Form: Self analysis?

[ChrisWoj]

I have some thoughts about my form that have come up as I've started throwing myself into rebuilding myself for Masters in 2025 this year... So I've found two big pieces that have made me super inconsistent the last few years. Wild how playing even just a little more helps open up the box over time.

1. I have truly struggled with making sure that I'm sitting on my back foot putting. It's got so easy to just randomly go from properly setting myself on my back foot to winding up over my front foot and just wrecking my putts.

2. I have struggled a lot with maintaining my hyzer angle and seemingly related (well it turns out absolutely related) late releases. And I tried really hard to focus on keeping my head down and again... I lose it just weirdly.

I was really getting frustrated and confused by the fact that I just could NOT seem to keep my head down on drives and sit on my back foot on putts. Like how could this become so unnatural to me? What the fuck? Have I let myself become so ADD that I can't remember to execute the simplest easy to remember things for 18 holes?

But... Solutions! Both problems, as it turns out, seem to have solutions in the pre-shot.

1. With the putts I was placing my front foot first. I never used to do that. I always set my back foot first at the appropriate distance back from the front foot to get the amount of weight shift I needed for the putt. And then I'd carefully place the front foot on line to the basket. And then I would just naturally sit down into the stance. By setting the front foot first I was often not adjusting the back foot and I had too narrow of a stance and really needed to make an effort to settle back on the back foot.

2. The drives I thought I solved last year by focusing on keeping my head down and thought the problem with inconsistency was just me rebuilding the habit. And it was actually on its own important to redevelop. But what I have realized is that the head needs to follow core orientation not the other way around. It can't lead your posture. If the torso is too upright keeping the head down still fails. So pre-shot I need to get to my hyzer angle by setting up how far forward on my toes I am. The more of my toes I am instead of my heel, the more my hyzer lines and thus angle of release are maintained.

I think I got away from that because sometimes I push the limits and go too far and my weight being too far forward leads to my foot coming out on full commit and scraping my knees up. But I think just gotta know my limits and live with the fact that I might not learn them. I mean, hell, whenever I scraped up my knee the slip happened after release and often the shot is great (I swear I can't remember scraping my knee on a tee and not being satisfied with the outcome of the shot, oddly enough.... probably bias).

I don't know if any of this will help anyone else. I don't know if any of it, especially with the drives, seems wrong-headed. If someone has critique of the way I'm self-analyzing please let me know, I fully acknowledge that being a knuckle dragger and doing copious reps has contributed more to my throw than knowing the technical elements of a throw has.

 

[Brychanus]

Since I think a lot about balance and work on most things in that framework, I've always found it interesting how much trouble I've had with my balance head to toe including the head relative to walking, dancing, or boxing. Motions that involve moving sideways-ish with your intent on a target that you then take your eyes off of is just a strange thing to do in the first place. I think that's part of why so many people struggle with it, and especially adults.

I'm also not sure the value or "true" ratio of self vs. other analysis. I had several dance instructors and only one of them had the kind of "chemistry" (and experience) that really helped me develop fast. I found it with sidewinder when other things weren't working at all for me. I simply couldn't get my body to do certain things on its own and I'm analytic enough that I had a taste for his style. When I "explore" now it's mostly trying to revisit things I already learned to see if it would improve how my body moves for whatever current cue he has me focused on.

I do like in general how you're picking out just a couple cues to focus on at a time. In general "paralysis by analysis" is a real thing for some people. Once my brain calmed down and I wasn't really thinking much anymore it became easier to adjust things on the fly, and return to old concepts more quickly.

If you can't do the best thing, do whatever next best thing you can.

 

[Brychanus]

2. I have struggled a lot with maintaining my hyzer angle and seemingly related (well it turns out absolutely related) late releases. And I tried really hard to focus on keeping my head down and again... I lose it just weirdly.

Can you say more about this? It sounds like you have almost the opposite problem I tend to have. I tend too be too hyzer and too early releases.*

I do so much form work inside on hyzer that when I get to the course I find out it was hiding bits of collapsing posture from me, and I have trouble achieving "reasonable" shallower hyzer planes for some shots. So even though extreme hyzers have had many mechanical learning advantages for me & I want to explore a wide range of angles, I started to make my indoor hyzer planes intentionally less harsh. Still not a flat swing, but between 10-20 degrees hyzer where I can still find a useable stroke at low effort.

