OverthrowJosh here. AMA

[OverthrowJosh]

I'm intrigued to hear a bit more about that USPTA credentialing scenario. We have a similar setup in Athletics here. For each level you submit a portfolio of your work (the exam portion more or less) and then a practical evaluation portion. Contrarily, my NSCA credential came with only an exam and no practical evaluation. The exam had an applied portion of course, but it's not the same.

I can see what you mean with the Mikey example, and I think the video working with Evan Smith is a big step in that direction too. Once a few pros start plugging coaching as an influence on their results, it'll hopefully start to move that dial. But I agree completely that a lot of the disc golf world doesn't see a need for a coach and it seems wild to me, but I think a lot of that world sees coaching in a team sport dynamic where the biomechanical knowledge etc gets hidden and tactics and team culture are the big focus. Coming from largely individual sports it's pretty natural both you and I would immediately see the value of coaching in disc golf.

It sounds similar to what you have described from your athletics.

The test has:
-a knowledge portion
-a stroke production portion where you have to execute basically every shot imaginable. If you miss more than 4/6 on any shot you're a recreational coach (failed), then you have Professional which is 4+/6, and then there is 6/6 which is Elite Professional.
-There is a higher level called Master Professional that is only achieved by sending a portfolio which evidences success of your students (usually high level juniors). You're only eligible after being an Elite Professional for 10 years. So those guys are goated.
-A private lesson portion where you have to coach a random topic/student
-A group lesson where you have to coach a random topic/group

You can fail certain portions and retake those portions later.

 

[Brychanus]

Paid coaching:
... Imagine if @Brychanus was faced with the decision to not coach disc golf because he ran out of free time and funds were tight. Even an extra $500/mo might be the difference maker in him continuing to contribute to this sport or walking away to pick up more hours/responsibilities at work.

Thanks Josh - I made a "Coaches' corner thread" that may interest you and anyone else who is broadly involved in coaching, disc golf or otherwise.

I did want to respond about this with my half penny since you are being very transparent & @-ed me. I'll start with the thing some people find the least savory & stick out my neck a bit.

1. I charge for live sessions. I use Overthrow's rate structure. Sounds like I have a similar strategy in live lessons to Josh. I have three main reasons for this.
a. The time it takes needs to be justified to my family/recover some costs for my own investment in the sport.
b. There is research that for some people, having "skin in the game" economically improves their progress.
c. There's a part of me that would not mind or very much like coaching significantly more of the time, which I would only be able to do if I charged for it and continue to get better at it.

2. I do a reduced charge for customized videos including a form review and drill instructions. IMO these are less effective and I do less of them. I also realized they take more time to do "well" than just doing live sessions. However, I still learn by doing them.

3. I give form tips on DGCR for free. I have three "agendas:"
a. Pay it forward. I write fast so it doesn't take much time when I choose to do it.
b. Keep learning about applied mechanics ("forward engineering").
c. Trying out ways of emphasizing something in the online format, then comparing it to what does or doesn't work live.

These tips are usually & necessarily not the same as what I do live with a person. Live, I focus on big picture moves that get people to move loose, natural and powerfully and use a more "whatever works for you" style of language even though I have a mental "model" for what I'm trying to nudge them toward.

4. I have paid for online forum coaching from @sidewinder22 (he is a mensch and never asked me - I decided to). I suspect it would have been/be faster in person, and that's not his fault. The medium matters and there is a reason diagrams that are very mechanical show up here, but they are not the same as live coaching or what his drills are actually intended to teach IMHO.

 

[OverthrowJosh]

I've coached many players with their forehand, just haven't done nearly as much content. Haven't you seen my quantent?

Once upon a time I did see some of your forehand content and am now remembering that you have taught some on it. The heading of that paragraph was named "forehand content" in response to their question but I took it beyond just forehands as they are actually one of the less neglected parts of coaching compared to approach shots, putting, shot selection, and mental game. From our conversation on the podcast I know that you shy away from teaching putting and approach shots. The point is that there are not many coaches (if any) teaching the entirety of the game from tee to basket; at least from what the community can see.

