Can someone draw lines for Tamms 710' drive? Cause some of it doesn't make sense. I mean it looks like he has anterior pelvic tilt here and he seems behind his plant for post of the time.
View attachment 335530View attachment 335531
Sidewinder obviously deeply influenced everything I learned and think about form, but I would in any case say I have good reason to agree w/ him and strongly encourage you to start thinking about the core, shoulder, and arm as one big postural unit.
Watch Eagle and follow the trajectory the shoulder takes relative to the rest of his upper body and core. Yes, there are circumstances where you will benefit from additionally manipulating the arm. However, I think a lot/most players get into a lot of trouble by missing the idea that there is a huge force chain from the feet up to both shoulders, and that the arm is "towed" by the shoulder in the most powerful moves. That's what "pulling/swinging", golf, baseball, pitching, etc. have in common. It's why I needed so many drill and "athletic" movement aids to learn - because I was always decoupling my arm from something else and especially my lower body moving sideways. Disc-golf-neil is deep into this now and I would never disagree that you can do things with your arm independently - I just try to teach him to look for the postural context of the arm to help understand where the power comes from. If you put too much emphasis on the arm, you risk not learning how the rest of the force chain and posture contribute to the efficient power move.
Wanted to orient you back to your Tamm question. Pay the most attention to spine & tilt in transition from the x-step landing and the transition to the plant. Look at the lumber region: looks fairly neutral here to me. You will see
some variability and some people are a bit more in spine flexion than this. I would not go into any more spine extension than Tamm here because it would cause problems.
You should ignore this for now and listen to SW, but I wanted to pay forward something that just blew my mind and now I cannot 'unsee' it.
"Behind his plant": well, I would say I'm still learning the most about this specific topic myself right now but let me try this out on you. Tamm's move has bothered me for a long time because I couldn't understand his X-step completely, but I might understand it better today. I think I would say in general to be wary of copying his move specifically due to the following (his move is
awesome, I'm talking more from a learning perspective because it's actually pretty sophisticated and I'm not sure it's the best for everyone):
Keep in mind that Tamm is landing in the "braced tilt" in his plant that we tend to talk about around here. That's what you want.
But how do we understand what you perceive as a lean away in transition into the X-step? I would agree it's a form of lean, but what I am trying to get you to see is the difference between
balance and the overall angle of his body.
This is IMO one of the weirdest things to understand because (1) it
does vary across pros somewhat in transition up to and thru the X-step and (2) what they have in common has to do with balance but it's very easy to misperceive
if you haven't felt it. I literally had one of the biggest flashes of insight just today, but it was only when I got my body to access my Waltz muscle memory for the first time in the context of the move. It functions almost exactly the same (with less spine extension/
more "athletic" posture). You need to understand where
balance is, not just where the body appears to be. The balance is the blue line. That is what
Steve Pratt or
intermediate-advanced dancers teach and what SW was getting at earlier.
I want you to notice this step before the drive step and really try to understand its function. One thing that is always true is that viewing the same move in different camera angles can yield a different impression, and part of it is about how each person's weight shift works. E.g., if I look at Simon or eagle at true 90 degrees, it's easy to miss that their fundamental balance, but that has to do with some details of their bodies and how they shift their weight and balance (I think Simon's is still the most sophisticated move I've ever seen).
Tamm's move might be working well because he's still got a version of this balance in the step before the X-step (though I would agree if you pointed out that it is less pronounced & notice how tall he gets on the rear leg in transition from the step before the X-step to the X-step), but the mechanics of the move makes it very easy to miss, and part of what's very sophisticated about his move is that his balance goes more into his X-step
as he x-steps. He has a version of the balance SW & I are trying to illustrate where he is doing his waltz move/"box step" and then carrying that through to rise his momentum into the x-step. Keep in mind that you can actually balance this way like Tamm even if you've got your upper body postured back like his - it's like moving very deeply into a waltz box step - I can barely do it personally and probably his body type helps there, & it's possible for some people. If you instead try to transition this way with the balance already on the front/plant leg, you will almost certainly tip over.
I might be wrong about this re: Tamm, but after today it seems more likely true than false. I am open to other interpretations or differences in opinion/curious what SW sees and thinks.