Elephant Walk Drill

[sidewinder22]

Some talk about Kyle Berkshire Monster Walk, and throwing/heaving the swing/pump forward before the backswing and throwing into the backswing away from target.

 

[sidewinder22]

Barry Schultz

 

[azplaya25]

I'd love to see your elephant walk.

There may be some variance, I think Paige starts bracing harder on the toes which breaks the elbow a little earlier/quicker. I don't see Paul's elbow start breaking until his heel plants at least on longer shots.

Swing don't Pull. You should get pulled by the swing. The "elbow is always forward" unless you let your upper arm/shoulder collapse. The arm may start dropping before the plant as long as there is no effort before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1pkfJtVq-8#t=4m6s

This is difference between a lot of ams and pros going toe to heel:

This idea of swinging instead of pulling is really hard to get a feel for, especially if you have built up muscle memory to pull really hard across your chest like a lot of people have. Best way to fix it is to put away the discs and just throw a hammer for days/weeks/months, however long it takes. Hammer claw will punish you and your torso if you try to pull it really hard across your chest lol

 

[sidewinder22]

 

[sidewinder22]

 

[crd 81]

Something that stood out to me was the melodic nature of how Dr. Kwon was saying "shift" and "turn". Might help thinking that way in the disc golf throw.

 

[bryantlikes]

Thanks for that video, found some stuff that I think is useful.

1) The part where he says if you don't turn your shoulders enough, then the arms will reach back too much. Seems like this would apply to the reach back for disc golf in the same way?

2) That last part at the very end where he explains pushing the ground vs turning the hips seemed like an ah-ha moment for me. When I tried this pushing instead of turning it made more sense to me.

 

[FulaFirren]

Something that stood out to me was the melodic nature of how Dr. Kwon was saying "shift" and "turn". Might help thinking that way in the disc golf throw.

I very much agree with the cadence of "step->turn->step->turn". A very, very common problem is the "step+turn -> step+turn" cadence. It ruins the whip by moving everything at the same time. This is why sometimes I don't like using the term swing (especially the idea of swinging from a position with the arm behind you) because it can easily be interpreted as the latter cadence, by someone that doesn't know. But then there are different ways of throwing (although with the same sort of timing and energy transfer). People like Emerson Keith or Scott Stokely swing from behind them with sort of a bent arm, while the likes of Anthony Barela, McBeth and Jordan Castro use the whip reachback "in->out-in-out" whip motion. But this is probably the topic of another thread entirely

Anyway, I tried to address this in a post last year, if something clicked in that video, maybe it's worth a read: https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3749213&postcount=10

 

[RFrance]

Interesting to see Dr. Kwon teach a group to do the Elephant walk and Shift and turn. I know I can see myself in the group thinking I know how it's done but still getting it wrong.
It takes lots of practice but is fundamental.

Skip to 1:35 to get to the teaching.

 

[azplaya25]

Pretty interesting way of doing the elephant walk. Fanning the teepad off with the disc. Might be a nice little pre shot routine…

 

[Sard0nyx]

I know that he is shifting his weight in the standstill, but it totally looks like he is doing what many consider to be rounding with his upper body. His elbow doesn't hinge and he pulls the disc back behind him and then he swings around his front leg. Can you shed some light on this?

 

[bryantlikes]

I know that he is shifting his weight in the standstill, but it totally looks like he is doing what many consider to be rounding with his upper body. His elbow doesn't hinge and he pulls the disc back behind him and then he swings around his front leg. Can you shed some light on this?

Play it at 0.25 speed.

 

[Lastchancer88]

I know that he is shifting his weight in the standstill, but it totally looks like he is doing what many consider to be rounding with his upper body. His elbow doesn't hinge and he pulls the disc back behind him and then he swings around his front leg. Can you shed some light on this?

The disc goes behind his body because his shoulders rotate further back than most. He maintains a >90 degree upper arm/shoulder angle. I would not consider him to be hugging himself or rounding because of those factors. I would also say while his elbow doesn't hinge as much, it definitely hinges some, (might be the coat hiding some of it).

 

[sidewinder22]

I know that he is shifting his weight in the standstill, but it totally looks like he is doing what many consider to be rounding with his upper body. His elbow doesn't hinge and he pulls the disc back behind him and then he swings around his front leg. Can you shed some light on this?

"Rounding" only happens when the upper arm collapses against the chest and the disc has to swing around the left shoulder and your center.

Note how much further everyone has their shoulders turned back from the "rounder" on the top left. So their upper arm angle remains wide from the chest and disc swings inward into chest/center without the left shoulder in the way and then redirects swinging back out away from center. They are also swinging leftward for a distance shot, so the trajectory is not completely down the line from the camera.

 

[ThrowaEnvy]

How the heck did it look like this got bumped... I don't know how I ended up here. Timely.

Nod to the God's.

