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Huge breakthrough today! Definitely not perfect - could be less closed off, like always, and maybe delay the shoulders even more, but - for the first time ever, I think, I had the feeling of the chain reaction, hips whipping the arm whipping the disc. It felt totally different. I'm not 100% positive, as it was a miserable day and I've got a ton of layers on, but I'm pretty sure it fixed my strongarming issue too. If my right shoulder is hiked in this it's definitely not as bad as it has been. It was wet, cold, and into a ripping headwind so discs were not traveling very far, but I have a feeling distance will improve with the weather. Thanks everyone on here for the help over the last few months!
I'm definitely no expert, but I think for me it's definitely not a "twitch" feeling. When I think about my hips the feeling that comes to mind is "unwinding" on the front leg. You land on the front leg, knee a little bent to absorb the impact, and then as the knee straightens, now with all your weight on it, your hips can't really help but turn forward, it's just what they want to do if you've put yourself in the right positions and shifted your weight linearly. I think it can definitely help to imagine your hip sort of pushing up towards the sky, but for me that's more of a posture cue, to prevent myself from tipping over the plant. For me the only conscious exertion as far as my lower body is just that push up on my plant leg.
I don't use a swim move, I don't think? I also don't think I fully understand the swim move. I do have an image in my head of Paul's swim move, but I don't believe I do that. I do focus on my off arm for sure though, bsammons really clarified for me how the trail leg and trail arm sort of act as a counterweight for the disc, and I've found that idea really helpful. The harder I drive down with my off arm, the harder the disc seems to come out on the opposite side.
Having a "loose" throwing arm for me is really difficult, but I think it definitely helps when my timing is all working well. If I let my shoulders get ahead of my lower body, I find I don't really have much choice but to tense my shoulder, arm, etc. to compensate. My big breakthrough today was that I finally kept my shoulders back long enough that they could take advantage of my lower body. It seems like once everything got in motion my shoulders and throwing arm didn't have much choice but just to go along for the ride. I have to say, though, it's never helped me too much to think of "loose". I tend to just get floppy arms. I like what SW has said to me in the past: the arm is "pulled taut".
Looks like a pretty good throw to me! Like joecoin said, Drew's offarm movement or even Paul McBeth's offarm movement are very good to copy. Their off arm starts moving in before the plant, like right around when the disc is starting to come forward.
Oh absolutely, Drew looks like he gets a ton from that move. It's been enough of a struggle for me just to get my arm tucked at all, but definitely more work to do there!
Well, finally clawing back from injury, and ready for throwing rehab - throwing right handed! Next two weeks I'm throwing 15 backhands and 15 forehands out to 150 feet, two times a week, so I figure I'll just film them all and work on de-rusting my form while I'm at it. I'm still working on lefty backhand too, but I'll just post it all in here from now on I guess.
It was actually pretty hard to focus on technique while throwing righty backhands, as I had to take so much off, and I was afraid if I tried to put everything together I'd accidentally throw hard and hurt myself. So I was kind of spinning open and throwing soft anhyzers. I know I was way "outside" my posture too. I don't know, what I was doing felt easy on my body but I don't know of any pros that have such ugly upshot form so it feels like there's work to do.
Forehand was actually a pleasant surprise, as I've always been trash at forehanding anything but putters (can't kick that ultimate forehand), but today they were really zipping out low effort. I was making sure to get my weight down on my front foot and planting more open to the target than I did previously, and I think those two things made the difference. The only problem was, even though they felt easy 75% came out as nose up hyzers. Not sure what I was doing different - here's one that came out nice and level:
BH you shouldn't be turned back that far unless going for big distance and striding front foot forward and turning it back with the pelvis. Front foot should be setup pointed somewhat targetward.
FH nose up looked like a longer stride. I would suggest "standstill" and turning your rear foot further back away and then lifting it or kicking it behind front foot like bowling.
Most of my efforts towards form the last 6 months or so have been put towards trying to keep my front shoulder from hiking up when I throw. I think I've made some big progress on that front, but I guess it's also left me paranoid. Does this look ok? I'm intentionally throwing a little upwards here, so I guess my torso would have to have a slight tilt putting my right shoulder higher - seem plausible? Or is this not quite it yet?
I think part of the problem is I'm not sure why the front shoulder needs to be down, just that everyone seems to do it to some degree. Some like McBeth or Jeremy Koling have theirs hiked up a little higher, some like Schusterick or Drew Gibson almost have their front shoulder lower than their back it seems like. Within a range, does it just come down to the individual's body and how their throw has developed? Or is one way of doing things necessarily better?
My forehands have all been very nose up, but after this last session I think I might be on to something. Seems like I've got a pretty serious swooping motion going on, right? That would probably explain the nose up. Would it work better to go for a "higher arm slot", to keep the disc more on a plane to release? I was inspired partially by Jeremy here:
his shoulder almost seems to go over the top at the end, where mine seems to be more coming under.
Your first move is to move or step your rear foot away from target. Need to keep your rear foot firmly planted/braced against the ground so your backswing can windup up torque against it. If rear foot moves away you are reducing torque/leverage. Your head is also turned back before your shoulders. Head should be the last thing to turn away from target in backswing. Shoulder should swing back underneath/behind the chin and then head continues turning back to the top of backswing.
Because you take a step back starting backswing, you probably don't create enough torque to pull the front foot up off the ground and take a step forward with front foot or feel the need to.
