unusual (ball) golf swing - anything to learn from this?

[timothy42b]

 

[Sheep]

good brace and weightshift.

 

[HyzerRoc]

Reminds me of this swing

Disadvantage is that you dont get pulled taut like with a pendulum swing. What loopghost demonstrates just teaches you about the principle of equal and opposite motions for balance, i guess he wouldnt recommend using it as your actual swing.

 

[Brychanus]

Reminds me of this swing

Disadvantage is that you dont get pulled taut like with a pendulum swing. What loopghost demonstrates just teaches you about the principle of equal and opposite motions for balance, i guess he wouldnt recommend using it as your actual swing.

One of the things I liked about this & timothy's above is that it helps you get in touch with the "organic" way your body uses little circular motions all the time for other things, but exaggerates it to an extreme. That's one fundamental difference between "flat" form (again, in motion regardless of release angle or trajectory) and "athletic" form. As you take the move more horizontal for disc golf, that's why sidewinder liked to call the move a "flattened pendulum or wave." It's the circular motion but elongated down the tee.

Anyway, if you haven't tried throwing out of that windmill drill it definitely contains learning value. That golf swing was a cool way to work on the rear side coil and posture.

 

[HyzerRoc]

One of the things I liked about this & timothy's above is that it helps you get in touch with the "organic" way your body uses little circular motions all the time for other things, but exaggerates it to an extreme.

Yeah it intuitively makes sense. When I did this one I just looked where my leg would want to go to balance out my arm going up.

 

[timothy42b]

This is mostly for Brychanus in light of his comments on Weck and rotational motion. There is an exercise called Windmill or Flying Daggers, done in some Chinese martial arts and Qi Gong. I guess we could try it with a disc .

 

[Brychanus]

This is mostly for Brychanus in light of his comments on Weck and rotational motion. There is an exercise called Windmill or Flying Daggers, done in some Chinese martial arts and Qi Gong. I guess we could try it with a disc .

Nice. My interim conclusion on WeckMethod is that if you are not careful, you can basically do a "too rotational" "spin-shift" version of each move which is basically what Sidewinder and I try to avoid. Basically as long as you're walking during the move you're in decent shape

Reminds me of this swing

Disadvantage is that you dont get pulled taut like with a pendulum swing. What loopghost demonstrates just teaches you about the principle of equal and opposite motions for balance, i guess he wouldnt recommend using it as your actual swing.

I was playing with the relationship between these two drills. I've thrown out of an increasing number of windmill X-steps to help my own form again and am starting to really like how it helps fix several problems in the X-step at once. Then I just see if I can connect the dots with the rest of my throwing move.

The challenge I agree is that it's fairly easy to miss the "tautness" and core loading and all that good stuff on the rear side. If you spend enough time with it vs. Door Frame Drill however, you can eventually notice that there is a way to windmill drill that actually gets you pulled more taut, but it functions more like a Gurthie windmill maneuver overall (not as horizontally away from the target). Pretty cool.

I think the truly circular motion does make it hard to nail on its own however and I don't expect everyone to get it the first time, so I would generally be pairing it with those other moves.

 

[YeaBuddy]

Just going to post here instead of starting a thread. Think we could get any use out of this?

 

[Brychanus]

I mean I've found any tool where you get athletic resistance, feedback from a couple senses, etc. useful in one way or another.

Nets have their issues but are great because you don't have to go very far to get the disc.

What if you... didn't have to go anywhere at all?

 

[Brychanus]

Disadvantage is that you dont get pulled taut like with a pendulum swing. What loopghost demonstrates just teaches you about the principle of equal and opposite motions for balance, i guess he wouldnt recommend using it as your actual swing.

I was playing with the relationship between these two drills. I've thrown out of an increasing number of windmill X-steps to help my own form again and am starting to really like how it helps fix several problems in the X-step at once. Then I just see if I can connect the dots with the rest of my throwing move.

The challenge I agree is that it's fairly easy to miss the "tautness" and core loading and all that good stuff on the rear side. If you spend enough time with it vs. Door Frame Drill however, you can eventually notice that there is a way to windmill drill that actually gets you pulled more taut, but it functions more like a Gurthie windmill maneuver overall (not as horizontally away from the target). Pretty cool.

I think the truly circular motion does make it hard to nail on its own however and I don't expect everyone to get it the first time, so I would generally be pairing it with those other moves.

I'm still playing around with the extremes between (1) a completely horizontal move that has almost no north-south tilt and (2) a complete windmill to Understand them better. I don't think I'm really saying anything new, but manipulating it in my own moves was interesting.

I played a round this morning and always threw my real shot with my current pendulum pump, then teed off using a complete windmill maneuver.