Knowledge is not the same thing as Understanding. Knowledge can be learned quickly while Understanding takes time. I don't think knowledge is a downfall, unless it's false knowledge. Like trying to fix all the little effects or byproducts instead of the root cause. Not all students are the same, some need to know why they need to be doing something different. Then I tell them like the others to go toss a sledgehammer or kick some cans, or don't spill the beverage. Most of the Zoom lessons I do with students are 15 min session per my recommendation because I want to hammer on the fundamental issue and don't want to go over too much stuff that will get them lost in the brambles. The few in person lessons I do out on the field I also try to keep relatively short like 30-60min although I ended up spending several hours working with a very motivated touring pro.

Yep. This seems to be the sweet spot. Unless there are special circumstances I really discourage more than 30 minute slots with my students. If we are doing more than that they are probably higher level and working on multiple aspects of the game.

 

[OverthrowJosh]

The certification consists of 120 units which are split into 60 units going over general training stuff and 60 units going over more specific discgolf stuff. The units are taught over a whole week as a workshop. I think it is less about form or mechanics specific to discgolf but more about a general introduction on how to conduct and structure practice.

If there is interest a guy from my local club goes through the certification this year and I can ask him what the course more specifically involved.

Some of the clubs in germany also offer weekly/bi-weekly training sessions of very varying quality. On what used to be my local course we had a guy who taught everything Feldberg and was pretty knowledgeable about form but struggled with teaching. Nowadays someone who mostly teaches form that would be best described as Will Schusterick took it over and it works well as most people in the club have noticeably above average form.

Ausbildung – Deutscher Frisbeesport-Verband

www.frisbeesportverband.de

Thanks for some more specifics on this. I had a student go through the program and it was so cool to see what they were doing. Leave it to the Germans to build a program like this lol

 

[OverthrowJosh]

Bowling (USBC) has a reasonably good system of training and certifying coaches at various levels. Level I for basic knowledge to coach kids & novices, Bronze for intermediate, Silver for advanced, Gold for pushing the frontiers of coaching. The actual "Find-a-Coach" feature is busted (name and city) unless the coach pays for Coach+ though to have full information on the site

It would be nice if PDGA came up with something similar.

Agreed but regulating that is a tall task it seems and I'm not sure the PDGA has shown enough logistical prowess to get my vote on this.

 

[Sewer bill]

This actually seems like a void DGCR could fill so far as coach ranking or qualifications are concerned. It's obviously pretty subjective.

I think it could be based on the feedback of the person who sought out the coaching and what type of results they obtained.

Where the rubber meets the road is did the person who paid you the coach come out of the experience satisfied? That feels like a decent metric even if it's annoying to parse out how to quantify it.

There's obviously layers and specialists on the coaching end but I haven't thought far enough ahead of how or if it's worth considering from the end user side.

 

[BenjiHeywood]

Agreed but regulating that is a tall task it seems and I'm not sure the PDGA has shown enough logistical prowess to get my vote on this.

Damn right. I was a little involved with wfdf and with UK Ultimate, both relatively small organisations and both with vastly better governance than the pdga. It is genuinely astounding to me that the 2024 worlds was awarded to non-existent courses where the bid just happened to come from the head guy. Or all the Natalie Ryan stuff. Wfdf are a pain, sticklers for protocol etc (particularly when trying to keep the IOC onside) - but they understand the importance of getting the details right, and how appearances matter.

There's no way the pdga could be trusted to organise a decent coaching certification scheme IMO.

 

[OverthrowJosh]

Damn right. I was a little involved with wfdf and with UK Ultimate, both relatively small organisations and both with vastly better governance than the pdga. It is genuinely astounding to me that the 2024 worlds was awarded to non-existent courses where the bid just happened to come from the head guy. Or all the Natalie Ryan stuff. Wfdf are a pain, sticklers for protocol etc (particularly when trying to keep the IOC onside) - but they understand the importance of getting the details right, and how appearances matter.

There's no way the pdga could be trusted to organise a decent coaching certification scheme IMO.