This intentionality seems to be teaching my body something different and new. Part of it came from a chat with a friend who observed I was making some shots way too hard for myself and we had a heart to heart where we agreed I'd always probably be a somewhat hyzer guy, but there is a lot to be said for shallower angles on some control drives (I think of Simon throwing "flat" at 350 or 450 feet, still baby hyzer, but much less hyzer than max "flat" drive).

*usually I find that if I'm swinging hyzer and end up with a late release it means I was not fully braced up/on top of the front leg and either collapsing or overroating in the front hip.

 

[ChrisWoj]

Can you say more about this? It sounds like you have almost the opposite problem I tend to have. I tend too be too hyzer and too early releases.*

I do so much form work inside on hyzer that when I get to the course I find out it was hiding bits of collapsing posture from me, and I have trouble achieving "reasonable" shallower hyzer planes for some shots. So even though extreme hyzers have had many mechanical learning advantages for me & I want to explore a wide range of angles, I started to make my indoor hyzer planes intentionally less harsh. Still not a flat swing, but between 10-20 degrees hyzer where I can still find a useable stroke at low effort.

This intentionality seems to be teaching my body something different and new. Part of it came from a chat with a friend who observed I was making some shots way too hard for myself and we had a heart to heart where we agreed I'd always probably be a somewhat hyzer guy, but there is a lot to be said for shallower angles on some control drives (I think of Simon throwing "flat" at 350 or 450 feet, still baby hyzer, but much less hyzer than max "flat" drive).

*usually I find that if I'm swinging hyzer and end up with a late release it means I was not fully braced up/on top of the front leg and either collapsing or overroating in the front hip.

I can try to say more on it!

Focusing on the late release situation.... It feels like "late release" might be the wrong terminology, more so that the release is to the right of and higher than where it needs to be. The release may be "on time" but my body orientation at the time of release finds a balanced place more upright and to the right of where it should be. It is easy to call it "late" because the disc is coming out in that direction. I think what's happening is I'm trying to start out forward, torso forward, to enable a hyzer release that is level and more on-axis with the rotation of the body, but I'm not truly getting my weight over my toes. So as I rotated, my torso was pulling into a more upright position, rotating around my center of balance. If I'm really more forward with my weight over my toes pre-shot, the rotation seems to hold more down at the angle, enabling the intended release.

Does that help clarify what I'm going through?

 

[Brychanus]

Yeah, interesting. I think that there is a lot of recent chatter about the extent to which there are options in terms of the extremities (hands wrists arms etc) vs. adjusting components of posture. I still tend to prefer to work on my overall postural unit and balance but have found the little excursions into other ideas interesting. For me converting the lessons from e.g. really extreme hyzer angles meant that adjusting to less hyzer or true anny is challenging. As usual I benefit from working on it in standstills too but it doesn't always immediately transfer to x step. So even though I'm endlessly curious I mostly try to be a dutiful student to whatever main "cue" is active and search in that space ...

 

[jupiterboy]

There are things I can do to juice the throw, but mostly they also cause disruptions or quicker late acceleration that doesn't end up making a smoother effort. Right now I'm working on throwing downhill and uphill. There might be infinite variations.

 

[ChrisWoj]

Yeah, interesting. I think that there is a lot of recent chatter about the extent to which there are options in terms of the extremities (hands wrists arms etc) vs. adjusting components of posture. I still tend to prefer to work on my overall postural unit and balance but have found the little excursions into other ideas interesting. For me converting the lessons from e.g. really extreme hyzer angles meant that adjusting to less hyzer or true anny is challenging. As usual I benefit from working on it in standstills too but it doesn't always immediately transfer to x step. So even though I'm endlessly curious I mostly try to be a dutiful student to whatever main "cue" is active and search in that space ...

I would say that I play around with both the extremities and posture. I'm fully capable of comfortable extending to almost totally perpendicular vertical release in part because I'll use the shoulder and the wrist angles to get a few more degrees of verticality out of it. I can also do that with the torso alone, but the power loss due to how far you've removed yourself from the weight shift sucks. If I try to do it with wrist and shoulder alone, that is hard to accomplish, and it is where the worst of the arm forcing itself back into alignment with the torso comes in and I wind up with a ton of OAT more often than I'm clean. But put them together and you can do really vertical stuff.

