Breaking Bad Timing Habit

[Melonhusk]

Ah, yeah I totally feel the swimming connection. I'll give it a try, thanks!

 

[Melonhusk]

Well I threw Friday, and it was so bad I didn't bother putting up videos, and throwing Monday felt somewhat similar but I figured more eyes on it couldn't hurt. Backhand I was trying to get my feet closer together, and swing my arm more level instead of pulling the nose up at the end (neither went well).

I'll start with the good, here were the two throws that at least led to the best throws - furthest, most on-line, etc.





That second one I did try to take a smaller step, and get lower - I think it felt a bit better in my lower body because of that.


Here are two of the worst, both on account of being popped up way higher into the air than intended. The one filmed from the back will show just how high we're talking.








In contrast to all that, forehands have kept getting better. I sort of forgot to brace the whole time, and I'm guessing I could probably be more closed off still, but I was getting more than enough distance to hit my target for the week and they weren't being pulled to the left as much.

 

[sidewinder22]

Best throw looked like perfect width of stance and stride. Your elbow is bending too early before your plant/shift - which is what should cause the elbow to bend.

 

[Melonhusk]

Oh well that's good to know! I thought I was setting up right, but then stepping too big.

Yeah, I notice that early elbow bend happening a lot when I start thinking about the rest of the throw too much during my backswing.

Thanks!

 

[Melonhusk]

Had a nice little breakthrough today, though things still look pretty messy overall I think. I decided to throw some mids rather than putters to try to coax myself to throw nose down, and I also really tried to focus on the last part of the swing - right at the hit - being free and easy and really extending my shoulder rather than bunching it up. The result was I was actually throwing low shots again, and they were coming out wayyy harder than expected.

I was throwing into a hill and I'm not sure which shots would have been the best, so I just edited them all together. From the video it looks like over time the disc speed might have trended down, so I might have started tensing up as time went on. I know I was still doing the early elbow bend for a lot of throws, and I think some problems came in and out with my lower body too.

One thing I noticed is I was pivoting on the ball of my foot rather than my heel? I didn't used to do that, so it's a little strange - should I try to fix that?

On a few throws I tried to get my off arm more involved, and whenever I did that it would cause my front shoulder to pop up. Is that from tensing, or is that just the off arm changing the tilt of my shoulders when it extends down?

Anyway, here's the video:



Thanks!

 

[sidewinder22]

Looks like your front foot/leg retracts/collapses going into the plant. Plant with your foot/leg more extended/braced to catch you more backward on it.

 

[Melonhusk]

My PT wants me throwing full power this week, which means I had to dust off my x-step, though I actually would have liked some more time just focusing on standstill.

The x-step looks pretty messy, looks like my weight is pretty far back and I sort of get stuck on my left foot when it crosses behind. There's probably more to it, but that's what I noticed.

This one looks like one of the better ones:



This was also one of the better ones, even though for some reason my plant foot didn't pivot at all. I took a bit off so that might be why I guess.



I was trying to standstill forehand putters, had a lot of wobble issues but this one actually came out nice. I was trying to think more baseball-y doing this, I realized if I think like I'm throwing a baseball I know how to close off into the plant, whereas if I think like I'm throwing a disc I want to open up earlier. Then the only problem becomes keeping my arm slot low.

 

[sidewinder22]

Your front leg is collapsing both BH and FH. You land BH too closed/seated/retracted on front leg. FH your knee leaks past ankle.

 

[Melonhusk]

Ok, I think I see it now. I think I may have misinterpreted this:

You are just doing door frame static. Need to get dynamic. Drop and bounce your butt targetward to pull against the door frame. The door frame should pull you back like spring before you can really plant/shift into front heel.

to mean that I needed to really bend or collapse my front knee. Unless I interpreted it right, but it was more applicable to the standstill than the x-step?

 

[sidewinder22]

Squat into rear leg, not front leg. Door frame drill should have almost no weight pressure on front leg.

 

[Melonhusk]

Gotcha, so when your front leg is bending, it's weightless - and by the time you shift your weight onto it it's extending - is that right? And my leg was "collapsing" because I was weighting it while also flexing it?

 

[sidewinder22]

Gotcha, so when your front leg is bending, it's weightless - and by the time you shift your weight onto it it's extending - is that right? And my leg was "collapsing" because I was weighting it while also flexing it?

When throwing the squat on rear leg happens while front foot is striding airborne and getting ready to catch yourself like a running back about to stick the front foot into the ground to change direction. Like Swivel Stairs.

In Door Frame Drill the front leg is only squatting because it's not striding, and squatting keeps the weight pressure off the front foot more, and more pressure back on rear foot.

There is no give in Paul's front leg, he plants it firmly into the ground and posts up on it.

 

[Melonhusk]

I see, ok that clears things up a lot. Thanks!