The 2024 worlds courses are here in Lynchburg lol. I don't see how they could host a good event for viewers. New London just isn't a good spectator course.

 

[HyzerRoc]

Now that we have gone off-topic, might as well just run with it.

What does the coaching infrastructure in the US look like? Do clubs offer regular training sessions where players are introduced to warm-up techniques, throwing techniques or maybe some form stuff? Is there a lot of the clinics the pros like to put on or is that just something that has grown out of the pros need to finance their tour?

 

[OverthrowJosh]

Now that we have gone off-topic, might as well just run with it.

What does the coaching infrastructure in the US look like? Do clubs offer regular training sessions where players are introduced to warm-up techniques, throwing techniques or maybe some form stuff? Is there a lot of the clinics the pros like to put on or is that just something that has grown out of the pros need to finance their tour?

The US is much more "you're on your own" than our EU counterparts.

All my EU students are like, "Yeah my club rents this facility out twice a week for practice" and "we've got training regimens." Then my US students are like, "Yeah, we just play tournaments and nobody practices."

Clinics are a way for pros to get paid and sustain tour life.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

What's up, feller. I haven't been following the nose angle debate much, so finally watched the video rustlin' everybody's jammies around here.



"This tip that Josh gave me. First and foremost, Josh is the one that came up with this verbal cue for throwing nose down."

First question, which is the verbal cue? Is it "flip it"? Is it "turn the key"?

Second, had you heard this cue before in disc golf coach speak? Anecdotally, I've heard turn the key discussed for years, but the implied instruction is the opposite of what Mikey-man demonstrated - you turn the key to lock the door/counterclockwise*. So, I'm interested in the genesis of how Overthrow may have flipped this "turn the key" advice to generally mean the opposite.

*it's not really an active movement cue thing, but more a positional/neuromuscular activation feeling. An obvious analogy would be how this positional/neuromuscular activation feeling mimics that of the brace foot. Also note how in daily life, when locking a door/turning a key counterclockwise, the elbow is most comfortable popping up, and, when turning a key clockwise/unlocking, the elbow is most comfortable popping down.

*edit* I'm looking to discuss swing theory here mainly. I work professionally in data analysis and am wholly uninterested in the TechDisc datums used by Mikey-man as evidence of the efficacy of the cue.

At 5:24

AB is telling grace to turn the key to keep the nose down and shows the motion. AB has a bit of pronation into the power pocket so he is supinating some afterwards so he isn't throwing with that pronation. I suspect he uses this cue himself so I'd guess it's probably common among those pros who have some pronation in the power pocket.

The phrase "turn the key" doesn't inherently imply which direction and if it's locking or unlocking, but my door locks clockwise. I think it's usually in the direction towards the door frame to lock? But I recall encountering some doors where you turn the key away from the doorframe to lock it and it was strange.

Internal shoulder rotation goes in the same direction of pronation and external with supination when the arm is extended so it makes sense the elbow wants to come up when pronating and it's easy to accidentally external rotate the shoulder when you don't want to while supinating for that reason and from my experience.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

I misworded, I don't mean I have a negative opinion on all cues lol. I just meant that some specific cues jar me pretty hard, and this is one of them.

I understand everything you are saying, and that in reality most people are not going to execute the literal demonstration...but I would argue that you are in fact advocating for violent maximal supination if the cue is...to literally flip the disc over the top of your hand. Maybe not advocating, but certainly that a reasonable human could not be faulted for interpreting it that way.

I find 'turning the key' to be a more reasonable cue terminology. I would not expect many people to interpret those words to mean that they need to turn that key quickly, nor that they might need to turn it until their palm is facing the sky.

Im really not arguing with ya though, I hear what you are saying.

I think most people realize that cues are not literal and are often exaggerated and realize that trying to exaggerate is often required just to get a little bit closer to the goal and often have experienced that even after trying to exaggerate they are still far from the goal.

 

[Brychanus]

I think most people realize that cues are not literal and are often exaggerated and realize that trying to exaggerate is often required just to get a little bit closer to the goal and often have experienced that even after trying to exaggerate they are still far from the goal.