For type of player - I've always tried to be a base neutral to slight hyzer player. I'm the same with my putt. And forehand. Barely any hyzer, but hyzer is where I want the miss to be off my baseline. I like being most comfortable with the middle ground but I want to still have a muted error-outcome relationship. I find it makes decision making a lot easier, and over time its helped with being comfortable going full anhyzer release or deep hyzer.

What is hurting me now is all the years away where I just lost all comfort with everything off my base flattish shot because that's what I trusted and used for everything because I didn't have time to practice lots of angles.

 

[HyzerRoc]

2. The drives I thought I solved last year by focusing on keeping my head down and thought the problem with inconsistency was just me rebuilding the habit. And it was actually on its own important to redevelop. But what I have realized is that the head needs to follow core orientation not the other way around. It can't lead your posture. If the torso is too upright keeping the head down still fails. So pre-shot I need to get to my hyzer angle by setting up how far forward on my toes I am. The more of my toes I am instead of my heel, the more my hyzer lines and thus angle of release are maintained.

I think I just found out what was wrong with my hyzers yesterday

It is interesting to read some self-reflection about form in here and to see how others go about thinking their misses through and looking for causes. I have to hold myself back from trying to go through all the different possible causes of a miss and trying tons of tweaks in the field that mostly end up not working out. You seem to have an easier time focusing on a limited cues to work through.

For type of player - I've always tried to be a base neutral to slight hyzer player. I'm the same with my putt. And forehand. Barely any hyzer, but hyzer is where I want the miss to be off my baseline. I like being most comfortable with the middle ground but I want to still have a muted error-outcome relationship. I find it makes decision making a lot easier, and over time its helped with being comfortable going full anhyzer release or deep hyzer.

Can you elaborate a bit about how getting comfortable with the slight hyzer play made you more comfortable with annys as well. Is it because you established a baseline throw and built from there to get better at annys?

 

[Brychanus]

Huh, interesting. I've found it kind of neat that I can now very independently control my arm and posture when needed in standstills for all kinds of weird shots on the course (I guess that's part of a "maturing" game). It's started to become more fun to figure out really weird shots in the heavy woods near me and find tradeoffs between ideal weight shifts/power shots vs. a scrappier/more extremity based move.

The x-step still requires me to mostly control the overall posture of the move, maybe because of my own movement limitations and the complexity in learning to do the move at all. I've been able to benefit from a bit of exploring "at the arm" recently again, but I think for the most part I have enough balance control issues that I'm content to just keep taking a "unit" approach (just saying it's been an interesting feature of my own development, appears to differ player to player).

Maybe one day I'll be more in the "Body English" phase there too if I'm at it long enough.

 

[ChrisWoj]

Can you elaborate a bit about how getting comfortable with the slight hyzer play made you more comfortable with annys as well. Is it because you established a baseline throw and built from there to get better at annys?

Oh, my bad - that's one of those paragraphs that gets chopped up in editing and you lose track of the fact that you removed important context. lol. The part about the slight hyzer was meant to be a tangent and it slowly took over the paragraph.

I was responding to his feeling a bit stuck by his base-hyzer feel for the throw by noting that I have always tried to be close to middle specifically for the reason he noted making his indoor hyzer shots less harsh. I'll take a slight hyzer where-ever the course gives it to me, but I feel like being able to access a wide range that crosses the hyzer-anhyzer threshold is important to a complete golf game (versus a wide range of hyzers and fewer anhyzers or the reverse).

The x-step still requires me to mostly control the overall posture of the move, maybe because of my own movement limitations and the complexity in learning to do the move at all. I've been able to benefit from a bit of exploring "at the arm" recently again, but I think for the most part I have enough balance control issues that I'm content to just keep taking a "unit" approach (just saying it's been an interesting feature of my own development, appears to differ player to player).

Maybe one day I'll be more in the "Body English" phase there too if I'm at it long enough.

I think my greatest benefits often come from periods where I'm willing to let my golf game suffer in the short term. I isolate pieces to change and even when a change proves to be a bad idea, there is an added proprioceptive benefit to really hyper-focusing on a small piece - wrist angle, head angle, torso angle...

