I have a Tech Disc for 5 days

[Nick Carroll]

A friend let me borrow his Tech Disc, since mine is likely not coming in for weeks or months. I picked it up Monday morning. I bring it back Friday evening. So I have limited time to work with it. Given that I'm 52, my recovery is poor, and I'm already sore before starting - I'm having to make do with a limited number of throws per day.

Day 1: I decided I was just going to get baseline numbers, so I know what I'm working with. Unfortunately I played a bit of disc golf from last Thursday through Sunday, and Monday morning I played a round of disc golf with the person letting me borrow it. I drove by a field on the way home to see where I'm throwing in terms of real world distance. Max backhand distance was 230' in a headwind, 240' with a tailwind, and I could tell I was already sore as it was, so was probably limited to about 80% of my throwing power. Any attempt to get more than that, the disc would practically fall out of my hand. I didn't attempt forehand because it's normally around 200' anyways. I can throw a backhand over 300' but I have to be rested and not sore. This is just where I'm at.

So I knew going into the testing session on the first day would be brutal. I just threw into the net, not worry about anything other than successfully throwing the disc. I went standstill backhand first, then 3-step walk-up. That's all I had room for, and I recorded it all. That video won't come out until next week since there's a ton of footage. I'll be working on it this weekend. Here's a breakdown of the day 1 numbers. These are just baselines.

Backhand numbers
35.15 minimum speed
47.29 maximum speed

808.37 minimum spin
927.61 maximum spin

3.41 minimum nose
10.02 maximum nose

4.37 minimum wobble
9.41 maximum wobble

Forehand numbers
35.36 minimum speed
46.92 maximum speed

449.46 minimum spin
614.41 maximum spin

-5.09 minimum nose
5.11 maximum nose

4.26 minimum wobble
11.09 maximum wobble

Conclusions after 1 day:

The backhand and forehand speeds are about the same - surprisingly. I'm not a forehand guy ... at all.

The spin rate of the forehand is 66% or so of the backhand.

Forehand averages more wobble.

The wobble on the disc is typically bad. But some throws have relatively little wobble, which I didn't think I'd see from either. But it shows I am capable - every now and then - of reducing wobble to normal levels (about as low as most people can go, even the pros). Anyone who knows me, understands this is by far my most primary concern, since my wobble is an outlier in terms of just how bad it is.

I'll make a post for each day, summarizing my findings. The reason I'm posting here is there isn't apparently a Tech Disc forum or discord or any other place to discuss these sorts of findings. But this forum has basically the best and brightest in disc golf form knowledge, so maybe you guys can see things I can't. You certainly understand it as well as anyone.

Lastly I'll have a video detailing all this on my channel next week, where you can see how this goes in that format. Thank you.

Nick
youtube.com/nickcarroll

 

[Kennets]

Looking forward to the rest of your adventure buddy!

 

[Sheep]

Backhand numbers
35.15 minimum speed
47.29 maximum speed

808.37 minimum spin
927.61 maximum spin

3.41 minimum nose
10.02 maximum nose

Those are 250-300 foot speeds all day but you riding wheelies. Especially 10 degree's nose angle is real bad.
But 3-4 is gonna stall out 230-250.


And yeah, there is a lot of case with disc golf in general on shared resource area's.
But I've beat this dead horse so hard that it came back to life and now I just ride the horse.

 

[Nick Carroll]

Those are 250-300 foot speeds all day but you riding wheelies. Especially 10 degree's nose angle is real bad.
But 3-4 is gonna stall out 230-250.

Yeah the distances on all these were pretty terrible. I was just focused on keeping the disc landing in the net's hexagon, which is aiming a lot lower than I normally do, so a number of them were outright atrocious. And I felt like I was in a super tight space, and it messed up my walk-up a bit. I made some corrections on day 2, thankfully.

 

[sidewinder22]

Your lower body action isn't terrible, your upperbody definately needs work. You have zero right side bend during your throw, so your shoulder goes high and elbow drops down and into your body hugging yourself instead of swinging the shoulder/elbow outward centrifugally. You need to drop your shoulder down and keep your elbow further forward and shoulder more internally rotated so your elbow is higher. You are releasing with your hand/disc above your elbow instead of below.

 

[donatdiscs]

I can't wait for it to come down in price and production ramps up. One thing I love about disc golf is the amount of data I can collect with my different discs. Only bummer in my brain is not being able to have it on multiple discs to test against each other. Well you could with enough money I suppose lol.

