I had to block him on Facebook. I don't give a ton of form cirques, but every time I did, he would chime in and tell me how I was wrong. I couldn't take it anymore.
Well S***... I'm sorry dude.
I try not to correct people anymore, but when I was it was only in the interest of making sure folks posting their throws had good info. I stand by my disagreements with whatever it was that I disagreed with. Sorry if I was out of line though.
I've blocked folks that I didn't appreciate too, more power to ya! That said if you want to talk about it I'm all yours.
Locking the knee deliberately like this seems like a true recipe for disaster. I am 100% not sold that a locked knee is required for huge amounts of power.
I totally agree locking the knee is not required for power. I do feel that many many AM players shy away from an active brace because they are afraid of knee injury. I know I was, I wasted 6 months of deliberate practice ducking away from an active brace in one way or another.
The only thing that helped me move away from that towards a more active and safe brace was drills like these one legs. Locking your leg in a drill that has a controlled movement and power level is totally fine. I'm not saying I want anyone to slam into a locked knee or hyper extension... just that its ok to allow the knee to extend during the brace and that is the best way to add power. This drill is a way to explore that and find how much of it you are able to do safely in your throw.
It seems alot of folks don't understand that a drill or an isolation is *not* the full throw that contains all of the ideas that a full throw contains. I super don't understand how common that line of thought seems to be. Please help me get it if you can... Am I not being clear enough that its a drill in a progression or are people just always gonna misunderstand things?
You can't balance on a locked knee.
What do you mean? You literally can though... just not dynamically. See my last point. Its a drill... As we were just talking about I think there is this weird resistance to isolating part of a movement. You said you didn't think a static knee drill is useful, because the knee can and should move in a real throw. I totally agree. But I keep running in to beginner and AM players that have no ability to keep their knee in any kind of balance so it can resist forward motion. This drill fixes that but simplifying the role of the front leg (to literally not moving at all) so that the rest of the body can*for once* organize itself to move *around* the front hip socket.
This 100% doesnt happen in the same way it will in a full throw. Again as we were just talking about you personally really want the front knee to bend as that is a more accurate representation of an active front hip clearing towards its glute.
But again, this drill is an isolation with a handful off different things that can become the focus.
The front leg staying still and strong.
The rear hip dropping down and being the only power source in the throw (note there are others in a full throw)
The spine staying at the center of rotation (note both hips and shoulders will drift in a full throw AND the center of rotation often migrates towards the rear shoulder and towards the front hip, but this can be kinda player dependent)
Getting and keeping the rear leg in line with the spine axis to keep the hyzer tilt counter weighted. This one is big, everyone tends to leave the rear leg too far south where it just mucks everything up.
To make the drill more realistic you can start to add some knee bend that then fires back into extension. This migrates the pivot point away from being the front hip socket and towards it being more centered on the spine. Progression... Not everything all at once. Thats too much for 99% of players.
Did I miss anything?
@Kennets thanks for posting this!