Right now it's really easy for me to, bit by bit go through those things because I'm comfortable with the fact that my game on the course isn't really sharp anyway, so why not fiddle? I'm going to shoot shaky rounds because of my problems, so I may as well.

 

[Brychanus]

Oh, my bad - that's one of those paragraphs that gets chopped up in editing and you lose track of the fact that you removed important context. lol. The part about the slight hyzer was meant to be a tangent and it slowly took over the paragraph.

I was responding to his feeling a bit stuck by his base-hyzer feel for the throw by noting that I have always tried to be close to middle specifically for the reason he noted making his indoor hyzer shots less harsh. I'll take a slight hyzer where-ever the course gives it to me, but I feel like being able to access a wide range that crosses the hyzer-anhyzer threshold is important to a complete golf game (versus a wide range of hyzers and fewer anhyzers or the reverse).

I think my greatest benefits often come from periods where I'm willing to let my golf game suffer in the short term. I isolate pieces to change and even when a change proves to be a bad idea, there is an added proprioceptive benefit to really hyper-focusing on a small piece - wrist angle, head angle, torso angle...

Right now it's really easy for me to, bit by bit go through those things because I'm comfortable with the fact that my game on the course isn't really sharp anyway, so why not fiddle? I'm going to shoot shaky rounds because of my problems, so I may as well.

I mean I literally just had another mind-and-body-altering insight that @SocraDeez pointed out to me a year and a half ago that I clearly didn't fully encode or understand, then suddenly an "ah ha!" clicked in. I don't get many ah has in disc golf so when they happen I need to tell all of DGCR about it lmao. It's bizarre to me how certain body "blind spots" can be incredibly important in learning (and not learning). Weird, weird stuff man.

I think the hyzer wisdom applies there. Even if I always skew hyzer learning from versatile throwers is starting to teach me new lessons, and when the random friend on the course gives me an idea to test out watching me in live throwing in one situation or another it's a little easier to try on the fit for a day or two and then discard it if it's either tampering with the "long run" of my learning or just isn't working for me.

What I've appreciated about learning from Sidewinder is his hit rate for isolating a key variable is damn impressive, but of course if he's not there hands on I have to kind of fuss around to see if I can get what he's saying. I now understand that you can be analytic to your own detriment, too. Sometimes a little bit of "random search" around the main idea or move helps, sometimes not. I'll never fully understand motor learning for a move this complicated, probably. I'm just happy that more "body fluency" means that it's way easier to adjust a single thing and quickly determine if it has any promise, which was not the case even six months ago for me. Just a weird cycle of plateaus, sudden insights and accelerated learning, and then new plateaus.

I've just learned to be more patient overall and enjoy the ride and stay open-minded as to where I end up. Truly a journey and not a destination, this game.

 

[ChrisWoj]

I'll never fully understand motor learning for a move this complicated, probably. I'm just happy that more "body fluency" means that it's way easier to adjust a single thing and quickly determine if it has any promise, which was not the case even six months ago for me. Just a weird cycle of plateaus, sudden insights and accelerated learning, and then new plateaus.

I've just learned to be more patient overall and enjoy the ride and stay open-minded as to where I end up. Truly a journey and not a destination, this game.

I hadn't really thought of it in terms of 'body fluency' but I think a lot of what I'm able to isolate probably also comes from a lifetime of trail running, and being a highly technical runner. I started running cross country when I was 8, and never really stopped, and I like going fast, I like hitting corners fast, I like trying to accelerate when I turn to maintain speed coming out of it, and I've always been like that - trying to find edges where other runners slow down (hill climbs are another example), because I've never been a top-end speed guy.

With disc golf getting onto the plant foot and using it in a reflexive manner to accelerate in a new direction is relatively easy to feel because I'm doing it in a very controlled space, compared to identifying the best surface to plant in a turn and adjusting the body for that at speed.

An in-between step might be something like what I did last night. I ran a particularly strong 5K with my dog on sidewalks. If she catches me slowing down, she tends to overcompensate and slows down even more. So, on her 'fast' days, when I hit corners on sidewalk runs with her I try to completely pivot the foot and catch myself entirely on the outside of the plant foot, prepared to drive hard with the first step at the perpendicular angle. And she's a flat-coated retriever mix, highly agile, so that keeps her ripping around the corners.

