Breaking Bad Timing Habit

[sidewinder22]

It looks like you are reaching down instead of back. When your elbow bends the arm/disc go upward over the elbow and more behind your body, instead of more forward behind the elbow and ahead of the body.

[Melonhusk]

Yeah, definitely. I think lately I’ve been finding when I bring the disc up high I have a harder time feeling the “taut” feeling against my back/obliques, and my shoulder starts to compensate and lift up. I know that’s not ideal, though, just haven’t figured out the right feeling yet. Is the disc being behind my body what’s causing all those early releases, do you think?

[sidewinder22]

Originally Posted by Melonhusk

Yeah, definitely. I think lately I’ve been finding when I bring the disc up high I have a harder time feeling the “taut” feeling against my back/obliques, and my shoulder starts to compensate and lift up. I know that’s not ideal, though, just haven’t figured out the right feeling yet. Is the disc being behind my body what’s causing all those early releases, do you think?

I think it's how your shoulder/arm/disc rotates. You are externally rotating/supinating coming into the power pocket, instead of either staying internally rotated or going from external to internal into the power pocket.

[Melonhusk]

Yeah you’re right, huh. I don’t really know how to flip that around, it’s not something I do intentionally. There was a while where I was all internal rotation I think, even at the top of the backswing, and then I know getting into external rotation at the top of the backswing seemed to help with loading up my shoulder. I guess I’m not getting back to internal once I get to external? Is there a good way to work on that? Thanks!

[sidewinder22]

Originally Posted by Melonhusk

Yeah you’re right, huh. I don’t really know how to flip that around, it’s not something I do intentionally. There was a while where I was all internal rotation I think, even at the top of the backswing, and then I know getting into external rotation at the top of the backswing seemed to help with loading up my shoulder. I guess I’m not getting back to internal once I get to external? Is there a good way to work on that? Thanks!

Swing/pound a hammer in slow motion with the elbow up and thumb pushing the back of the handle. Hold the disc 90 degrees and fan the air to the target, so all the pressure is loaded against the thumb.

[Nick Pacific]

Originally Posted by Melonhusk

Yeah, whenever I'm struggling with late releases it seems like this is at the root of it.





The power was mostly there I think, but man did I have a lot of early releases. I caught myself a few times getting too much over my toes, failing to do this:



but towards the end of the round, I think I was pretty much just gassed and I was late releasing everything. Then I tried a few times to get a good drive on the finishing hole and pulled everything, trying too hard.

Almost all of my early releases are when I'm rounding too much. If I concentrate (during practice) on pulling the disc in tight to my chest, in a straight line, the discs shoots out and is almost never early released. I think the very nature of rounding, where the disc is out way in front of your chest with at least a foot or more of space (and your arm is straighter than it should be, never getting to a 90 degree bend) can cause you to early release because the disc is off the line, to the left of the line (RHBH) and will shoot off to the left side, often early.

One way to make sure you're not rounding, and that the disc gets pulled into your chest area tight (bent elbow 90 degrees) is to slow down that early part of the throw, from the X step to the initial pull through, just like I mentioned above. When you slow down that part, getting the disc to come into your chest and getting your elbow bent is a lot easier because everything is moving slower.

You can speed things up later when you get the timing right. Right now I'm concentrating on a slower x step and initial pull to make sure I'm doing the fundamentals correctly, just as HUB noted in that video I posted above, and seeing success. Once I get the timing down perfectly and it becomes second nature is when I will add the speed back.

[Flashblastx]

Originally Posted by Nick Pacific

Almost all of my early releases are when I'm rounding too much. If I concentrate (during practice) on pulling the disc in tight to my chest, in a straight line, the discs shoots out and is almost never early released. I think the very nature of rounding, where the disc is out way in front of your chest with at least a foot or more of space (and your arm is straighter than it should be, never getting to a 90 degree bend) can cause you to early release because the disc is off the line, to the left of the line (RHBH) and will shoot off to the left side, often early.

One way to make sure you're not rounding, and that the disc gets pulled into your chest area tight (bent elbow 90 degrees) is to slow down that early part of the throw, from the X step to the initial pull through, just like I mentioned above. When you slow down that part, getting the disc to come into your chest and getting your elbow bent is a lot easier because everything is moving slower.

