Learning Lefty

[Melonhusk]

Gotcha, yeah I think next time I'm definitely going to have to try starting my right arm closer to my body and making that motion more compact. Also focusing on the counter movement, not only the forward movement. It's interesting to me how the off arm form seems more difficult to get a hang of than the throwing arm form. Maybe it's just because it's instinctively second in my mind's focus to the arm that's actually releasing the disc, but even with my right handed throws that's one of the main things I struggle with doing consistently and well.

I guess maybe the off arm has a trickier role than the "throwing" arm, being the off arm has to help initiate the throw, and the throwing arm is more along for the ride (in some ways).

Anyway, thanks!

 

[sidewinder22]

I think it's only "trickier" because it's often being used wrong to help try and rotate back away, instead of rotating from the hips, or being used to counter balance an out-of-balance condition.

 

[Melonhusk]

The "ripping a phone book" analogy really helped get my whole posture working a little better, and was illuminating in general. I occasionally got the right feel for that move right handed, but without knowing why - thinking the motion with the other arm/shoulder was more forward and down instead of backwards. The swim move makes sense! You swim forward by paddling the water backward. One of those things you just have to feel to understand I guess, or at least I did.



Here's the latest video, I got a bit closed off here for some reason but posture overall I think improved. Maybe I'm rounding? I don't know that I really get into the power pocket here, at least my arm doesn't seem to bend hardly, but my shoulder also doesn't appear to be too far behind the rotation of my torso so I'm not sure.

I also played around with the DFP grip as discussed here: https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showthread.php?t=121557
and that's what I used for this shot. I definitely noticed the disc leap out of my hand faster than with my typical fan/pinch grip on those times that I really felt my thumb and forefinger engage, but on those shots I also had a hard time keeping it from coming out nose up high trajectory hyzer. Not "turning the key" fast enough?

Thanks!

 

[Melonhusk]

I think I may be steadily getting worse at this, but the reason is I'm starting to realize how much my entire concept of how to throw needed to change, even for right handed throws. I don't think now that right or left handed I ever really had the feeling of whipping my throwing arm instead of yanking my shoulder, and wow is that proving a difficult mental and physical shift. I'm basically having to relearn how to throw a disc! For what feels like the third or fourth time! Anyway, here's some video:


This one I focused on my off arm, and my left arm got out of whack

Same here

Here I focused on whipping the disc, and though my off arm was the one that got wonky this time the disc did get very heavy leaving my hand, and for what it's worth I got that audible snap. Looks like it all happened a bit late though, and it went about 90º left of target.

It's taken hours of slow practice with no disc in front of a mirror to figure out how to move my body so that my arm shoots forward into the power pocket and whips out in front without hunching my shoulder up or yanking it back, but I think I'm finally getting the sense that a crucial part of it is getting that off arm forward early, is that right? It feels like when I swim the off arm forward my torso sort of rotates just enough that I get into that power pocket position with no front shoulder effort, with off arm tucked to the side and body facing perpendicular to the target, and then once I'm there with front elbow forward, swimming the off arm back and pushing with the lead leg against the lateral shift facilitates whipping the disc forward towards release. Is that accurate enough? I can get a feel for that in front of a mirror, less so on real throws.

 

[sidewinder22]

Your description sounds correct. I would just focus on keeping the rear arm in just like holding a beverage. Your rear arm is spilling the beverage or pouring it out. Get your palm to face your stomach, not away from it.

 

[Melonhusk]

Thanks for the vid! I've never really understood this drill I have to say, but I think maybe I'm sort of seeing it: the goal is mainly to keep my arm tucked like you said and then also thumb pointing up, right? Is that what keeping the beverage unspilled is? I just went and looked at a bunch of pros' off arms, and all the ones I saw who bend their rear arms at some point did have their thumbs up like you show. They go thumbs facing in at a point, but only when the disc is being released as far as I can tell, whereas my thumbs are in the whole time. Doing this slow I can feel that there is a difference in how this affects my body positioning - but if you wouldn't mind elaborating, what is the difference and what's the significance of it?

 

[sidewinder22]

If you think your rear arm/hand as the handle of the whip and the lead arm/hand/disc as the tip of the whip, one thing affects the other down the line or chain.

If your rear arm is turned out, you can't really catch the water in front of you first to swim/whip the rest forward. You will thrash around and drown instead.

Keeping the rear arm folded in/thumb up also keeps your mass in tighter to your center and will rotate faster than if the arm is out and behind you. I think it also helps engage your core/oblique sling from rear shoulder to lead hip.

 

[Melonhusk]

Yes, ok I see how having my thumb up or palm in really increases leverage when it's time to swim forward. Thanks!

I got out there after work for some more attempts, kept struggling with keeping my throwing arm relaxed but also elbow forward, which meant a bunch of rounding which meant either low power early releases,



or epic griplocks.



However! I was watching your swing drills video and I think it made something click - I recorded some dry swings here:



Does this look better? My swing feel for these was swinging "vertically", like I was trying to hit a golf ball on the ground. Felt like setting up for a spike hyzer, but watching it back, it looks like if I had released the disc it would probably just be on a slight hyzer release, right? Doing this it finally made sense, how to get my elbow forward while staying relaxed.

