This is SO MUCH cleaner looking than the post from early in the month.
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Hilariously Bad Backhand Form, Please Advise
- Thread starter ninjabq
- Start date
Brychanus
* Ace Member *
Looks like you're getting more counter-rotation through the upper body in the backswing while you're shifting forward.
I think you're not quite balanced onto the rear leg in transition and tipping off. Supplement with Hershyzer Drills maybe.
I think you're not quite balanced onto the rear leg in transition and tipping off. Supplement with Hershyzer Drills maybe.
I was purposefully starting on the ball of my rear foot and dropping down from there, should I stop doing that?
Brychanus
* Ace Member *
That part is probably fine. Try to square up your rear foot a little more perpendicular to the target so you leveraging off of it more sideways.
I am a beginner, too, so no form expert here. About same as ninja, I max out around 200 feet, with a rare 225 feet mixed in. Playing just over 2 months. Similar frustrations at times - I get that! But, watching these videos, isn't he rounding many of the throws, at least partially - not getting a full "power pocket" formed???
Again, beginner here, trying more to learn myself more than to give form advice…. That said, I watched a video once saying that the best stance/foot position on a drive, to get more distance, is to stagger your feet, where the heel of your front foot is even with or even slightly past the toes of your back foot (so, RHBH, working from an imaginary line perpendicular to your target, your front foot heel is on or slightly left of the line, while your back foot toes are on or slightly right of the line). He says that way you have more room for your arm to come past your body in a correct power pocket, and it allows you to get more body spin more easily. Thoughts, anyone???
Brychanus
* Ace Member *
Some degree of stagger is ok - the key in any case is to make sure your feet and legs work well moving foot to foot like walking, and generally the most efficient move is when the foot angles relative to each other are neutral. It benefitted me tremendously practicing narrow or more extremely diagonal staggers in standstills, then using Sidewinder's door frame drills to work on the transition into the plant and find where I got the easiest power.
Rounding: I think if you trawl around reddit or facebook, a lot of 300' throwers will use this word to mean any degree of the disc going "behind" the body in any way, and this misunderstanding is related to why they can't throw consistently farther than that. Though you see some variability in pros, that idea is clearly incorrect and they are not thinking about how one-armed swings/pulls work mechanically in the context of the rest of the body. I'll explain:
Top left player letting the shoulder angle collapse, top right is not collapsing. Green = good, red = bad. Notice how top left the bicep is pointed more toward the sky (shoulder is "externally rotated," anatomically), whereas in top right the bicep is pointed toward his rear shoulder (shoulder is "internally rotated, anatomically - much stronger leverage). Bottom row both Paige and Gurthie showing how deeply "behind" your body the disc can go into the backswing so long as you don't do the error on the top line or get your rear shoulder in the way:
Rebecca Cox is rounding, Paige and Henna are not:
So after starting as a skeptic myself, I came to endorse Sidewinder's better definition of rounding, which is more related to how you allow space for the swing to evolve as long as you don't get the rear shoulder in the way and let the throwing shoulder collapse:
By the way, I use a version of a more Paige and Gurthie like backswing now. It can be hard to learn to get loose and relax the disc while preserving your posture that way. There are fine lines between too loose and too taut, and in and out of leverage coming out of the backswing. Swinging increasingly large hammers have really helped me to gain mechanics that keep me loose but powerful even though I don't have ideal mechanics yet.
Btw, Sidewinder opines "backswing doesn't matter much" as long as the swing mechanics are preserved heading into the release. I think I still have a couple questions about that, but after tinkering with it for a while, it's definitely more true than false, and frying the bigger fish of how the whole body moves matters more.
Thank you Brychanus, for taking the time to break this down and explain it. I read and reviewed this many times, and compared it to video of me - gotta admit, it is still kind of like Greek to me, but I am sure as I continue to watch, study, and practice, I will grasp more in time. I think I am too upright, and not getting into a good power stance. Probably too rigid - no loose noodle arm and whip effect. Improvements in putting seem to come so much easier than improvements in driving!
