• Discover new ways to elevate your game with the updated DGCourseReview app!
    It's entirely free and enhanced with features shaped by user feedback to ensure your best experience on the course. (App Store or Google Play)

~400' BH and ~325' FH Help

Thinking about it again, i guess you can have leverage on the lower arm with a narrow angle if you get that elbow far forward and REALLY stiffen up your shoulder. But it still feels less powerful and harder to time than just having everything at 90°. I'd also imagine i'd get a sore shoulder regularly.
This is how Avery throws. I would believe it's the elbow getting sore, not the shoulder. He always wears that tendonitis brace on his forearm. More likely to hyperextend the elbow moving it that much that fast at the end of the throw.
 
I've been thinking about what i feel is missing in your throw a bit and i think i figured it out.

You get into that beto position where the angle between upper and lower arm is very narrow. However, I feel like that angle should never be much below 90 degrees. If you think about the throw as a chain of levers, i feel like there is no way to extend that chain to the lower arm if the hinge at the elbow is collapsed like yours is. My intuition about physics tells me that pulling the elbow orthogonal to the line the disc is moving on will net you the most acceleration. There is no way to do that with a narrow angle.

You can confirm this by looking at pro-throws filmed from a birds-eye-perspective. All of the ones i could find had that angle at approximately 90 degrees at the start of the hit. No one gets to that beto position.
Agree with that mostly. Learning to throw like Feldy(sledgehammer or slap shot with very little elbow or wrist bend) really simplifies how the whole arm needs to extend into one big pendulum.
 
I've been thinking about what i feel is missing in your throw a bit and i think i figured it out.

You get into that beto position where the angle between upper and lower arm is very narrow. However, I feel like that angle should never be much below 90 degrees. If you think about the throw as a chain of levers, i feel like there is no way to extend that chain to the lower arm if the hinge at the elbow is collapsed like yours is. My intuition about physics tells me that pulling the elbow orthogonal to the line the disc is moving on will net you the most acceleration. There is no way to do that with a narrow angle.

You can confirm this by looking at pro-throws filmed from a birds-eye-perspective. All of the ones i could find had that angle at approximately 90 degrees at the start of the hit. No one gets to that beto position.

Yes I think you're right.

Being aware of the drills and positions, I try to get to that elbow forward position as a goal and then unload...and that causes me to use the arm too soon so the hand goes up as my arm is moving ahead of torso and disconnected, then I arrive at elbow forward position with the bent elbow from getting there.

Instead the arm needs to be pulled forward by the torso, and the arc will load the forearm back naturally. Then at that point I'll be at a powerful position to unload the shot.
 
Agree with that mostly. Learning to throw like Feldy(sledgehammer or slap shot with very little elbow or wrist bend) really simplifies how the whole arm needs to extend into one big pendulum.

That is exactly how it finally clicked for me. Just that instead of Feldy is was watching McBeth on low powered shots.



edit: can't get the the video start at the right moment. Skip to 29:12
 
Instead the arm needs to be pulled forward by the torso, and the arc will load the forearm back naturally. Then at that point I'll be at a powerful position to unload the shot.

Exactly. What helped me to feel it was planting in a way that sets the disc on a path wide away from your body. This way you have all the time in the world to turn everything target ward, catch the disc and rip it forward. Might be easier to feel it with something that has a bit of weight to it.
 
I'm really feeling it better than before. Thoughts on this?

I know the plant leg kind of bows outward but I don't exactly want to put much force into the hammer and have an accident. But I feel like I wait and wait and the hammer arcs at the right time.

https://vimeo.com/295062859

https://vimeo.com/295062859^^^^^^^^^^URL FOR BIGGER VIDEO^^^^^^
 
Last edited:
The first one felt kinda right intuitively, but especially in those from behind you pull way to soon. Try to wait until hammer, hand and elbow all form a line to the target. That's where you want to power it (at least that is where it feels right for me)

edit: after going through it, only hand and elbow are in line , the hammer is lagging behind.
 
Last edited:
The first one felt kinda right intuitively, but especially in those from behind you pull way to soon. Try to wait until hammer, hand and elbow all form a line to the target. That's where you want to power it (at least that is where it feels right for me)

edit: after going through it, only hand and elbow are in line , the hammer is lagging behind.

Wow, thank you. That's a great description.

So much is made of the power pocket...I always tried to get there. In those videos I was trying to let the power pocket happen and then extend outward thinking that powering the opening of the levers would give the snap and unwinding.

I was skeptical of waiting even longer...but trying it I'm afraid to put any power or speed into the motion because it feels like crazy leverage. Waiting until everything is already opened and aligned and then gassing it...that's so much later than I ever thought. But it feels like a lot of leverage and it prevents the over loading/lagging back that was in that video.

So I feel like there's way less load angle, but like my arm is way longer and that I can continually feel the weight of the hammer the entire time.

The first of the behind view swings is not as good...afraid of a mishap. Second one is more how it was feeling to me.

https://vimeo.com/295069993

https://vimeo.com/295069993^^^^URL
 
Started writing this before second vid, which is definitely better...


Swinging the hammer incorrectly with no regard for nose/head angle. Your front foot is spinning out open, trying to use your weight instead of the hammer's weight. When you transition from backswing forward the nose/head of the hammer goes up instead of down. Too much lag and too much rotation. Your rear arm just keeps going around you, there is no swim/push back to release the front arm.

