Middle aged here and continuing to see small increases in distance every year. My number one practice tip and lesson learned over the past few years is that you can learn this stuff at any age, the secret is lots of practice and reps, and the way to do that is 50% power shots. I know you know this, but it's worth reiterating, you don't want to go to some empty field and strong arm power shots endlessly into the void. You do want to work on specific shots/angles/techniques by having a shorter range target and focusing on it, and by most importantly getting lots of reps in, but only throwing about half power.
This will allow one to get lots of those reps in, do it multiple times per week if possible, and to drastically reduce the wear and tear on the body and really reduce injury risk. Heck if 50% is too much drop it to 33% and start from there. I really started to see improvements doing this. I would bring one or two things out to the course I was working on, focus on them, and get lots and lots of throws this way.
It really reminds me of working out at a gym by lifting weights. You never just cram your max weight and go for 1 rep. Nobody with an impressive physique does that. What they actually do is much, much lighter weights than you think, and get in tons of reps, and repeat said process for years. They basically practice too.
When lots of pros and really good golfers would tell people to "practice lots with a putter" or "work on lots of standstill shots" I believe they basically stumbled upon the same thing above that I did and are trying to communicate this idea, albeit in a different way. By forcing yourself to throw putters or standstill shots you're dialing the power down a few notches and focusing more on the techniques involved.
Thanks for this Nick - well, I can only go so long before I write a ton over coffee, apparently.
Here's my personal not-quite-old-but-aging general take. There might be some "truths" here, I hope.
I agree about the points with putters and standstills, and I just realized that I take this advice very differently now. Something I underappreciated until recently is that neutral putters can also be perfectly fine stand-ins for drivers if the mechanics are sufficiently good to reduce nose angle issues and OAT. If a person doesn't know what I mean, they haven't discovered it yet. For my own growth, I started intermixing putters and drivers that have similar flight characteristics and this has taught me a lot about angle control
and line control
and distance
and placement, and is making me much more comfortable at pinpointing gaps with little stress and less demands on the body. Studying players like Isaac Robinson or Tattar (and SW frankly) is teaching me a lot about how to attack woods and letting discs do as much work as possible work for distance if your driving form and game is built around a natural "stock" hyzer angle.
I'm always learning more about athleticism and optimizing for power
and longevity and use it to improve my development. When I say "athleticism" I mean that broad class of things people who did sports in earnest early in life whether or not they did DG specifically. As they become teens and adults, their brains and bodies do all kinds of things they don't have to think about, and their bodies have a basis of strength, flexibility, and "reserve" that they might not be consciously aware of. People vary wildly in those respects, of course. I am asking a lot of athletes about their habits and growth experiences these days.
So some of this is very old hat to most people, but this is where I tend to spend the most time these days essentially developing DG athleticism later in life. I'm sneaking in one possible answer to "how do I get more distance?" if you follow my plot:
1. Once you have a move, you can
almost always make it more efficient. I'm an obsessive maximizer and also worried about longevity, so I spend the most time here. Once it seems like I've gotten everything I can out of the move I start to move on/get input etc.
A pristine move at 50% power should be celebrated just as much as a smash. Soak those in and say to yourself "****, that was clean." Then just move onto the next thing without overthinking it. Really, it helps. There's evidence for that. And learning to get work done at 50-60% when everyone else around you is struggling and spraying at 90-100% is a thing you can privately celebrate. Even better if they don't know you have a lot more in the tank when needed.
2. Each move probably has new athletic demands on the body, and the older you are, the less most bodies can take, especially if you're new to athleticism later in life. Always be learning about your body. You need it for a while.
3. Forced breaks are good for learning and for recovery. I usually don't notice things like overuse or microinjuries until 2-3 days
after I last threw high volume or worked on power. Once things like cortisol etc. taper off the body shifts into a different kind of "repair" mode. I wish I had understood this better a year ago. Overuse injuries are very real in disc golf. People with more initial resilience are less likely to suffer them, but should be conscious of them.
4. My average throwing session now always starts with plenty of dynamic stretches including resistance bands, a few DG drills, pitching drills, and I start throwing around 50%, and just like lifting I scale it up in increments, ~10% at a time. I like working up to 80% these days since my body tends to get banged up more quickly at 90-100% no matter how good the move is. I usually find that 80% is a good sweet spot where I'm working on moving loose and athletic (for me) but less likely to bind up and accidentally jam things. For a given body, you can get
a lot out of a good swing at 80%. I've been rehabbing for a few weeks recently so - just like lifting - if the body isn't feeling up to it that day I back off and just work on whatever it can handle, or stop. I'm always happy to grab short tee rounds at 50-60% like I mentioned and keep maximizing what I get out of my move. I now know I'll always throw farther more easily and consistently when I start to speed up again.
Relevant story: I started working with a guy who has been throwing comfortably in the 500s for a while now (in his 20s, athletic, Eagle McMahon body type + ambition to be a top pro) but was specifically interested in improving mechanics. I interview players about goals and their training. What I described above is how he does it too. One mechanical tweak gave him 50' in one day because he already had many other things going well for him. I only knew how to point it out to him since I've struggled so hard to get what I can out of my body and soaked up everything I can from SW. So it wasn't all credit to me, and I tell people where I learned it. People often don't see how much work goes into it before that can happen no matter what the player's background is. And different bodies and brains have different advantages and disadvantages. If people have trouble understanding that it is beneficial to study it. Not everyone does.
5. In my own body, I am constantly finding relative physical weaknesses in places that matter for throwing. When I'm not throwing, I'm working on those. If you are older and more sedentary, we can almost guarantee you have weaknesses and inflexibilities that affect your posture and movement. Some of that gets better just by learning to move better for DG. Some of it does not.
I often like to remind myself & others that distance training can look different for more athletic (in the right meaning of the word in this context), younger, otherwise advantaged etc. people. You can generally push much harder in various ways, especially if you were already the "right kinds" of athletic. If you want distance you need to work on it. There is no way around it.
But some of the principles are entirely the same no matter who you are. I do think there's plenty of wisdom for everyone in slowing down to master movement and gradually moving uptempo/more momentum and athletic demands within sessions and over time in general. The smart things you learn to do now will be worth much more later. Physical mileage varies. So does patience.
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