 

[Melonhusk]

Before throwing Monday I spotted this in someone else's form thread:

Can't remember who's form thread I saw this in, but SW recommended working the Hersh part 2 drill and just trying to keep the toes of that plant leg touching the wall as long as possible to get used to that falling feeling and staying in balance as you fall.

which seemed like exactly the kind of thing that would probably help me too. I didn't have time to do the actual drill before throwing, but while throwing my main focus became sticking my toes to an imaginary wall behind me.

I think I definitely need to spend more time with the actual drill - as I don't know that I really pulled it off in practice - but it at least made me do some things different! My core and right oblique felt way more taxed than usual, which I take to be a good sign.

Here are I think the throws where my lower body looks the best I think (upper body stuff was sloppy throughout, but I couldn't really focus too hard on it).






I tried to get some good putter forehands in, but they all came out super wobbly. Not sure what it is; I feel like I'm throwing them the same as drivers but every time I've tried to forehand a putter or mid they never come off clean. I tried to firm up my plant leg too, still a bit soft though.

 

[sidewinder22]

Looks pretty good. Turn your arm/disc wing up.

 

[sidewinder22]

Note how both my scapula's are contracted - shoulder blades pinching together - big chest arms out, and both of your shoulders are protracted and chest concave and arms in front. I've got the lower arm/disc lagged behind the elbow

The off arm needs to reach out and open up and then tuck in to help bring the rest of the body/arm/swing forward.

 

[Melonhusk]

I think I got a bit more comfortable with the new x-step, still feels like everything's moving too fast to control but I've read elsewhere that's sort of to be expected. As long as I focused on pumping the disc far in front of my body and keeping my "toes against the wall" it seemed like my balance kept improving.

Upper body still a bit of a mess though. I tried to get my disc flat at the top of the backswing, but it seems like I overcorrected and it wound up with the outside edge angled down? I was trying to go flat, to inside edge angled down as it came near to my body, like you see a lot of pros do and like you demonstrated in a video I can't remember the title of, but that just didn't happen.

Here's a downtempo one



And this one I was going all out. I think I maybe got a little leaned back here. It was pulled waayyyy to the right, which I can't see an obvious reason for? I was definitely trying to yank it over on anhyzer, so I know that didn't help.



No FH this time, really struggled to get my scapula's squeezed in a way that felt natural so they all looked the same. I did improve on the OAT though, I realized I was tensing my forearm instead of letting it lag behind my upper arm.

 

[sidewinder22]

Something with how you land on your left foot slows you down. You kind of step in your own way and retract the leg instead of landing more extended and out of the way on rear leg to glide/pivot easier into the plant.

Your first step with left foot isn't staggered closed enough, but turned back too far. Need to step across to closed your stance with foot more pointed targetward and allow the right foot free access to stride straight forward unimpeded.

 

[Melonhusk]

Ah, ok interesting. When you say my first step isn't staggered closed enough, do you mean "closed" in the sense of like left-right side of the teebox? Like my left foot needs to land more right side of the teebox to give each foot a clear lane towards the target? Or do you mean not closed enough in the horse stance sense of it?

I tried my hand at making one of those wireframe images, tried to capture the same spot in the x-step your two examples are in.

So I can see my balance is off in a similar way to your red example, and my right foot is turned even further back than your red example. My left foot does look to be turned back about as far as Eagle's? Maybe a hair farther back actually, because he's got it more vertical. I think I'm starting to see part of the issue here. Eagle's and my hips are at roughly the same point, but because he's got his balance such that his right heel is stacked under his center of mass, he can start crossing over much earlier than I can, and much more "underneath" himself. I have to reach forward with my left foot to cross over, which keeps my feet out in front of me and puts the brakes on like you were talking about. Is that getting warmer? Thanks for the help!

 

[Melonhusk]

Well, of course I had myself convinced yesterday that my toes were pointing basically parallel to the teepad, but on later review of the video there was...basically no difference. So that's something to work on still, but I'm noticing something else. I've been getting an elbow pain different from the pain caused by my injury - and I've noticed it seems to happen when my throws look a particular way. Here's an example:



What I mean by the title is that it seems as though the disc is getting to my left chest, and then my elbow is snapping open and the disc is released - rather than the disc traveling deep forward deep into the pocket before everything uncoils. This is all a total guess, but the reason it makes some sense to me is that the pain is almost like "elbow whiplash". Feels like one arm of the dingle arm is being yanked too early, instead of the energy transferring smoothly from handle to tip.

The main reason I think it's got something to do with current technique is I used to throw harder, and never had that pain. Here's a frame by frame of what my throws used to look like:

Doesn't look pretty, but it does look like I'm letting the disc travel a lot farther forward before it gets redirected outward.

Anyway, am I on to something here? And if so, what might I be doing wrong to make my arm do what it's doing?

Thanks as always!