Your hammer head is vertical facing the ceiling at the finish of the pump/top of the swing (and your followthru in bigger swings) about 90 degrees off where I have it. Should be horizontal and facing right tee pad side, and turned nose or face down after swinging through the nail/door frame into followthru. The head of the hammer needs to rotate back and forth with your whole arm, the hammer should hit the nail flush horizontal just over the front foot, not at the top of the swing, but at the bottom of the swing arc. Drop your front shoulder and let the arm hang completely loose, and keep wrist locked from flexion/extension - you don't use that wrist motion to hammer, only maybe some ulnar deviation to pound it, but wrist is stiff/locked from flex/extend with hammer - feels same with disc. Swing the arm/hammer from the shoulder/s - Reciprocating Dingle Arm.

40SLT8T.png
 
I'm going to have to read through this a few times, but FWIW I think I'm holding the hammer 90 degrees to you. Not holding it like a hammer but sideways so the hand is in disc golf orientation and hammer head is sideways/target wards.
 
I'm going to have to read through this a few times, but FWIW I think I'm holding the hammer 90 degrees to you. Not holding it like a hammer but sideways so the hand is in disc golf orientation and hammer head is sideways/target wards.
My grip on the disc feels just like a normal hammer grip but the hammer head/nose is down slightly compared to the disc.
Hold your disc and then open up your thumb and slide a hammer in there. I wouldn't be surprised if you need to change something in your grip pressure or orientation to hold both.
vluKpoe.png
 
Grip vid is spot on for most part, but I'm really not trying to use the wrist in that fashion of ulnar deviation either. Everything else pounds the hammer with the wrist tightening to transfer that force through it, literally like pounding a nail, but swinging through it without that blowback of the nail/wall.

I think most people misunderstand wrist extension, as literally going from flexion to extension or flicking the wrist open. What I feel as wrist extension is the wrist or thumb being as far away as possible from my center. That means my wrist is neutral, not flexion or extension because either direction takes my thumb back toward my center. That also means my wrist will be ulnar deviated some(not max) so the tip of the thumb extends as far away as possible from my center. The arm/wrist will rotate through to keep extending the thumb/disc level or nose down through.

I would say the grip is diagonal to the disc, the knuckles go diagonal to the disc plane. Same thing when you use an actual hammer grip, your knuckles will be diagonal across the handle and the index will hook the handle higher than the rest of the fingers. If your knuckles are all the same to the handle it puts the weight and wrist out of control and weak. You want to have control of the weight/head/nose all the way start to finish.

In the hammer swing, keep your weightshift 1" so your front foot doesn't need to pivot/spin out during the swing or just keep your front foot planted. You are also curling the hammer inward somehow, either too much shoulder or elbow or wrist bend happen there. Keep the wrist/thumb/forearm/handle straight inline to each other, no curl.
 
Last edited:
Yes I can feel how to keep the hammer straighter, I was having too much elbow bend or elbow around to the right motion which loaded it back near my chest. I can feel how to keep it and the wrist more as a unit. And with this wrist orientation the thumb "away" or pointing out at the hit makes sense now.

With a disc in my hand just going through practice swings, it seems weird. It feels like there's not as much compression/bend of all the levers I'm used to, like I won't get the same spin. And like the power is going to happen so late.

With a hammer it feels very leveraged and strong, but with a light disc that I'm so used to having snap out there it feels odd. I do trust it's going to work, and may be quite an adjustment, but it's very different from what I've been doing.

Edit: I think I'm just so used to baseball bats and golf clubs where you keep the head back and snap/release it through the hit zone. This is a different goal than throwing the lever. Is this what's been going on?
 
Last edited:
Yep. Toss the bat one-handed. You should still be able to hit the ball one-handed without really snapping the wrist. I don't try to spin the disc, torque/spin is the byproduct of leverage.

I also think that having to wait for the ball changes things some. Should be more like hitting a teed up ball.
 
Last edited:
I'm on board with what you're saying with the disc golf throw...I mean it feels really weird but why not change 6 things and give it a go. I realize the disc will spin and it will work out. And my follow through position in that behind view hammer video almost looks like when Eagle powers down on a PD to the 400ish range, so that's a good thing. I'm just also going to accept I'll probably shank a ton of shots along the way.

But I just want to see if I know how to swing a bat or club, like I thought I did. To me, I set it to lag in the backswing, intentionally keep it lagging, and set the arcs so that it has to be released through the hit zone. The club has way more bend back/load than the disc or hammer feels like it does now, and is also arcing out way more aggressively through the hit zone. Again I realize I'm not throwing these objects but hitting another one, but I really feel like you TRY to lag it back there to be quick forward, rather than try to resist as then it would drag.

Now I'm not saying I'm trying to snap the wrist with a golf club or baseball bat...just that I'm not trying to resist the load. I'm trying to achieve that lag angle and then an arc in the forward swing that releases the club/bat appropriately.

attachment.php


This was the first shot of this video, but really it's any golf swing to me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnIVuvQoSNY
 

Attachments

  • Golf Wrist Angle.jpg
    Golf Wrist Angle.jpg
    95.6 KB · Views: 193
Lol, 6 different things, but it's just a single conceptual change. You might find it way more consistent this way after the first couple tosses.

I would say the wrist lag/hinge happens in transition in the golf swing with two-hands. The backswing is done when the arm/club reaches horizontal way before the top of the backswing(between 1&2), from horizontal that is all abandoned or tossed momentum from there pulling it up to the top. Two-handed you have to unhinge the front wrist to swing the rear arm through the ball.

One-handed golf swing, there is no wrist hinge(release) until after the ball is hit, you lose all leverage to the club if you hinge before and put your wrist in a weak position. I could be wrong on this as I've never actually played ball golf, but I do have a 7 iron and this is what I feel like it would be swinging it, like the sledgehammer.
 
Last edited:

Latest posts

Top