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Hello! I've been working on rebuilding my backhand form. I know I have issues with getting into the power pocket. From my analysis, this originates from my lower body timing and weight shift being off. From reading the forums, I know that I need to shift my weight to my plant foot before beginning my downswing. However, I'm really struggling with this as it seems to cause me to open up even sooner. Any advice is greatly appreciated!
Need to shift forward while turning back - door frame drills should pull or turn your body further back as you move/shift your CoG further forward.
You get all the way turned back while you are still shifted all the way back, so when you make your forward move you have no choice but to start opening up early.
Thanks Sidewinder! Doing the door frame drill help a lot. Just to make sure I understand correctly: You shift your weight onto you plant foot by essentially "sitting down" with your hips still closed and back facing the target. This happens at the apex of your reach-back, before your arm moves forward at all. You then open your hips which will drive your upper arm forward with your lower arm trailing behind.
I still have issues with transferring my weight to my plant foot too late. So, I practiced starting from the "sitting down position" with all of my weight on my front foot. Not perfect but I think much improved! Do you have any other suggestions for ways to practice this in the field?
So on the standstill shot, if you play it frame-by-frame, you can see the first move you make is leaning back with your upper body. You want the butt/hips to make a move forwards before anything else. You need to get some back and forth momentum, shifting weight between rear and front foot, if you want to do a standstill shot. It's really hard to throw from a static position like that. Try throwing from the "windmill drill" from loopghost.
In door frame drill your shoulder should get loaded back against your rear leg driving forward away from door frame. If you release from door frame after driving, your shoulder should get sling shot forward pulling the loose arm/disc lagged behind.
In your throw there your right shoulder barely moves and your pull your arm instead of it being pulled or swung from your body.
Thanks guys. I'll try the windmill drill out this week. I can definitely feel the shoulder sling while doing the door frame drill, but I'm having a hard time translating it to an actual throw. Guess that's the hard part, muscle memory is killer!
Thanks guys. I'll try the windmill drill out this week. I can definitely feel the shoulder sling while doing the door frame drill, but I'm having a hard time translating it to an actual throw. Guess that's the hard part, muscle memory is killer!
Hello I'm back! I've been doing a lot of reading on these forums, instead of posting. I want to get more serious about my form and post here more frequently. I've decided to do somewhat of a reset, with a focus on drills.
My analysis: Too much trying to rotate hips, especially in the back swing. Too much focus on vertical pressure on the lead side (locking out lead knee). Need to focus more on pushing the lead hip back and keeping rear hip back (butt would be coming off the wall in the butt wipe drill). Bonus toss looked the best.
Lower body/sequence is outta whack. You're kind of corkscrewing rigidly into the rear hip rather than compressing/decompressing into the rear hip load. You are also rising in the plant/swing rather than falling into it and swinging. So:
Swivel stairs and Elephant walk and Battering Ram to work on sequence and hips & weight leading the swing:
This might help you get the more natural feel for "athletic" hip swiveling/rocking:
SW22 & SocraDeez here have finally helped me break through on this after many months. Let me suggest the following. It might help you to see video of me first learning it so that the difference between "rigid body" hip movement and "athletic/pogoing" movement is very clear.
Get athletic and loose and bouncy through your whole body and see if you can get your legs to "pogo" your hips into the rock back and forth. If you don't have the "pogo" bounce in your legs the hips won't rock correctly:
Then, you can see at the beginning here how I swing a weighted club with the same motion as Battering ram as I waddle around, but one-handed, and then plant my feet and bring it into the DG backswing & downswing:
Don't need to adopt my music, but coming from a dance background I find it helpful to have something with a clear beat to sync motions.
This might help you get the more natural feel for "athletic" hip swiveling/rocking:
SW22 & SocraDeez here have finally helped me break through on this after many months. Let me suggest the following. It might help you to see video of me first learning it so that the difference between "rigid body" hip movement and "athletic/pogoing" movement is very clear.
Get athletic and loose and bouncy through your whole body and see if you can get your legs to "pogo" your hips into the rock back and forth. If you don't have the "pogo" bounce in your legs the hips won't rock correctly:
I've seen the "pogo" idea in a few threads and never really understood it. Is it similar to what HUB is describing here: https://youtu.be/8UQ5j5ZUuBA?t=286 (compressing and pressing back out)? Would a good way of thinking about it be: using your legs to put force into the ground to drive the hip movement? I think I'm currently isolating the hips too much, and not using ground forces to drive the motion.
Hello I'm back! I've been doing a lot of reading on these forums, instead of posting. I want to get more serious about my form and post here more frequently. I've decided to do somewhat of a reset, with a focus on drills.
My analysis: Too much trying to rotate hips, especially in the back swing. Too much focus on vertical pressure on the lead side (locking out lead knee). Need to focus more on pushing the lead hip back and keeping rear hip back (butt would be coming off the wall in the butt wipe drill). Bonus toss looked the best.
Welcome back....one thing I noticed with my own form was the position of my plant foot. I never knew how important it was until I started looking closely at my videos. Sometimes my throw would go left of target, sometimes right, and sometimes straight. In all my videos my form seemed to be the same, but then I noticed that when my disc went right of target, I planted my last foot pointing forward (open). When the disc went left of target my plant foot was with the toe pointing kind of back (closed). When the disc went straight, my plant foot was square to the target line.