Looking back on the videos of my throws it looks to me now like I was set up more for flat to anhyzer, that's probably partly why every time I got a hold of one it throllered.

 

[sidewinder22]

Yeah, your arm swing looks better in the last one. Your body is still a little over top the front leg. Tilt your head back on front leg, so right ear is toward the ground and chin leads nose forward, so your head is balanced dynamically on front leg axis.

Need to fix your grip/disc alignment. And pull your shoulders further back striding forward - door frame drills. Left shoulder should be pulled back behind your chin.
https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showpost.php?p=3440757&postcount=4

 

[Melonhusk]

To switch things up I thought I'd try just kind of throwing the disc on a straight line towards the target. I know that's not really how it goes, but I feel like really I was getting my body all mixed up overthinking every aspect of the swing and the redirection and all that. Tried to get a bit more intuitive with it. I think it got me somewhere! Much more relaxed here, and I think getting more momentum moving laterally got the disc deeper into the pocket, so my shoulders rotated open as needed rather than trying to forcefully rotate too early.



I also tried keeping my feet a bit wider so I could stay more inside my posture, and getting the nose down more in the grip. Seems like I still struggled with that a bit, I'm trying to mess around with that DFP grip still and it feels harder to get the nose down with the wrist. I'm also probably not gripping like I need to with my fingers at the end.

I tried to get my shoulders turned more, but having a bit of trouble! Combination of starting to come around before my foot lands and lack of flexibility to that side I think.

 

[sidewinder22]

You have everything moving forward together too much in the stride instead of creating more separation with forward stride and backswing still going back away. You are planting with the disc almost already in the power pocket instead of being at the top of the backswing.

 

[Melonhusk]

Yeah, I definitely see that. Thanks for all the videos! Completing a full backswing has been really hard on my left side for some reason, I expect more doorframe drills and flexibility there will help.

 

[Melonhusk]

Alright, I've done some hacking away at the not reaching back far enough problem and it's...not perfect. But better I think? I was able to throw a bunch this weekend and noticed a few things.



This was my first throw of the day, included partly just to show the little pre throw routine. I'm reeeally trying to keep my throwing shoulder down, which is a problem that goes back to even when I was throwing decently rhbh (pictured)

and one that's really baffled me for a long time, but I think I'm finally seeing how to avoid it. I think it's definitely worse when I get my weight back and don't plant soon enough, or start coming through too soon. I also notice sometimes I do this weird thing:



where my lead shoulder sort of yanks up and back and around my body in what looks to me like an upward spiral type motion. Even when I start on a hyzer angle like in this video this bad habit usually also pulls my torso onto a more flat or even anhyzer orientation. Anyway, this seems to be sort of my default right now, and I think that upwards yank of the shoulder also contributes.

I think these two:





were probably the highlights of the day, though that first one it seems like my arm didn't get to full extension really? And the second one had a weird low release, but I did at least manage to get my rear arm tucked behind me. Not sure why both of those felt so underwhelming - they look decent to me but neither throw gave me that lightbulb feeling where they really ripped out of my hand, so something clearly still wasn't working. At the end of everything I tried a little x step and got a mid out to 260 though, which is a lefty personal best, so some progress was made!

 

[sidewinder22]

Last one looked by far the best. Tuck rear arm in front of your body, not behind it. First one was way too static starting, need to keep moving and swinging back and forth more setting up.

Your rear shoulder needs to come in underneath front shoulder.

The first part of any kind of Swim Move is that the trail arm moves or reaches forward in front of the body, so it can then pull the body/swing forward.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mpp7ZFLHK90#t=9m40s
https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showthread.php?t=124523

 

[Melonhusk]

Ok good to know, I thought it looked better but hard to say with how the disc came out of my hand. Maybe a grip issue or something.

Ah yeah, those diagrams make that concept really clear. As to the swim move/off arm stuff I keep changing my mind on whether or not it needs to be the main focus, as I constantly put out fires in different places. When I don't actively focus on it it gets really bad, like no tuck at all, and when I sort of half focus on it I get stuff like in that last video where I tuck it but in odd places. Given I can only really focus on one swing thought at a time, do you think it should be that right now? At the expense of keeping my front shoulder down?

Thanks for the one leg drill link, it occurs to me that the way you demonstrate "keeping your shoulder closed" is really what I've been trying to do with, as I've been saying, "keeping my shoulder down". When I yank my shoulder up and around that's flying open too early, and that's one of the main problems, isn't it? You've told me to keep my shoulder closed a million times, apparently it takes a while for these things to sink in

I wanted to circle back to your rear shoulder underneath the front shoulder comment last to make sure I understand: do you mean that in the way where if your torso is tilted to throw on a hyzer angle, your rear shoulder will start higher off the ground than your front shoulder, but then they will exchange places as the shoulders rotate around? Or do you mean something more specifically about the way the swim move works?

Thanks again!

 

[sidewinder22]

Focus on rear arm in.

Exchange shoulders - tilted spiral.

 

[Melonhusk]

More off-topic golf content:





Swing felt easy and heavy at the bottom, and the few times I actually made solid contact they were smoked, but man out of 75 balls I maybe got close to squaring up 2. Most of the time they were either whiffs, badly topped, or like these two, sort of squibbed off to the right. Any good Shawn Clement videos for that?

 

[sidewinder22]