So yeah... I definitely had not thought before how that kinda translates to the 'body fluency' side of things in disc golf, but it makes sense that I probably benefit to some extent from practicing that loading.

 

[HyzerRoc]

Oh, my bad - that's one of those paragraphs that gets chopped up in editing and you lose track of the fact that you removed important context. lol. The part about the slight hyzer was meant to be a tangent and it slowly took over the paragraph.

I was responding to his feeling a bit stuck by his base-hyzer feel for the throw by noting that I have always tried to be close to middle specifically for the reason he noted making his indoor hyzer shots less harsh. I'll take a slight hyzer where-ever the course gives it to me, but I feel like being able to access a wide range that crosses the hyzer-anhyzer threshold is important to a complete golf game (versus a wide range of hyzers and fewer anhyzers or the reverse).

I think my greatest benefits often come from periods where I'm willing to let my golf game suffer in the short term. I isolate pieces to change and even when a change proves to be a bad idea, there is an added proprioceptive benefit to really hyper-focusing on a small piece - wrist angle, head angle, torso angle...

Right now it's really easy for me to, bit by bit go through those things because I'm comfortable with the fact that my game on the course isn't really sharp anyway, so why not fiddle? I'm going to shoot shaky rounds because of my problems, so I may as well.

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense. Especially woods golf doesnt always allow for the hyzer flip to play a left to right line but requires flex shots and the like.

I think knowing your stock standard shot is valuable for learning form changes as it lets you just throw without thinking about angles and instead thinking about whatever you are trying to forge into your move. It also gives some baseline off of which you can think of more hyzer or more anhyzer as a mental cue for shots.

 

[Brychanus]

I have some thoughts about my form that have come up as I've started throwing myself into rebuilding myself for Masters in 2025 this year...

Wanted to come back here in case you or others were willing to chat. Can you say more about this? I.e., specifically at Masters level and how you more generally are "rebuilding"?

In my first tournament, one of the guys was in his early 40s and was probing me about joining leagues. He looked at me and said "I don't want to make any assumptions, but if you happen to be around 40..." - I'll just assume it was my very prematurely gray head of hair cuing him in ;-)

I am thinking more about how I can become a better golfer these days while inching closer to that age category. I am making all of my practice much more deliberate with the limited time I have for field sessions. I won't be a touring pro. But to focus myself, I'd like to end up being locally competitive in the 40+ division. So I'm interested in how someone like you approaches it.

I used to be a little more upset that I didn't learn earlier in life when my body was more robust and before I tried to go it on my own and put mileage on my body that will always be there. But now I am wondering if I'll view it as a blessing in disguise in 5 years that I decided to obsessively learn from @sidewinder22 because I have always been willing to back up and relearn something or learn something new and I am now tending to get better at responding to my body.

What my first B-tier tournament did for me was tell much how much other kinds of work/play I could put in and enjoy to be a better golfer and not just learn to crush drives. And that I'll probably drive better with a different approach to practice. I'll probably work on form and distance as long as I am physically able to because I enjoy it. I think I do have a little more in the tank based on the last couple weeks, but I don't know where that will end up.

I've seen a few holistic approaches to getting better, some of which involve data (and not just TechDisc).

1. Putting vs. Driving: My favorite "drive for dough, putt for show" (opposite the usual amateur catchphrase) data were from this guy. He was basically showing under a few assumptions that becoming more accurate+precise could improve his scores more than putting, which surprised him. What I liked about this is it's a fairly simple representation of why a high-level player plays so well - they throw farther with more accuracy & precision, and they make their putts. This is obvious, but mathematically their average score and distribution of any given round is just the drive * putt distribution's central tendency and variance.