Stand-still, one step, x-step...didn't matter. If my plant foot was off, so was my throw.
IMO this is one of the harder things to get a "full" description of because it involves so many complex interactions. I got all tangled up in it conceptually and in my form work and will write again in the main threads soon about it. But to simplify it as a coaching point I'd say:
Would a good way of thinking about it be: using your legs to put force into the ground to drive the hip movement? I think I'm currently isolating the hips too much, and not using ground forces to drive the motion.
Yes, but it took me months to enact what SW22 says here.
You can see it here:
And again here as SW22 sends the "bounce" back and forth in his staggered stance:
427s:
The hip movement requires this very fast, reflexive, "bouncy" action in each joint in the legs/hips. It really does function like a "pogo". The problem is that you typically can't easily "see" it in very advanced form because the "pogo"/spring action is so small, fast, and tight. But you can't move your hips correctly without it. I had particular difficulty due to knee injuries from last year, but I am not alone in the struggle to get the mechanic. Apparently, some people never do even if they're fairly athletic.
Like so many things, I found it easier to use gravity to help and feel & find it when I did that little vertical bounce you see in the linked vid above (second to last in post 9), then started using the bounce to help me shift back and forth. Then, SW22 had me start widening the stance and get the "bounce" to transfer my more horizontal (last vid in post 9). So it's a "fast twitch", quick move that I was very unfamiliar with. As it gets smaller and smaller, it feels like "pumping" the hips back and forth from the ground very quickly. If your athletic posture is good over your feet, that bouncing action will help you easily transfer your weight back and forth from foot to foot like walking or running effortlessly. It feels really cool.
I'm not sure if this will help you/stick right away, so I'm curious if this helps you. A lot of people seem to have problems with getting the legs to "pogo" correctly, so I'm wondering if learning little exaggerated athletic bounces up and down and then getting progressively wider is helpful early on, or if it only worked so well because I'd onboarded so many other mechanics first. Give it a try and pls report back!
1. Walk your rear foot diagonally northeast to target. Your rear foot is too inline with hand or across it and rear foot is too close to door frame/hand and too far away from target. You need to play around with the rear foot placement while holding on frame. Don't overdo the eastward movement, should only be around 6" east, and about 12" north.
IMO this is one of the harder things to get a "full" description of because it involves so many complex interactions. I got all tangled up in it conceptually and in my form work and will write again in the main threads soon about it. But to simplify it as a coaching point I'd say:
Yes, but it took me months to enact what SW22 says here.
You can see it here:
And again here as SW22 sends the "bounce" back and forth in his staggered stance:
427s:
The hip movement requires this very fast, reflexive, "bouncy" action in each joint in the legs/hips. It really does function like a "pogo". The problem is that you typically can't easily "see" it in very advanced form because the "pogo"/spring action is so small, fast, and tight. But you can't move your hips correctly without it. I had particular difficulty due to knee injuries from last year, but I am not alone in the struggle to get the mechanic. Apparently, some people never do even if they're fairly athletic.
Like so many things, I found it easier to use gravity to help and feel & find it when I did that little vertical bounce you see in the linked vid above (second to last in post 9), then started using the bounce to help me shift back and forth. Then, SW22 had me start widening the stance and get the "bounce" to transfer my more horizontal (last vid in post 9). So it's a "fast twitch", quick move that I was very unfamiliar with. As it gets smaller and smaller, it feels like "pumping" the hips back and forth from the ground very quickly. If your athletic posture is good over your feet, that bouncing action will help you easily transfer your weight back and forth from foot to foot like walking or running effortlessly. It feels really cool.
I'm not sure if this will help you/stick right away, so I'm curious if this helps you. A lot of people seem to have problems with getting the legs to "pogo" correctly, so I'm wondering if learning little exaggerated athletic bounces up and down and then getting progressively wider is helpful early on, or if it only worked so well because I'd onboarded so many other mechanics first. Give it a try and pls report back!
You've definitely got me thinking! I'm working on your pogo drill from post 9. It's surprisingly difficult to do what you're doing at 11 secs in! Fair to say it's a similar feeling to what Paige is doing here?: https://youtu.be/2lvXcIcNGgs?t=173 But, with more emphasis on vertical force rather than horizontal?
You've definitely got me thinking! I'm working on your pogo drill from post 9. It's surprisingly difficult to do what you're doing at 11 secs in! Fair to say it's a similar feeling to what Paige is doing here?: https://youtu.be/2lvXcIcNGgs?t=173 But, with more emphasis on vertical force rather than horizontal?
Yep, same leg action. Trick is getting the action to rock the hips when you're in the tilted/athletic posture. You might get it faster starting horizontal than vertical, worth experimenting either way. There are often other mechanics to sus out to get the hips rocking better so don't worry if it doesn't "click" right away.
1. Stand up and relax - rear hand/posture should be closer to taking a piss. Posture is too bent over. You have to use more muscles to crouch like that.
2. Should be swinging fairly effortless 50% or so, use the weight of the hammer and gravity to do most of the work. You just need to help assist/guide it while staying out of the way of momentum.
