line, and more often.
2. Speaking of straighter lines, ever heard the phrase, "The shortest path between two point is a straight line?" Let's avoid the quantum physics time travel sci-fi argument and take that as truth for now. Much the same way a bullet out of a rifle loses accuracy the longer it goes, the key to accuracy in shooting is the initial velocity. Imagine a circle in front of the basket, or a target like you would use at a shooting range. Now pretend that your shot will, 100% of the time, hit within that circle, but has the exact same chances of hitting directly on the crosshairs as it does the edge of the circle. Obviously, you want that circle to be as small as possible. My argument is that always putting at a hyzer angle, where you have to factor in a bit of side to side action, or putting with a lot of height on a softer style of putt, INCREASES that target circle.
3. PUTT IT FLAT. It's basic aerodynamics that a disc perfectly level with the ground is least affected by the wind. Check out Vortica Disc Golf's blogs for more on this-- I'll steal a snippet from it for now.
To help visualize this point, you first have to understand how the wind works. It's an accurate way to look at wind flow as the same way water in a river flows. Or if it helps you more, imagine something like a dam breaking and the water coming through. Even through the hills and valleys it would flow through, the water is trying to get forward and out, but always attempting to move parallel with the ground surface. (It's why a basket placed on a sharp ridge or mound can be absolutely brutal on a windy day... no matter what direction you're putting to it, air is pushing up from under the disc, causing all sorts of mayhem and score sabotage).
Now, take a disc and hold it directly flat and horizontal to the ground, and hold it at eye level, until all you can see is the rim. No flight plate should be viewable, or any of the underside of the disc either. Shouldn't be able to see the bottom of the lip on the back side of the disc either, unless your putter is warped, and if that's the case, you need new putters The point is, when the putter is launched flat, you're MINIMIZING THE SURFACE AREA THAT THE WIND CAN AFFECT.
4. I'm sure I'll get some arguments from this next statement by more than a few nose down and/or hyzer putter players, but here it goes-- To MAXIMIZE your chances of the disc hitting chains and going in, YOU MUST AIM FOR THE CENTER AND TRY AND HIT IT AS FLAT AND LEVEL AS POSSIBLE. Now, obviously, past a certain distance, any putter will begin to lose enough speed to tail out, but the goal should be to maximize the range you can putt and keep it level on it's entire flight as much as possible. The more acceleration into and through the putt you can muster, the straighter and laser-like your putter's flight will be.
5. So how do we generate this power that transfers into precision? You may think that with the Cam Todd reference above and all this talk of flat and straight lines that I'm going to advocate for a lot of wrist and a spin putt motion… NOT THE CASE!
You have to realize the importance of bigger muscles versus smaller ones when it comes to athletics and human anatomy. A motion with any part of the body will ALWAYS BE EASIER TO REPEAT if you're using the big muscles instead of the small ones. The power must come from your legs and your weight transfer, and the two are infinitely intertwined. The glutes, hamstrings and calves are some of the biggest muscles in your body, and your hands are full of numerous tiny ones. Also important to realize is that when it comes to nerves and playing under pressure, the small, twitchy muscles in your hands are the first to be affected! Ricky Wysocki is obviously our prime example here, with that massive rock backwards and low center of gravity at the furthest back part of his reachback. All his power comes from the rear foot pressing into the ground, causing a powerful ripple effect of energy transfer from the ground up, and into the weight shift, that transfers into a straight pendulum type arm motion, causing a massive amount of acceleration into the disc. You'll also notice his relatively quick release for such a big move…. Almost as if his disc goes from 0 to 100% speed in about 6 inches of actual arm movement. This creates that powerful speed, and you'll constantly see him drill 60 to 70 footers with a line drive that barely gets above the top band on the basket. EVEN WHEN HE MISSES, HE CAN CONFIDENTLY BE AGGRESSIVE, BECAUSE HIS TARGET AREA IS SO SMALL THAT HE'LL AT LEAST HIT METAL.
This leads me to the greatest benefit of all ...
WHEN YOU'RE ABLE TO PERFORM THIS STYLE OF AGGRESSION WELL ENOUGH TO START AT LEAST HITTING METAL NEARLY EVERY TIME, YOU DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT BLOWING IT BY THE BASKET!!!! Giving a shot a 'half-go' or 'half-run' is terrible course management. Much like the ball golf adage that says, 'you miss 100% of the putts you leave short." Any good golfer knows that this game is all about maximizing your percentages. If you shouldn't be running it, then a half-run is just pitiful shot selection, and you need to be attempting to leave your shot directly under the basket. Does Ricky make every circle 2 putt? Of course not, although some days it might seem like it. The true advantage in the aggressive line drive putt is that over 18 holes, those seemingly small percentage chances on long putts add up when compared to the soft half-go mentality, and that equals multiple strokes the people too scared and soft to run equals multiple birdies they had a zero percent chance in getting, all while not increasing his chance to 3 putt at all!