However, what I find interesting is that at any given power level, I think people plateau for accuracy and precision, and getting better takes exponentially more work. My takeaway from competing was that I'm dramatically more reliable on hyzer lines of all kinds than anything else (due to how my form developed and what I practice). I am what I would say "accurate and sometimes precise" on a given day. Once I was warmed up, I parked or nearly parked every single hyzerflip I threw in my first tournament. So I figured I could first make up a significant number of strokes just developing similar basic body intuition for other lines, and aiming points

2. How far do you really need to be able to throw to win? I mean, as far as you need to with whatever accuracy and precision to beat your competition all else being equal, right? I don't know the exact context, but here are amateur Master's distances in the Long drive competition from 2021. Players with mid-900s ratings throwing somewhat or significantly less than 400' when intending to crush and one notable exception. If you broaden it to include younger people, you get what I posted a couple years ago. Steve West also previously had some data suggestive that 400' of useable distance was enough to get ~1000-rated. In the short, wooded courses near me if I just had a wide range of control over a single mold (Comets) I really don't need any more power than I have - I just need to put it where I want it on more angles.

3. Putting and upshots: This is painfully obviously a place where I can add tens of PDGA points' worth of performance with even a minor or moderate amount of practice. It's getting a little annoying messing up touchy shots or dropping discs in C1 and drawing metal constantly but failing to sink some easy putts.

 

[ChrisWoj]

Wanted to come back here in case you or others were willing to chat. Can you say more about this? I.e., specifically at Masters level and how you more generally are "rebuilding"?

In my first tournament, one of the guys was in his early 40s and was probing me about joining leagues. He looked at me and said "I don't want to make any assumptions, but if you happen to be around 40..." - I'll just assume it was my very prematurely gray head of hair cuing him in ;-)

I am thinking more about how I can become a better golfer these days while inching closer to that age category. I am making all of my practice much more deliberate with the limited time I have for field sessions. I won't be a touring pro. But to focus myself, I'd like to end up being locally competitive in the 40+ division. So I'm interested in how someone like you approaches it.

Genuinely - I don't think there's much difference in how I want to train based on my age as much as on my place in life. At 39, I haven't really experienced a heavy athletic dip. The dip IS there, but regular yoga, running, and weight training along with a very aware and careful approach to injury recovery (ARITA - active rest is the answer, along with eschewing ice and anti-inflammatories) have helped me retain all around mobility.

I've tried to take all the best things my Dad did (staying active, running, eating well) and cut out the things that have led to his decline in his mid-60s - he played basketball well until 65, but even before that there were clear signs of loss of flexibility/tissue pliability because of his overuse of ibuprofen and his belief in 'playing as warmup' because he loathed stretching, and his ankles went downhill pretty quick because instead of resting he kept playing ball every week with ankle braces instead of taking time off (admittedly, the ibuprofen helped with the fact that he played through things, since you don't want to compete with swelling, that's where the active rest time is so necessary).

However - I've had to change a bit about my training practices based on life. I have an adult job now, I didn't when I was 20-25. It was really easy to putt every day when I was able to get out at whatever time was convenient. Similarly - it was really easy to throw drives in the field when I wasn't really restricted on when I could go to the park. So I need to do my putting at very specific times of day, or else the other responsibilities mean I won't get to it at all. I need to do my driving into nets, because I often can't get away from home to a big enough field for long enough.

I used to be a little more upset that I didn't learn earlier in life when my body was more robust and before I tried to go it on my own and put mileage on my body that will always be there. But now I am wondering if I'll view it as a blessing in disguise in 5 years that I decided to obsessively learn from @sidewinder22 because I have always been willing to back up and relearn something or learn something new and I am now tending to get better at responding to my body.

I definitely credit my parents for this one - they let me, as a teenager, really just get obsessively into my hobbies no matter how insignificant they seemed to be. I was able to focus on mastery, getting knocked down and having the time to get back up (so to speak, they weren't all physical hobbies). They didn't get on me for staying up until midnight obsessing over code or writing pro-wrestling fiction in writing communities, or for shooting jumpers until the sun went down. They just let me learn to learn, and that really has served me well in so many areas.

3. Putting and upshots: This is painfully obviously a place where I can add tens of PDGA points' worth of performance with even a minor or moderate amount of practice. It's getting a little annoying messing up touchy shots or dropping discs in C1 and drawing metal constantly but failing to sink some easy putts.

There was a lot there, but I'm really curious about something related to this bit about putting... because I just got back to doing something that I fiddled with back in like 2019-2020 when I was trying to win collegiate nationals, but didn't do much of, and now I'm doing it again and it really seems to be helping.

It's funny because, in a way, it feels counter-intuitive given my point about approaching my putts from the back foot and making sure I'm able to comfortably sit on my back foot.... but....