Brychanus
* Ace Member *
It's hard if you're learning online/remotely. Do/post drills, swing heavy things, don't assume your body is going to swing exactly like anyone else. Get out of your head, have a drink, swing freely. Just try to discover what all the big guns have in common. It's a strange journey for most of us ;-)
Hello friends! This will be more of a blog post than a specific request for help, but advice is always welcome.
Haven't done much field work since my last post, on account of unexpectedly buying a crack house and spending lots of time on that. Still been playing around once a week, but trying to get back into the grind. Still maxing out around 300 feet. Scores haven't improved nearly as much as I'd have liked.
Finally had time to get out and take some video today. Here's where I'm at:
Besides the clear spinning around on the "plant", if you can even call it that, I also see that I still have the ole' front shoulder hunch.
I was playing around in front of the mirror and I believe I have discovered the root cause - instead of resisting the ground on my plant, my hips are sliding forward and then up (instead of clearing backward), causing the whole front side of my body to go up as well.
Clearly I am in need of some serious Crush the Can/OLD. I didn't have a lot of time today but I did some OLD-ish practice to try and fix the my clear planting issue.
Can't say it looks a ton better and the results were definitely worse, but this/crush the can are effectively what I need to work on most.
Also, I am in a constant state of playing around with grip. I am more-or-less using a 4-finger power grip, and have found that the combination of keeping the grip very loose during the "pull through" and "carrying the briefcase" into supination feels the best, both during the movement and in the feeling of the disc ejecting from my hand, but I feel like I'm not getting a tight enough grip at the end. Also, there is still a ton of wobble in my throws. As we've discussed earlier that may not be grip or arm related at all, but I am keeping an eye on it.
After I had finished, some older dudes (maybe around 55-60?) came up and played off the teepad. One of them parked his shot and looked like he was trying a heck of a lot less hard than I was. One thing I struggle with is slowing down and focusing on smoothness rather than trying to rip it, even when practicing or upshotting. Something I need to work on.
As always, input is appreciated and thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Haven't done much field work since my last post, on account of unexpectedly buying a crack house and spending lots of time on that. Still been playing around once a week, but trying to get back into the grind. Still maxing out around 300 feet. Scores haven't improved nearly as much as I'd have liked.
Finally had time to get out and take some video today. Here's where I'm at:
Besides the clear spinning around on the "plant", if you can even call it that, I also see that I still have the ole' front shoulder hunch.
I was playing around in front of the mirror and I believe I have discovered the root cause - instead of resisting the ground on my plant, my hips are sliding forward and then up (instead of clearing backward), causing the whole front side of my body to go up as well.
Clearly I am in need of some serious Crush the Can/OLD. I didn't have a lot of time today but I did some OLD-ish practice to try and fix the my clear planting issue.
Can't say it looks a ton better and the results were definitely worse, but this/crush the can are effectively what I need to work on most.
Also, I am in a constant state of playing around with grip. I am more-or-less using a 4-finger power grip, and have found that the combination of keeping the grip very loose during the "pull through" and "carrying the briefcase" into supination feels the best, both during the movement and in the feeling of the disc ejecting from my hand, but I feel like I'm not getting a tight enough grip at the end. Also, there is still a ton of wobble in my throws. As we've discussed earlier that may not be grip or arm related at all, but I am keeping an eye on it.
After I had finished, some older dudes (maybe around 55-60?) came up and played off the teepad. One of them parked his shot and looked like he was trying a heck of a lot less hard than I was. One thing I struggle with is slowing down and focusing on smoothness rather than trying to rip it, even when practicing or upshotting. Something I need to work on.
As always, input is appreciated and thanks for coming to my TED talk.
Brychanus
* Ace Member *
1. Set up feet more neutral. You kind of rock back and forth and get pigeon toed in the plant leg rather than more naturally walking into it.
2. You are fundamentally throwing on a completely vertical axis with flat form. I think drilling everything in Turbo Encabulator and Double Dragon hardcore might be necessary. Need to make your body more comfortable with the tilted axis. If you don't change that you will just be fighting yourself and gravity and chasing ghosts.
*ps - as a prematurely old dude, yes, ripping it can add power, but you can also build a form that generates a lot of useable power without ripping it (and then add athleticism on top of it).