 

[Nick Carroll]

Your lower body action isn't terrible, your upperbody definately needs work. You have zero right side bend during your throw, so your shoulder goes high and elbow drops down and into your body hugging yourself instead of swinging the shoulder/elbow outward centrifugally. You need to drop your shoulder down and keep your elbow further forward and shoulder more internally rotated so your elbow is higher. You are releasing with your hand/disc above your elbow instead of below.


View attachment 330012

Thank you! Yeah I'm working on this now. Unfortunately my wobble numbers are still high, but I think I can get my elbow up and out more. At this point I'm staring into the center of the Tech Disc as I'm throwing, to keep it on plane as much as possible.

 

[Sheep]

Your lower body action isn't terrible, your upperbody definately needs work. You have zero right side bend during your throw, so your shoulder goes high and elbow drops down and into your body hugging yourself instead of swinging the shoulder/elbow outward centrifugally. You need to drop your shoulder down and keep your elbow further forward and shoulder more internally rotated so your elbow is higher. You are releasing with your hand/disc above your elbow instead of below.


View attachment 330012

yeah, gotta keep that elbow up so it can push the arm out.

 

[Nick Carroll]

I wasn't planning on uploading directly to here for form review but I'll just show you a focused view of where I'm at now. Here's a throw with my 175g Star Cheetah. It went 230' (70m). I was throwing into a headwind, unfortunately, but I had to face that direction to get good lighting. Also this was Monday afternoon, on the way home with the Tech Disc that I borrowed. Lastly, I've played disc golf 5 days in a row (on vacation) so I'm pretty wiped out prior to throwing the Tech Disc for the first time. So the worst conditions for showing a throw, but here's what I was able to do:
View attachment 230 foot Cheetah throw for DGR.mp4

 

[Nick Carroll]

Here's the YouTube version if you want to use the . and , to see it frame by frame.

 

[Nick Carroll]

Day 2. There's been some improvements. I had a full day's rest, and while completely sore, I spent a lot of my free time thinking about what I wanted to change for the second set of tests. I also spent a lot more time throwing, and made a lot more throws with backhand and forehand.

Backhand
51.40 max speed
996.18 max spin
-3.54 lowest nose angle
1.87 least wobble

Forehand
48.26 max speed
623.16 max spin
-6.95 lowest nose angle
3.90 least wobble

I actually increased my backhand throwing speed by 4 mph, and forehand by almost 2 mph. Backhand spin rate went up by 70 rpm, although forehand spin rate went down a touch.

I also had several throws with much less wobble angle than my least wobbly throw on day 1, and probably for the first time in my life, had a negative nose angle on my backhand.

 

[Nick Carroll]

I'll summarize days 3-5 here. I raised my net a foot higher by placing it up on a curb, while I threw from the street. Essentially my side yard and my parking space along it. That helped a lot and made the launch angle relevant, because I was throwing up a lot more often, and the distance simulations were more valid.

I was also able to hit my best numbers by day 5, showing a progression despite being somewhat sore all week. I'll wrap up with some interesting stats.

607 Throws
388 Backhand
219 Forehand

Fastest backhand throw: 53.70
Highest backhand spin: 996.18
Lowest backhand nose: -3.54
Least backhand wobble: 1.46
Longest backhand distance: 245

Fastest forehand throw: 51.29
Highest forehand spin: 623.16
Lowest forehand nose: -9.73
Least forehand wobble: 2.82
Longest forehand distance: 227

The only metric that didn't improve from the marathon session I had on day 2 was the spin rates, though I got really close today.

Anyhow, that's going to do it. This series comes out next week. Thank you for reading!

 

[sidewinder22]

Here's the YouTube version if you want to use the . and , to see it frame by frame.

Your shoulder motion is all jacked up/strong arming, from behind tee view going into power pocket it's moving left/west to right/east, instead of swinging out wider right/east to left/west. You need to load your swing back deeper/east/right Inside posture and swing your shoulder freely more like a battering ram.


And swing your shoulder forward over your knee.

 

[Nick Carroll]

Thank you! I'll look at this tomorrow morning. Happy holidays!

 

[Cashley56]

I think, in real life, your best numbers for the backhand would easily translate to over 300'. Maybe close to 350'. (The TechDisc simulator is notorious for giving lower than real life numbers for most people.) While I think "best" numbers are important to show the top end of what you can currently achieve, I think your numbers for your average throw after you are warmed up are probably more important. I like to do 20-40 throws a day and make a set out of all the days' throws (excluding my warmup throws), so I can compared my averages from day to day, as well as track my all time best stats.

 

[Nick Carroll]

Yeah right now the maximum number of throws you can put into a "throw set" is 30 so I think it's best to warm up without the Tech Disc, and then when you're ready to start testing, that's when it should be used. I made a lot of throws with it that were basically warm ups that added to the stats for no reason.