I guess my conclusions remain similar but to be specific:

1. Full windmill encodes the "organic" motion of the hips in tilted North-South and West-East balance for me. The connection to drills like Swivel stairs, Double Dragon, Turbo Encabulator all together are very obvious. I've started to use it as part of my warmup to make sure I'm not making everything too "flat" or "inorganic" in my motion pattern, especially since I always tend to get too flat-footed and not nimble enough in transition.

2. I tend to agree with HyzerRoc that the tautness is hard to access in windmills, and in a pure windmill (i.e., as circular as possible like the drill) it is very hard to access the optimal tautness and commit it directly toward the apex of the shot. I think it is possible since I've been learning from studying Sadlowski's driving form which is one of the most circular windmills I have seen in any context, but to then convert the extremely circular momentum into a nice golf or distance shot with the feet moving is not trivial. I think it might also work better for some body types than others - e.g., I can take a backswing back like a physically bulkier Kyle Berkshire power drive and get a good effect (with or without the pendulum forward pump part), but I have trouble physically doing/cannot physically do what Sadlowski does (and I expect most people would struggle to be that extreme). I also wouldn't generalize too much from my own motion and its limits of course.

3. Connection between windmill and pendulum mechanics is very clear. Pendulum is just the most arcing move that still functions like a "flattened wave" you see in most advanced throwing motions. The more horizontal the move, the flatter the wave. It's still always some degree of flattened wave if you're moving in a tilted balance of axis because otherwise you don't get the correct combination of tensions, momentum, and pressure in the motion (they're all connected to each other). For me, my pendulum clearly functions the best when my lower body is moving a lot like the windmill through the tilted balance and hip mechanics. So the windmill is a nice priming drill for balance and fluid hip action. If I take the move more and more horizontal it works "the same". You can get a similar swing "length" from extreme vertical to horziontal, it's just that the vertical will curve the move up more like the picture we share all the time around here:

Vertical motion:

Horizontal motion just does the "same" thing but elongates in the X dimension and squashes in the Y dimension.

 

[HyzerRoc]

I'm still playing around with the extremes between (1) a completely horizontal move that has almost no north-south tilt and (2) a complete windmill to Understand them better. I don't think I'm really saying anything new, but manipulating it in my own moves was interesting.

I played a round this morning and always threw my real shot with my current pendulum pump, then teed off using a complete windmill maneuver.

I guess by full windmill you are referring to a windmill arm motion combined with the single step that loopghost demonstrates in his video.

Have you ever tried doing it in a standstill? I noticed that I would get different loading on my drive leg when compared to the sidewinder dingle arm drill. Doing a stand still with a windmill would load my drive leg with some vertical force which would then translate to tension against the instep driving me forward. On a dingle arm drill I can feel something that is more akin to a resistance in my drive leg that would then release itself when driving myself forward a bit.



Nvm I just watched that one again and there is a windmill version of that drill in the video as well. Simpsons did it first.

 

[Brychanus]

I guess by full windmill you are referring to a windmill arm motion combined with the single step that loopghost demonstrates in his video.

Have you ever tried doing it in a standstill? I noticed that I would get different loading on my drive leg when compared to the sidewinder dingle arm drill. Doing a stand still with a windmill would load my drive leg with some vertical force which would then translate to tension against the instep driving me forward. On a dingle arm drill I can feel something that is more akin to a resistance in my drive leg that would then release itself when driving myself forward a bit.



Nvm I just watched that one again and there is a windmill version of that drill in the video as well. Simpsons did it first.

Yes I meant the full windmill arm motion with the single step (or through the x-step).

I almost follow what you said after that but can you clarify- what was the difference between "sidewinder dingle arm" and "windmill" - just whether you are doing a full windmill with the arm or not?

 

[HyzerRoc]

I almost follow what you said after that but can you clarify- what was the difference between "sidewinder dingle arm" and "windmill" - just whether you are doing a full windmill with the arm or not?

Yeah I should be a little more thorough when describing some move. Usually I just type whatever comes to mind.

When I dingle the arm in a pendulum movement my back leg gest loaded southwards against the sideways movement by my arm. I almost want to unload that tension against the instep of my drive leg and start going towards the target again.

When doing the same perpetual motion drill with the full windmill arm movement I noticed that my drive leg gets loaded differently. Firstly I get some vertical load on it which then translate into lateral movement northwards to the target.

So the difference is: pendulum - sideways loading & windmill - vertical loading.

 

[Brychanus]

Yeah I should be a little more thorough when describing some move. Usually I just type whatever comes to mind.

When I dingle the arm in a pendulum movement my back leg gest loaded southwards against the sideways movement by my arm. I almost want to unload that tension against the instep of my drive leg and start going towards the target again.

When doing the same perpetual motion drill with the full windmill arm movement I noticed that my drive leg gets loaded differently. Firstly I get some vertical load on it which then translate into lateral movement northwards to the target.

So the difference is: pendulum - sideways loading & windmill - vertical loading.