2. You are fundamentally throwing on a completely vertical axis with flat form. I think drilling everything in Turbo Encabulator and Double Dragon hardcore might be necessary. Need to make your body more comfortable with the tilted axis. If you don't change that you will just be fighting yourself and gravity and chasing ghosts.
*ps - as a prematurely old dude, yes, ripping it can add power, but you can also build a form that generates a lot of useable power without ripping it (and then add athleticism on top of it).
Brychanus
* Ace Member *
You might need to back up and try something else first, but if you want to try and fix it with Ride the Bull (which IMHO is one of the best drills of all time. I use it as part of my warm up every round now):
1. Posture, Posture, Posture. Mechanics are harder to learn or impossible out of posture, sadly. Let your shoulders relax and protact more like hugging a cylindrical trash can. From a side view you should look more like this. I physically held a trash can to help with this. Heavy water jug is good too:
2. Let the bottom of the pool cue swing more comfortably like a pendulum so the bottom swings smooth and slow aligned with your overall balance from head to foot and contacts inside your knee(s).
Watching you move overall, I really think you might want to supplement with this drill/spend a week on it first. I had to do both Ride the Bull and this drill side by side for a long time before it started to stick.
3. When you get moving slow down a little and land so that you get more athletically stacked and feels "seated" on his left leg/glute at roughly this moment. Notice that:
a. His pool cue is aligned with his overall balance like the Pratt drill. Yours is crossed, suggesting you're actually still hiding your vertical axis of balance in your move.
b. His rear ankle, knee, and shoulder end up stacked when he is "seated" for a moment on the rear leg - load is in glute, hammy and calf more than yours. Work on landing and pausing "seated" on that rear leg in this posture for a moment before you shift forward.
Here's how Simon would be balanced and "holding the cue" at this moment. Compare to SW above. Main difference is Simon's transition move & size of his backswing.
Fair warning - this RtB move will recruit your hamstrings, calves, and glutes more than you're used to if you haven't already done a lot of similar athletic motions. SW noted that to me a while back and I did get sore. It's also still where I get sorest after a lot of throwing now if I don't get enough rest and why I changed my conditioning in the offseason. But definitely a basis for easier power and one of the best ways to break through the flat unathletic form.
Fair warning 2 - this is going to take weeks of practice, probably. No way to cheat retraining balance.
I remember seeing you (or someone) post this video somewhere and trying that, a while back, and I tried it out at the gym with sandbags. Didn't translate obviously.
I feel like I have a mental block about protracting my shoulders because I my shoulders are already rounded from my normal bad posture, so "good" posture to me is going the opposite direction haha.
I will say that since the inception of me reading everything here, ride the bull is the one that I have always had the hardest time connecting to the disc golf throw. But maybe that's because I've never done it right? Regardless, I will blindly follow you until it makes sense.
Anyway, here is my attempt at things (went with a 5 gallon barrel full of gravel). I realized after all of this that I wasn't supposed to be crossing my leg behind - not sure how much of a difference that makes but will note that for next time anyway.
Just getting a feel for things...
Attempt 2...
With a rod...
And attempting ride the bull again...
I'm wondering then if I should pause my fieldwork until I get further in with this, since I don't want to reinforce bad habits while retraining.
(Sorry if these videos are unnecessarily long - thanks as always for the help!)
Actually I was just playing around with riding the bull in my living room after watching the video again, and I think I have it down better than in the videos from the last post - definitely felt the calf/hamstring/glute recruitment more. Plz hold for new video in AM
Brychanus
* Ace Member *
Remember that posture is many things - "bad" posture in an e.g. office worker is usually due to a weakening posterior chain since chairs remove the need for using those muscles. Athletic postures all require strong (enough) posterior chains in balance with the rest of their body.
I think you should stick with the bucket. One advantage over a sandbag is the rigid cylinder can help force your body into the right posture with adjustments. Also helps you physically understand the concept of "space to swing/slash/pull thru." The bucket is basically forcing that space. Take the bucket away and use the same posture and voila- that's your "pocket." Real throw will be a little different of course, but pretty close.