 

[semisensei]

SW22, when you are moving through your x-step, how do you think about timing your forward pump? What strikes me as interesting about it when compared to the Elephant Walk drill is that the disc/foot connection seems to be reversed:
-In EW drill, as the disc swings toward target, weight is on the right foot (RHBH), as it backswings, weight is on left foot.
-In your actual throwing motion, the EW drill seems to be reversed into the X-step: you pump disc forward (way forward!) as you push off the back foot, and the disc arm begins the backswing as your front foot is weighted. Your pendulum arm is at the apex of the downswing (pointing straight down) as your weight transfers to the left foot in the X-step, and at this point it lines up with the EW drill: backswing completes with weight over the drive/back/left leg, disc pauses at the top (nod to the gods) as weight shifts to brace leg, then kaboom.

Other pros seem to do a pump that seems more inline with the EW rhythm: pumping forward while over right foot, back over left. McBeth, Williams, Feldberg. I remember reading that you initially emulated Feldberg's swing to learn the pendulum timing. What lead you to switch things up?

 

[sidewinder22]

Other pros seem to do a pump that seems more inline with the EW rhythm: pumping forward while over right foot, back over left. McBeth, Williams, Feldberg. I remember reading that you initially emulated Feldberg's swing to learn the pendulum timing. What lead you to switch things up?

The sequence going into the x-step is the same here, Dave is just more forward facing and taking a larger first step which affects the speed/timing somewhat.

Line is on left knee. Disc is wide-narrow-wide.

 

[semisensei]

I think I might still be confused - if you would continue the sequences a few more frames, I believe Feldberg's disc would keep pumping forward while leveraged over his right foot, while your disc is already at the top of the pump here in the third frame. Put another way, in Feldberg's third frame here, is disc is only beginning to accelerate forward (in relation to his CoG), while in your third frame, the disc is decelerating.

Put yet another way, it looks like Feldberg's Elephant Walk drill rhythm begins with a forward pump while his weight is leveraged on the right foot and his left foot is crossing behind through the x-step. Your forward pump seems earlier, leveraged off the left foot, so that your true EW drill rhythm (in terms of backswing on left foot, downswing on right foot) doesn't seem to begin until you're already through the x-step, and you backswing with weight on your left foot through the stride.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but the pumps look very different to me. And I'm curious what the intentions behind such differences might have been.

 

[sidewinder22]

I think the difference is I pump all the way thru the hit/impact to the release point, while Dave pumps to the hit/impact point.
Dave is also making a more rhymic and lateral move while I'm too rotational.

First frame is the completion of the full pump to target, the disc has ceased its forward acceleration relative to target and trailing foot( right foot here) is leaving ground.

 

[Brychanus]

I think the difference is I pump all the way thru the hit/impact to the release point, while Dave pumps to the hit/impact point.
Dave is also making a more rhymic and lateral move while I'm too rotational.

First frame is the completion of the full pump to target, the disc has ceased its forward acceleration relative to target and trailing foot( right foot here) is leaving ground.

I inevitably got too curious about this and tinkered a bit in slow drills trying to emulate your 5-step setup from 2013 or your recent Agape round (looked awesome btw!!!) to see what I could learn. It was significantly easier to play with after you got my pump and calf back in better shape.

I was trying to figure out if you actually have a different ground force or leverage process in your pump. It seems possible that you have more pressure on the rear foot than Dave does as your pump initiates and there were a couple little implications, and context as you are noting seems to matter. Let me try to show what I'm seeing/tinkered with.

Top line: Keeping in mind observed actions follow the forces, this is the moment where we see each of you exhibit some forward motion flowing through the arm to the disc (top). Both of you have some pressure or all of the pressure on the rear foot, though accounting for Dave's aggressive forward posture he's about to get onto that leading foot "earlier" than you. I think both of you are letting gravity accelerate the pump out.

Middle line: Dave is fully planted on that front foot as he continues the pump toward the release point, leveraging it like his throw. You are about to plant a few frames later but I notice the posture differences at this moment.

Bottom line: Dave reaches the full pump, which I think carries him through the release point similar to yours but as you noted lacking the full wrist pump action you have, at which point your vertical sync becomes almost indistinguishable.

Just to add to the discussion, I'm pretty sure that if there's any real distinction there, your move from the step before the x-step actually contributes to getting the weight shift to be even more abrupt and faster targetward, which seems to help explain the difference in the trailing leg trajectory into followthrough. It did seem slightly more likely that I'd go into a "too rotational" move that looks a little more emphasis on the buttwipey part like yours, but it also reduced the chances I would lean away/get stuck kind of like when I mess with the crow hop. Also not sure it's guaranteed to not be "lateral enough," would have to play around a little more.

Yours does also remind me a little of Isaac Robinson's move or Silas Schultz as semisensei mentioned elsewhere. I think on Robinson's mechanics thread I speculated there was an inefficiency there. I think I'd revise that thought that it's just a way to get the weight into the plant, and it's actually pretty quick and can lead to very powerful and quick compression (which I think we clearly see in Robinson). I think it depends on what else is going on whether tradeoffs apply. Moral may be there are a few ways to win there.

FWIW somehow tinkering in this space also made it a little more clear to my body that I could pull off a lateral move with a little less stress on the drive leg and a little less leaning away that I could immediately bring back into the 3 step you know I'm working on.

SW, I would be curious what (if anything) you've found over time messing with the rhythmicity and lateral/rotational tradeoffs since 2013. I think your Agape and other recent rounds looked pretty similar mechanically but more compact.