Yeah. I think I'm having trouble getting the slings fully involved. I can feel them though indoors and practicing stuff. When I actually throw, it's hard to coil enough while moving down the teepad. I can feel the coiling by sort of walking in place and rotating my hips and upper body naturally. But I'm having a hard time figuring out how to incorporate into an x-step. Any tips?
Also, plant leg I'm seeing that maybe it helps when my weight is more east on the teepad instead of West. I feel more like I can drop into it more from "behind". It almost feels like I'm planting backwards when I do that. Haven't been able to put it into a throw yet but wanted to see if I'm on the right track.
Let me know how I can throw like a lumberjack haha. Unless it means getting a sledgehammer and throwing it around. I think I only have a hammer lying around.
Throw it like a lumberjack: get whatever stuff you can and start heaving it in athletic posture, baby. All the time.
IMHO this is a weeks/months long project, but because I know a bit about your goals I'll summarize what I'd probably be working on based on what I see. In baseball, Paul Nyman, talks about "throwers and pitchers." He points out that lefties can often get away with "pitching, but not throwing" because they throw fast enough that their stuff is competitive, but it's also because they're throwing from the "wrong" side from the batter's perspective, which is always an advantage. Lefties can get away with more mechanical slop as a result (this is less true in 2023, but still somewhat true). Righties need to be
throwers because they generally need absurd velocity to compete at the top, which means they need pretty outstanding initial advantages plus mechanics. Dirty industry "secret": coaches often talk about the fact that it's very rare to create
throwers with coaching, and instead they are using college and Minor leagues to pre-select the
throwers, and then turn them into
pitchers. I think many disc golf amateurs are
golfers, but most of them are not
throwers. From what I know of you, you want to learn to be a thrower, and if you're not one, I think you need to attack it with hard work programmatically (IMHO, FWIW, etc.):
1. X-step + learning to throw - watching your form, I do think you are starting to "counter-rotate" your upper body back while you are shifting forward, but I don't think your body is in the ideal posture to get fully "pulled taut" more or less directly away from the target. So the sequence is off and your body is in the way, which you know. There's still some slack in your arm and lower body. That's what the Door Frame Drill is really good at sussing out, but most people have things going on that block it from working at first. Flashblastx was onto something when he once told me "it's basically the entire throw."
But even if you learn to drill and golf, I think you are here to learn to
throw. I think the 3 most influential helpers in my own case were medicine ball, sledgehammer*, and full pendulum throws (elephant walk, then taking it sideways like Hammer X) walking thru x-step, but I should say why I think that would benefit you as bridges between drills and disc throws. You can also do it with one armed with dumbells (more in 3 below). The problem (IMO) I'm realizing for many people is that they just
haven't learned to throw much of anything with significant force in the backhand direction. And one of the big problems, like you were mentioning above, is you really need to get comfortable with a
lot of compression going into that rear leg in the backswing (I don't know what the force measure would be at the backswing peak, but I think it would be quick and very high) and getting pulled taut athletically but loose at the same time you are dropping relaxed into the plant. Baseball and golf people tend to get that part faster than others. I literally needed to "heave it like a lumberjack" hundreds of times before my body started doing it automatically, then I started walking it out into a shuffle step and then x-step with high loads.
I'm just bringing all of this up to you because I think you lack that coil and rear leg loading working together. Not everyone needs the heavy weight work but I definitely did. Otherwise I would just get too rigid somewhere and tense up, or drift back into the "flatter" mechanics, or not backswing or shift aggressively enough. From there, recently I've had more success playing with quicker shifts out of the backswing, which is where more "easy" release velocity can be found as you keep tweaking things.**
I think people often still have trouble nailing the coil with one arm + light disc with the feet moving, which is where exaggerating bits with Load the Bow has been very helpful. I'm noticing that even pretty healthy young people sometimes have trouble getting fully coiled against the frame at first as they "shift from behind." So door frame drill can test/help with that.
2.
Plant leg stride + shift from behind, yeah sounds like the right feeling. I think there are things to tweak in your strides to fix your balance, but I worry you might always be fighting your own body if you don't connect it to the coil/core loading posture. So that's why I nudged you that way first.
3. *If you toss a dumbell, should feel like you are "throwing your thumb" at the target. I think your arm kinetics have improved but you have a bit to gain here.
*Sledgehammer was the best $40 I've ever spent for form development other than paying my coach. Not a "quick" fix, but excellent body feedback for some issues especially as a lifelong strong-armer.
**I'm sorry to be so opinionated my friend, but if the last ~3 months has taught me anything, it is that throwing far is
definitely an athletically demanding activity, and if you didn't grow up a thrower and have high goals, it takes patience. You need to get your body moving better just to have access to pushing your consistency/distance peak. And you need to keep in mind that whatever body adaptation you require lags that. You can do it!