I've been doing sets of putts from my front foot only. Back foot in the air, balanced, and trying to identify the best possible hip/shoulder orientation for a comfortable toss into the basket. Removing the back leg from the equation completely really forces you to be hyper-aware of body orientation. I've been taking 5 putts at a clip, without touching the foot back down, really trying to establish a balanced space.

I actually got back to doing it after watching this recent Calvin video:


He uses a LOT less leg than I do when I putt, but at the same time - there's a ton to be said for recognizing how to generate comfortable pop without any weight shift, it really helps you recognize the best possible body orientation for YOUR body and YOUR sense of balance.

I've been starting at 5m with my 5 putters, if I make all 5 I go up another meter. If I miss 1 I stay, and if I miss more than 1 I go down one meter (no shorter than 5m). I make it a bit punitive because I'm not trying to extend this out to huge distances, I'm just trying to establish a comfortable and easy POP on the disc.

It feels like, when I complete about 50 putts doing this, my normal 15-20 meter putts are just... easy. It's wild how comfortably I can generate power with what feels like a smooth and under control motion from way downtown.

Curious what you think of that drill.

 

[Brychanus]

Genuinely - I don't think there's much difference in how I want to train based on my age as much as on my place in life. At 39, I haven't really experienced a heavy athletic dip. The dip IS there, but regular yoga, running, and weight training along with a very aware and careful approach to injury recovery (ARITA - active rest is the answer, along with eschewing ice and anti-inflammatories) have helped me retain all around mobility.

I've tried to take all the best things my Dad did (staying active, running, eating well) and cut out the things that have led to his decline in his mid-60s - he played basketball well until 65, but even before that there were clear signs of loss of flexibility/tissue pliability because of his overuse of ibuprofen and his belief in 'playing as warmup' because he loathed stretching, and his ankles went downhill pretty quick because instead of resting he kept playing ball every week with ankle braces instead of taking time off (admittedly, the ibuprofen helped with the fact that he played through things, since you don't want to compete with swelling, that's where the active rest time is so necessary).

However - I've had to change a bit about my training practices based on life. I have an adult job now, I didn't when I was 20-25. It was really easy to putt every day when I was able to get out at whatever time was convenient. Similarly - it was really easy to throw drives in the field when I wasn't really restricted on when I could go to the park. So I need to do my putting at very specific times of day, or else the other responsibilities mean I won't get to it at all. I need to do my driving into nets, because I often can't get away from home to a big enough field for long enough.

I definitely credit my parents for this one - they let me, as a teenager, really just get obsessively into my hobbies no matter how insignificant they seemed to be. I was able to focus on mastery, getting knocked down and having the time to get back up (so to speak, they weren't all physical hobbies). They didn't get on me for staying up until midnight obsessing over code or writing pro-wrestling fiction in writing communities, or for shooting jumpers until the sun went down. They just let me learn to learn, and that really has served me well in so many areas.

There was a lot there, but I'm really curious about something related to this bit about putting... because I just got back to doing something that I fiddled with back in like 2019-2020 when I was trying to win collegiate nationals, but didn't do much of, and now I'm doing it again and it really seems to be helping.

It's funny because, in a way, it feels counter-intuitive given my point about approaching my putts from the back foot and making sure I'm able to comfortably sit on my back foot.... but....

I've been doing sets of putts from my front foot only. Back foot in the air, balanced, and trying to identify the best possible hip/shoulder orientation for a comfortable toss into the basket. Removing the back leg from the equation completely really forces you to be hyper-aware of body orientation. I've been taking 5 putts at a clip, without touching the foot back down, really trying to establish a balanced space.

I actually got back to doing it after watching this recent Calvin video:


He uses a LOT less leg than I do when I putt, but at the same time - there's a ton to be said for recognizing how to generate comfortable pop without any weight shift, it really helps you recognize the best possible body orientation for YOUR body and YOUR sense of balance.

I've been starting at 5m with my 5 putters, if I make all 5 I go up another meter. If I miss 1 I stay, and if I miss more than 1 I go down one meter (no shorter than 5m). I make it a bit punitive because I'm not trying to extend this out to huge distances, I'm just trying to establish a comfortable and easy POP on the disc.