You can speed things up later when you get the timing right. Right now I'm concentrating on a slower x step and initial pull to make sure I'm doing the fundamentals correctly, just as HUB noted in that video I posted above, and seeing success. Once I get the timing down perfectly and it becomes second nature is when I will add the speed back.

I struggled with the arm quite a bit and just recently came the realization that rounding is just your shoulder hinging (think of how your elbow articulates) when the shoulder should be rotating (internally and externally). Any time that you are not rotating the shoulder joint you will round, angles don’t really matter in that regard. You can still throw far rounding but it’s not getting to the root of the problem which is how the shoulder joint is articulating.

So I disagree with there being any timing issue or anything like that. Your body should all work together correctly if you are performing the door frame drills correctly. Not so much timing as it is a motion pattern issue. Trying to move slowly won’t really help that.

I agree that accuracy is definitely a rounding issue but not so much due to speed, some certain angle, or having the disc too far in front and not tight (look at GG or Wiggins). It’s more due to movement patterns and articulation of the shoulder. Which if done correctly will get you a huge release angle greater than 90 without you even trying to do it.

Hopefully this helps.

Dan

[Melonhusk]

Originally Posted by Flashblastx

I struggled with the arm quite a bit and just recently came the realization that rounding is just your shoulder hinging (think of how your elbow articulates) when the shoulder should be rotating (internally and externally).

First off, wow, this makes a ton of sense, at least when I do it in slow motion.

Originally Posted by sidewinder22

Swing/pound a hammer in slow motion with the elbow up and thumb pushing the back of the handle. Hold the disc 90 degrees and fan the air to the target, so all the pressure is loaded against the thumb.

This also made sense in slow motion; it didn't even feel possible to move the hammer in this way without going ER-IR-ER. That's where there was the greatest and easiest range of motion. It was a pretty different story with a disc, though!



There's so much going wrong here, I know. This felt very unnatural to me, and everything from footwork to posture fell apart. I did at least get myself internally rotated in the power pocket somewhat, on some attempts, but when I did I usually didn't get it external again, and the disc just flew straight up. I don't know if I was overdoing it in some way, or if like Richard says in his video I was basically just not holding on long enough?

[sidewinder22]

You need to fix your address/start position, you are too turned away with the feet from ground up to your head. Your rear knee leaks past your foot as soon as you start moving back away from target. You need to keep your rear knee leveraged inside the foot to allow the rest of torso/shoulder/arm/disc swing back behind it.

https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forum...d.php?t=134167
https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forum...d.php?t=134177

[Flashblastx]

I’m glad that makes sense man. The hard part is applying it since you probably have been used to the rounding motion for so long (hinging). I know I have that issue it’s easy to revert back to old habits in the field.

Unfortunately when you pick up a disc you go back to your old ways usually.

I definitely see some posture balance issues but as far the arm goes it seems like you may just be pronating/supinating the wrist instead of rotating the shoulder in its socket. Again probably because of old habits and if it feels weird there is probably a core motion pattern issue to address. The only time rotation of the shoulder felt natural to me was when I focused on a lateral movement. Shoulder leads the elbow, elbow leads the arm and disc as a unit.

It looks to me in those throws that you’re pushing off the left leg into the plant (you can see if straighten) instead of letting your center of gravity accelerate the weight shift. You can also see this when you push off the right foot in the x-step, you are straight up and down and then compensate by pushing off that left foot when it comes time to shift your weight.. When I started leaning forward off the right foot I started to feel the magic of using gravity to accelerate my shift. While gravity pulls you towards the target you should have your disc pull counterclockwise away from the target.

I don’t see the usual embedding for YouTube haha so here’s the link:

https://youtu.be/5_tQE0N9RHY

I can’t stress the importance of this drill. If you do this and then apply it to the doorframe drill hopefully it starts to add up. When you grab the door frame with your center of gravity shifted towards the target focus on keeping your eyes on the target for as long as possible. The only reason you should look away from the target is because your right shoulder is getting pulled back from you grabbing the door frame.

Really practice these drills until you start to feel the leverage and power. It will feel like you could tear that door frame down (that’s what the leverage feels like to me). It’s just too easy to go throw in the field and just revert to old habits.

Also helped me to practice the last part of the door frame drill to feel this, but you have to actually move around the door frame. I always just grabbed the door frame and got into my final backswing position which never helped me feel anything.

Hope this helps!

Dan