Corrections to avoid elbow pain

[Mongoose40]

My throws have been pretty anemic. I'm a bigger guy - 6'2" and in the 240's. I've always been pretty strong and have had good power in most sports, i.e. I can hit a baseball far, I drive a golf ball far, throw hard, etc. But I've noticed that in disc golf I'm being out driven by just about everyone, and my sub 200 foot throws are resulting in elbow pain almost immediately.

Like golf, I realize that disc golf is form over strength. Swinging the golf club as hard as I can normally results in a weaker drive - swinging it correctly results in a longer one. So clearly this is a form issue.

Has anyone experienced a combination of short throws and elbow pain? If so, how did you fix it?

 

[BillFleming]

I'm currently seeing a soft-tissue specialist to recover from an arm injury. I hurt my arm while trying to over compensate/correct my throws. Currently, if I throw a backhand upshot, my arm hurts and my fingers go numb. What I've learned is to not force the disc. Slow is smooth, smooth is far. Also, I am accepting that I'm not going to throw it as far as other players...I'm not a pro, my form isn't great, and I'm older. So, I'm happy with the distance I do get....I need to focus on accuracy instead.

But to avoid getting injured? The one thing I've seen with disc golf (and ball golf when I played it) is the lack of warming up. When you come to bat in baseball, you don't just grab a bat and step up to plate....you swing it a few times and frequently use a weight with the practice swings....a few easy swings and a few full speed swings...and then up to bat.

With disc golf, we need to stretch (and that doesn't mean just grab a disc and practice putting)....Disc Golf Strong has some videos for stretching and also an app. But even that doesn't go far enough....we should be throwing shots in a field before play. I've talked to pros at tournaments and a lot of them throw in a field starting with putters and moving up to drivers...they don't start with full out driver throws. But us amateurs do....we get to the first tee box, pull out our distance driver and throw as hard as we can. If we don't get in some warm up throws....we should start with a midrange off the first tee and work up to a driver....yeah, might not get loads of distance off the tee, but our arms will last longer.

 

[flatflip]

Hard to say without seeing your technique but the general strategy is to pretend that you are actually throwing something heavy -- this will help cue your body to get into the most efficient positions.

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/bogeypro-golf-the-bag-toss

 

[Skervoy]

Keeping the arm out rather than back in reach back has really helped me not strong arming throws. You kind of need the disc to come in to the power pocket instead of through.

Reaching to much back and behind causes rounding and to get distance you need to strong arm it.

But without a clip it is hard to give specific advice

 

[dmoore1998]

I'm a big guy, 6'6", 230...took up disc golf again this year after having not plaid for a decade or two. First thing I noticed was elbow pain. Best advice for me (besides detailed advice on my throwing form videos) was to keep my upper body and upper arm at a 90 degree angle. Let my lower arm trail without any real intent to movement...then just turn my hips, let my upper body/upper arm follow, and lower arm drag behind. It's hard to have elbow soreness if your elbow just swings freely all the time.

The throw is basically just hip movement, locking your upper arm to your chest at 90 degrees, and letting that hip movement drive every other movement naturally when it has no choice but to move. The quicker you do that, the better your form can get in a hurry, because you can get more reps in without having elbow soreness (as an example, when I first started, it was hard to practice good form, because I was still using my arm, which meant I could only throw a few times before it hurt).

 

[TiltedFlipCurves]

Well my super anemic throws at least cause zero pain (tripping over stuff on/off the course, on the other hand...) but roll 12d20 for distance and 4d20 minus 40 for angle deviation from where I'm aiming

Also I really don't try to throw "as hard as I can" because I *will* hurt myself probably and the direction will be even more random and the distance won't actually probably improve. This is probably the key. Wonder if my arm ever actually straightens out on drives.

But close to quitting because see above and not getting better and therefore not fun. :|

 

[BillFleming]

4d20 minus 40 for angle deviation from where I'm aiming

Something I recently learned is I've been aiming wrong. Before I hurt my arm, I was practicing an island hole....I keep coming up short on that and, while I know the basket isn't in my range, the island is achievable. I thought about it a while.....and realized I was aiming wrong. I was aiming at the basket....well, gravity sucks and if I aim at the basket, gravity is going to take over before the disc gets there. So I tried aiming higher, which really bugged me because - keep the nose down can't happen when you throw higher. Well, as it was explained to me....it's nose down on the angle being thrown. When I aimed higher and kept the nose down on the angle I was throwing, my disc was landing in the island. It improved a LOT of my throws.

 

[Horsman]

Proper warm up and daily body work goes a long way. This year I suffered from some bad tennis elbow for the first time in a decade. Could get thru 9 holes without being in pain. I started to add more into my warm up and started to mobilize every night and within a week the issue was gone and I've been pain free since. Voodoo floss on the forearm, elbow and tri helped the most for me. Otherwise just simple upper body stretches helped a lot. Key is that you need to be diligent about not taking a day off of stretching.

Theres a book by Kelly Starrett called "Becoming a supple leopard" that helped me a lot with any little nagging injuries or discomfort that I have.