Oh gotcha, and no worries, I'm just as likely to be unclear in writing most of the time lmao.

Incidentally this is related to & reminds me of the thighmaster/adduction chatter on the other thread. I find this easier to notice and manipulate in standstills, and since my drive leg is weaker (physically) and gimpier than my plant leg I was stopping to pay more attention to the moves again today and realizing it was probably at least part of why I always have trouble getting complete balanced stability in transition. If not a literal Thighmaster I should be doing a bit more hip adduction exercises than I have recently lol.

Yes, I think the pendulum will tend to coil back more south with more horizontal force in general, which will also tend to get you more athletic load and tension "sideways" engaging that hip adduction effect. That's part of what ideally is stabilizing your balance when you walk or run etc, you just do less of it when walking forward.

When I do either standstill full arm windmill or full x-step windmill, like you I too tend to get more vertical load that moves me northward toward the target. That's a potential source of power. However:

I think the tricky thing we were talking about above is what's "best" or finding a "sweet spot." For me or other people I work with, you've got a lot of theoretical options going into the reachback or backswing that are all "acceptable." My own pendulum has always seemed to work "best" when there's a clear phenomenon on the drive side - I need just enough verticality to feel deweighted and "levitated" briefly in the backswing at least so I don't get stuck on the drive foot (athletic walk, run, hop etc). I also need to get juuuuust the right force moving back opposite my shift to get that athletic loading in the core, which seems like 25% of my power (I'm guessing of course, but you get the idea).

So what the windmill helps me (or others) access is that "levitating" part by carrying me all the way off the ground vertically briefly. Because it's circular, it also taps the natural way the hips work in transition like Swivel Stairs. Like, alarmingly well for me, and I've now seen it give a lot of players "ah ha! -s".

But like anything sweet, you can spoil your meal, so beware.

Gurthie seems like the closest modern thrower to a pure windmill and I would still call his move a form of windmill like Sidewinder does, but even though he's got a very centrifugal move, his backswing is still working a lot like a pendulum arc in transition, so that he is getting enough of that leverage you can find in a pendulum. I've also found it sort of interesting that my own X-step move is gradually evolving from having a lowish backswing like Gannon Buhr or Aderhold to a higher "levitated" backswing like GG. I didn't really do it on purpose but as I kept working on my balance it gradually starting happening on its own & is directly related to a better effort/distance ratio in my case.

I still use a low backswing for a lot of standstill shots depending on the shot, and I think especially high trajectory hyzers on rough ground where I need very sure footing from the rear leg.

 

[HyzerRoc]

I think the tricky thing we were talking about above is what's "best" or finding a "sweet spot." For me or other people I work with, you've got a lot of theoretical options going into the reachback or backswing that are all "acceptable." My own pendulum has always seemed to work "best" when there's a clear phenomenon on the drive side - I need just enough verticality to feel deweighted and "levitated" briefly in the backswing at least so I don't get stuck on the drive foot (athletic walk, run, hop etc). I also need to get juuuuust the right force moving back opposite my shift to get that athletic loading in the core, which seems like 25% of my power (I'm guessing of course, but you get the idea).

So what the windmill helps me (or others) access is that "levitating" part by carrying me all the way off the ground vertically briefly. Because it's circular, it also taps the natural way the hips work in transition like Swivel Stairs. Like, alarmingly well for me, and I've now seen it give a lot of players "ah ha! -s".

That part is a good thought. I used to think of the movements involved in a throw as something that I would need to max out. So more drop, a wider stance and so on would be better to me. But along that line of thinking I failed to consider balance. So just enough to feel deweighted is a good mark to go off of.

Guess I gotta try this windmill drill by loopghost again. What I focused on when I tried it was just the coordination part of plant leg and right arm. But you seem to find a lot more in it.

 

[Brychanus]

That part is a good thought. I used to think of the movements involved in a throw as something that I would need to max out. So more drop, a wider stance and so on would be better to me. But along that line of thinking I failed to consider balance. So just enough to feel deweighted is a good mark to go off of.

Guess I gotta try this windmill drill by loopghost again. What I focused on when I tried it was just the coordination part of plant leg and right arm. But you seem to find a lot more in it.

I think while learning and probably even more so for adults taking each move to an extreme can help you find the more efficient in betweens.

I think by comparing the extreme vertical windmill to an extreme linear/horizontal move also helped me improve my pendulum too. Helps the body kind of figure out the "best" of each world in the long run (maybe/hopefully).

Maybe try the windmill drill again but be patient to see what you notice on the rear leg side. E.g., I can find the exact moment in the "cycle" where my preferred backswing exists as the windmill is passing through it. But I could only find it at first by slowing down to feel it out in the rear side in transition. I think that's gradually helping my shift over time.

Always recommend you come back to each move later on, too. I always understand them (physically) slightly differently later and notice little things I either didn't know, or knew but couldn't access myself.