I think you need to pay attention to your pelvic tilt instead of your shoulder tilt. Your pelvis is tilted over / instead of back \ posted up on front leg so rear leg can swivel underneath. What is concerning with the shoulders is your lack of followthru, or being pulled into followthru by the release of the disc/arm - your rear shoulder should end up pointed at target and rear arm whipped around. https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134329 https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showthread.php?t=134415
FH - you need to brace up your front leg/knee. Your knee is leaking forward past your ankle which will create slack or loss of being pulling taut like ball on string. I don't think you are swooping, but I guess the knee leak and slack kind of creates that effect.
Wow yeah, I just tried in front of the mirror and if I widen my stance a bit, and focus first and foremost on swinging my shoulder back under my chin that is pretty much all there is to it - hips are rocked downwards, and front heel lifts off naturally like in the doorframe drill. Good stuff!
I guess I'm still a little confused about the whole shoulder posture thing. Is it just inconsequential? Or is it purely a symptom of good hip posture? I notice for myself that when my weight goes fully on my front leg it tends to lift my front shoulder and lower my rear shoulder, but in your straight & flat swing thread post those stills from the distance comp show GG and Kevin front shoulder down, yet hips fully rocked forward/up, which is a position I have no idea how to get into in a real swing. Then again, Paul and Seppo and possibly AB have their right shoulders slightly higher, so maybe I'm just hyperfocusing on something unimportant. Just so long as I'm not tensing my shoulder anymore, and so long as I'm swinging it under rather than up and around!
Yeah honestly that follow through did feel pretty natural for 150, for how much I had to take off it, but yesterday my program saw me bump up to 200 and for some reason I kept up that (lack of) follow through at first and it did not feel good. It was a bit of a struggle overall - tried a few things, nothing felt or looked good, had some grip issues, was releasing my fingers from the disc instead of gripping at the hit and things were coming out wobbly and pulled.
This one I think you can see I'm really stopping my follow through, rather than it just running out of gas. Didn't feel so good, but it seemed to happen as a byproduct of focusing on the disc shooting out to the right? It's like I would focus on keeping my arm loose and then hitting the hit point, and after I was done with that step my arm was forgetting to follow through. I think I got better at that as I kept throwing but I had other problems too.
Here I was trying to swing "under". I didn't do it so good, very nose up.
Still trying to swing under - maybe would have been better if my stance was wider? So I wasn't so far outside of legs?
As for FH, gotcha, yeah I can see how that plant is not quite holding up.
Here's one from yesterday, my best one - I popped it up, but even though it popped up it was still nose down to its trajectory. It also had the best "rubber band-y" feeling of my throws today, really felt like nothing to release it, and I easily got it to my target at 200 ft. From the slow motion, looks like I may have just been able to hold on longer than some other throws? Still a little leaky with the brace though.
Need to stop moving your rear foot away from target in backswing and keep knee braced inside ankle - extend/tilt/rotate in backswing on rear leg, then squat/fall going into transition. Swing your front foot/leg back like pitcher or batter to windup.
FH looks like your arm is moving before or without your shoulders, and not really tucking your left arm in. Let your arm go hang and pulled/swung by the shoulders/left arm. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8U00VMoYnJQ#t=1m
I wish I had seen your Monday night reply before throwing/filming yesterday, I think just that tip about the setup, swinging my arm under my chin and not lifting my back leg would have helped a lot.
I'm working through your post, and since I can't throw again until Friday I figured I'd film some drills, see what's what in the meantime. I don't really have a good doorframe filming spot in my tiny apartment so I'm trying to simulate the doorframe drill here:
Does that look any better?
The "windup" analogy is really making sense. I've tried the hershyzer drill a bit, but actually going through the windup motion on the ground is almost helping me more to see the connection. In this video I progress from pretending to pitch righty (there's some muscle memory there so it helped me to feel it out), to going through a lefty pitching motion into a backhand plant and swing, and when I thought about it like I was pitching, my hips naturally torqued and rocked to leverage the ground. Crazy! That said I don't think it looks great or anything, I'm guessing plant leg needs to be further forward?
Yeah lower body looks better. Upper body/arm needs work. Keep shoulders closed and lead the disc/wrist with the elbow forward. Your shoulders/chest are open at address.
Your grip might need some adjustment, thumb is super deep.
Ah gotcha, yeah I was trying to keep my arm straight to go easy on the elbow, but that's not really gonna be conducive to seeing what my swing looks like! I'll get more video on my next throw day, thanks again for the help!
As for the grip I was getting nervous with the window right there so I was really trying to hang on haha. I made a video of my real grip though, seeing as I'm trying something new and it is still a bit of an adjustment.
I used to hold the disc a lot different, having a lot more hand contact with the disc and really shoving it into my palm crease as far as it would go - and also having my hand more rotated under the disc. I've seen a lot of long throwers doing something more like this though (at least something that looks like this to me), so I've been giving it a shot.
Oh interesting, those grips look very similar to the grip I use on ultimate discs. With the bigger rim I've found I need to keep my pointer tip away from the flight plate bottom, or else it's easy to get that last digit stuck and twisted in there on release which does not feel good. On golf discs when you throw fan grip do you find it "rips" from your pointer finger? Or is it more of a pinch between the side of the finger and the edge of the rim? That's how releasing an ultimate disc feels to me, pinching the disc between my thumb and the side of my index finger right at release.
Not sure the difference. My thumb print is pinching right into the tip of my index finger and pushing thru the flight plate against the inside rim of disc, and the disc pivots around the index print/pad.