I agree this is true.

RB and SW and I all most encoded a full-arm mechanic that emphasized a natural leverage chain.

I usually start with that same style instructively esp. in person and get more "ahas!" than not, but it is not a guarantee. Then you go into the bigger back of tricks when needed.

Even though I love hammers and got some of their main lessons right away, I still needed more coaching cues to stop my arm beginning its motion & rotation in the wrong direction into and out of the backswing/reachback.

Some of these very late in the swing cues have their place, though I am very cautious with them because the action late in the move is so important to an intact move, and it's very easy that people break their chains, fail to get the nose to come all the way around into the release point even if it is somehow nose down at release, and so on. There's more to say about that last part elsewhere.

Sometimes I've also seen people swing hammers and get the late action pretty quickly and then totally fail to connect the rest of their arm to their chain, even if I can get them to do a very natural looking weight shift with other moves.

All contextual, gotta be careful with words. Easy to misuse or misunderstand everything without context.

Sorry, back to AMA, just wanted to give a little more thematic grist for the mill. I'll put more on what hammerland can teach and how it relates to Techdisc reverse engineering for muh nerds in a different thread.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

I agree this is true.

RB and SW and I all most encoded a full-arm mechanic that emphasized a natural leverage chain.

I usually start with that same style instructively esp. in person and get more "ahas!" than not, but it is not a guarantee. Then you go into the bigger back of tricks when needed.

Even though I love hammers and got some of their main lessons right away, I still needed more coaching cues to stop my arm beginning its motion & rotation in the wrong direction into and out of the backswing/reachback.

Some of these very late in the swing cues have their place, though I am very cautious with them because the action late in the move is so important to an intact move, and it's very easy that people break their chains, fail to get the nose to come all the way around into the release point even if it is somehow nose down at release, and so on. There's more to say about that last part elsewhere.

Sometimes I've also seen people swing hammers and get the late action pretty quickly and then totally fail to connect the rest of their arm to their chain, even if I can get them to do a very natural looking weight shift with other moves.

All contextual, gotta be careful with words. Easy to misuse or misunderstand everything without context.

Sorry, back to AMA, just wanted to give a little more thematic grist for the mill. I'll put more on what hammerland can teach and how it relates to Techdisc reverse engineering for muh nerds in a different thread.

I agree about being cautious about last moment cues. Ideally you use a cue upstream that has a multiple downstream benefits. However, I think many people simply cannot stop pronating into the hit, and a more direct intervention ends up being required.

Part of why turn the key immediately clicked for me I think was because my default was maintaining a decent amount of supination from setup position and throughout the full motion so when I started with more pronation, my wrist had a lot of muscle memory to end in supination. But many people can't just maintain supination successfully to build up the muscle memory like I did and end up pronating.

I'm sure there are upstream cues that can work but seems like a popular one that works for many is missing in the community from seeing so many people saying I just can't stop pronating no matter what I try, but the people that tried something that worked may not be as likely to comment.

 

[Brychanus]

I agree about being cautious about last moment cues. Ideally you use a cue upstream that has a multiple downstream benefits. However, I think many people simply cannot stop pronating into the hit, and a more direct intervention ends up being required.

Part of why turn the key immediately clicked for me I think was because my default was maintaining a decent amount of supination from setup position and throughout the full motion so when I started with more pronation, my wrist had a lot of muscle memory to end in supination. But many people can't just maintain supination successfully to build up the muscle memory like I did and end up pronating.

I'm sure there are upstream cues that can work but seems like a popular one that works for many is missing in the community from seeing so many people saying I just can't stop pronating no matter what I try, but the people that tried something that worked may not be as likely to comment.

Whether I go with hammer or another technique or cue, I am usually also watching to see if the action into the release point to see if (1) the disc ends up on plane and (2) if the nose of the disc is fully coming around.