1. When you are holding the bucket, try to hinge back slightly more at the hips. Your elbows should be just over your toes, and your butt should be just slightly back, like a 1-2" adjustment. Don't squat toward your knees, "sit" more like a deadlift in the setup.
2. Rake was trending better, but I would be drilling bucket for whole body posture feedback for a couple weeks first. I can tell your body/brain are a little confused by the task. You also favor shifting to one side more than the other - that will be a problem for your form even if you only throw one direction with your backhand. Rake will probably work better once you get it down with something like the bucket.
Fieldwork - should you do it? Everyone's a little different, but I do think you're going to need to heavily reinforce the above if you want to change the fundamental move. Usually people do a drill like 1-5 times, get bored and impatient, go back to throwing, and barely change. If you use drills, you need to do them often enough to make your old throwing behavior feel weird and wrong and week. Think about the number of throws you do vs. drills. IMO/experience from "drill land," 5-10 minutes of a correct drill a day takes about 2-3 weeks to "stick" for most people. Then it gets easier to tweak things later because you've already built up muscle memory. Sometimes very athletic people need a lot less, but that's just because they've already done more of the "drills" earlier in life in other contexts.
Ride the bull feeling weird - totally, especially if you haven't done a lot of things athletically moving sideways at a high level. Tough starting when older. I guess I'm evidence that you can gradually change if you're willing to stay after it.
What's your fitness routine? Work life involve lots of desk/chair sitting? I have more suggestions there based on how you move but don't want to assume.
Yeah, flexibility on the left side in general has definitely lagged behind the right side since I started playing disc golf - definitely need to keep a balanced routine.
Psh, I would never do something like that!
Yeah this definitely makes me feel like I should focus solely on this and not throw and bring in those old habits. We'll see how we're feeling by the weekend to see if I even want to play or if it'd be better to give it an other week of buckets.
I can respond to both of these in kind - pretty much all of my "athletic" experience has just been olympic weightlifting at the gym. Rarely ever do anything one-legged/one-sided except for accessory weightlifting. Typically my fitness routine is just lifting some combination of typical ohp/bench/squat/DL/rows 3x a week. Over the last couple years I tried adding in more flexibility/plyometrics but it's been hard for me to stick with it.
However, I've been waylaid for a few months due to a torn ligament on my middle finger (from playing volleyball - should've stuck to disc golf!) that makes it very difficult to grip a barbell. (I should have picked something else up in the meantime but alas...)
So all that is to say I'm down to build a new routine from scratch!
And yeah, I'm a SW engineer so mostly sitting at a desk. I do have a standing desk that I don't use often enough.
Anyway, here's this morning's efforts:
Brychanus
* Ace Member *
Ah, the sitting life ails many of us!
What weight is in that bucket?
Take that hip hinge back a bit more shallow so that you're standing slightly taller. You should feel it recruit calves, hammies, and glutes but not too stressful. Balance looking a little better (but do a little each day).
I'm actually going to add this now since you mentioned flexibility on one side. I wish I had worked on this two years ago. I do it in each workout and throwing warmup whenever I can. Do it both sides and see how deep you can get while staying in balance:
Workouts: I won't take two legged lifts away from you if you like them, but neuromuscularly/balance wise/supporting muscle wise I strongly suggest some one/split legged/lunge walking lunges in each direction etc. I had trouble sticking with it too at first and eventually just went "all in" and scrapped my old workout routine in favor of my DG specific one, mileage varies.
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Just measured it, comes in at 29 lbs.
I'm definitely feeling glute soreness as the day goes on, more than anything else. Also when I do the exercise I definitely feel it in my lower back and obliques.
Okay, now you really get to experience the limits of my flexibility. Don't say you didn't ask for it!
Well like I said, I can't really grip a barbell properly right now anyway. I'd be interested to know what your full DG specific routine is, and maybe I can build something I like off of that.
In other news I managed to hit the daily upload limit on YouTube which I didn't even know was a thing! So aside from the above, all I have is riding the bucket, since I can't post my latest Pratt video. Will undoubtedly have more in the morning so I suppose it doesn't really matter.
I tried drawing lines against my previous videos to figure out where I need to be. How's it looking?