It feels like, when I complete about 50 putts doing this, my normal 15-20 meter putts are just... easy. It's wild how comfortably I can generate power with what feels like a smooth and under control motion from way downtown.

Curious what you think of that drill.

I enjoyed all of this and learning a bit more about where you're coming from, thank you - getting what I can out of current time & recovery limits is a big part of my goal setting these days too.

Calvin drill - like One Leg Drill for putting - I learned my putt from Simon's mechanics and it usually has a larger weight shift and rock. I hit a lot more C2 than I have business to without practicing, but I have noticed that when I get to that "easy" 15-20' range my body is a little confused & it definitely spooked me at the tournament. I clearly don't need a lot of weight shift power at that distance. In my last field session I also coincidentally realized I can also now putt pretty far with that Calvin style you're showing with a minimal weight shift and basically just my rear toe grazing the ground and counterbalancing the toss.

So I'm going to try that one more in my basement putting station more deliberately this week and see what it does for me. Like you're saying I'm curious if it will help my body square everything up a little more reliably - seemed to be helping my pole hits on Wednesday at least.

 

[jupiterboy]

One of my biggest issues is playing too many rounds on consecutive days.

 

[ninjabq]

I hit a lot more C2 than I have business to without practicing, but I have noticed that when I get to that "easy" 15-20' range my body is a little confused & it definitely spooked me at the tournament. I clearly don't need a lot of weight shift power at that distance.

I grapple with this a lot... is it better to reduce and reduce the stroke as you get closer to the basket, or is it better to have one repeatable full body motion that effectively works from 15-35? For me (as someone who can't make putts from anywhere anyway, so grain of salt), the more I try to practice a less-motionful 10-20 foot putt, the worse my 30+ foot putts get, and the more I practice the full body putt for 25+, the worse my 10-20 putts get (in the same way as you say, the body gets confused).

Granted it's only been a couple of months of serious putting practice and my putting form has changed on a near weekly basis since then so there is that...

 

[Brychanus]

I grapple with this a lot... is it better to reduce and reduce the stroke as you get closer to the basket, or is it better to have one repeatable full body motion that effectively works from 15-35? For me (as someone who can't make putts from anywhere anyway, so grain of salt), the more I try to practice a less-motionful 10-20 foot putt, the worse my 30+ foot putts get, and the more I practice the full body putt for 25+, the worse my 10-20 putts get (in the same way as you say, the body gets confused).

Granted it's only been a couple of months of serious putting practice and my putting form has changed on a near weekly basis since then so there is that...

I guess one benefit of learning the full body motion (for me) was that it gave me a lot more control over parts of the move. Like I could figure out the Calvin drill quickly and otherwise use the "same" mechanics. If I had done it before learning the Simon rock I wonder what I would have left on the table. But learning whatever works best seems to take some real world experience and practice and trial and error (again, for me at least).

 

[Brychanus]

The dip IS there, but regular yoga, running, and weight training along with a very aware and careful approach to injury recovery (ARITA - active rest is the answer, along with eschewing ice and anti-inflammatories) have helped me retain all around mobility.

I've tried to take all the best things my Dad did (staying active, running, eating well) and cut out the things that have led to his decline in his mid-60s - he played basketball well until 65, but even before that there were clear signs of loss of flexibility/tissue pliability because of his overuse of ibuprofen and his belief in 'playing as warmup' because he loathed stretching, and his ankles went downhill pretty quick because instead of resting he kept playing ball every week with ankle braces instead of taking time off (admittedly, the ibuprofen helped with the fact that he played through things, since you don't want to compete with swelling, that's where the active rest time is so necessary).

I did want to talk about this more because my personality type puts me at risk of your dad's Ibuprofen spiral.

Having never been a throwing athlete or almost 40 before, I've had to learn all the maintenance stuff on my own.

Since I have some slightly banged up joints that I never experienced before a couple years ago, I've had to figure out how I can make progress without going overboard. I still can't tell what's optimal because being fully recovered and rested at almost 40 still doesn't feel the same to me as it did at 20. So I guess I don't know what my "baseline" is supposed to be now.

I did change a lot of workout habits which has helped, but figuring out the best cycle between form and field work, playing, active recovery, and full recovery continues to challenge me.