Not nitpicking you on this next part Neil, just things I've noticed along the way: other bit to mention is that I still would encourage caution about implementing "maintain" cues because they can tend to inhibit the natural motion paths in one way or another (notice here I am using words like "usually," "caution," "can tend to," and so on lest I be misperceived as dealing in absolutes - sometimes you tell someone to maintain something and then they make a better looking organic motion, etc). This often (but not always) gets people into forced angulations or postures rather than letting the angles and postures naturally come from how they move.

Oops, getting off AMA topic again. Can move this elsewhere if interesting to continue.

 

[OverthrowJosh]

Whether I go with hammer or another technique or cue, I am usually also watching to see if the action into the release point to see if (1) the disc ends up on plane and (2) if the nose of the disc is fully coming around.

Not nitpicking you on this next part Neil, just things I've noticed along the way: other bit to mention is that I still would encourage caution about implementing "maintain" cues because they can tend to inhibit the natural motion paths in one way or another (notice here I am using words like "usually," "caution," "can tend to," and so on lest I be misperceived as dealing in absolutes - sometimes you tell someone to maintain something and then they make a better looking organic motion, etc). This often (but not always) gets people into forced angulations or postures rather than letting the angles and postures naturally come from how they move.

Oops, getting off AMA topic again. Can move this elsewhere if interesting to continue.

Meh. I don't care. Keep it here if you want. I think people are basically done with the AMA. This thread may yet be destined for higher callings.

But if you start people pronated and have them do a large supination motion throughout the swing it isn't really a late chain cue. Just supinate from peak reachback through the hit and pronate after if you want.

Used this today with a student who had only thrown nose down one time before the lesson by accident and finished with 10 nose down throws in a row in a comfortable manner. He was ecstatic.

 

[Brychanus]

But if you start people pronated and have them do a large supination motion throughout the swing it isn't really a late chain cue. Just supinate from peak reachback through the hit and pronate after if you want.

Sounds good re: thread creep.

The direction of this action pattern will likely interest people around here.

I kind of feel like a new or revisited arm mechanics thread might be fun.

 

[Serious-OLD]

Hi Josh,

I'm a big fan of your work and your approach. Tennis is the other wtf complex mechanical sport Ive played, and disc golf is like 200 years behind tennis in teaching and form analysis so I apprecitate you jumping over to help us out. I also really appreciate the logical, bio-mechanical breakdown and cue driven teaching methodology.

I'm currently working on eliminating elbow drop as I pull into the pocket, and also max distance bracing.

Do you have any content or cues you could recommend?

Thanks for all your hard work to keep us on the fairways.

 

[OverthrowJosh]

Hi Josh,

I'm a big fan of your work and your approach. Tennis is the other wtf complex mechanical sport Ive played, and disc golf is like 200 years behind tennis in teaching and form analysis so I apprecitate you jumping over to help us out. I also really appreciate the logical, bio-mechanical breakdown and cue driven teaching methodology.

I'm currently working on eliminating elbow drop as I pull into the pocket, and also max distance bracing.

Do you have any content or cues you could recommend?

Thanks for all your hard work to keep us on the fairways.

The elbow swoop does not always appear to be a problem (see Eliezra) and I don't always try to eliminate it.

That being said, your fix depends on which camp/throwing style you're in.

If you are part of the "swing" camp (think box drill/wide rail) then lifting the elbow and orienting the arm to where it is pointing out and not down is more or less the fix. These are more swing plane fixes basically.

If you're in the deep pocket camp then it doesn't come up as much because you're driving the elbow forward actively and avoiding the swoop via brute force more or less.

Such are my observations anyways

 

[Serious-OLD]

I had to think about this a lot.

If the distance is in my comfort zone, I drop my elbow (and it doesnt bother me) because I want a very controlled and straight pull through.

When Im trying to throw at or near max, I deviate from my "control" form to more of a wide rail pull through, but I have to remind myself to do it every time.

The problem then becomes, why do I have two forms, and what's going on with my 'regular/control' form that prevents good weight transfer, hip rotation, timing, follow through, etc? or conversely, why do I feel like I have less control with my 'power' form?

Thanks for the advice. I'll stop bothering you until I know what question I should be asking.