Need Form check & Analysis please

[Brychanus]

I'm not a big fan of a crow hop but I'm not saying no to that idea. I feel a bit of loss in accuracy and crow hopping for small upshots isn't ideal either. I'm trying to keep the style that I like the most and is comfortable for me and provides the accuracy I like. All I want to do is some minor adjustments and get the lower body to work. Since lower back injury healing takes a long time, I will probably need to rest for 2-3 weeks more and only use forehand. I can do drills a little bit but once I start feeling a pain, I stop.

I have a good excuse to practice forehands which is not hurting my lower back. This also gives me time to figure out my forehand style and get rid of any unnecessary movements that I may have for better accuracy. I don't have a lot of distance in forehand and I don't think I can get any more either without destroying my elbow

Overall, it's going to take a bit longer than expected most likely to get back to the 100% feeling. The recovery is going good and can do drills. That's all

You will need that back for a long time

I think people often misunderstand what the point of looking at vertical x-step is or that it's somehow mechanically distinct from people who look like they're striding. I'll explain. Think of it as someone like Lizotte's horizontal form as a hop but stretched wide along the ground. So basically whether you're vertical or horizontal, you want that kind of mechanic working for you. There's a reason Simon could smash in both vertical and horizontal form. He took that power from the vertical hop and figured out how to stretch it horizontal in athletic (not power) stance. The problem for most people like you and me who lifted is that our legs don't want to do that. Going more vertical has helped me find the difference because it was a little easier to find the fastest drop in athletic stance into the plant. YMMV.



Advantages for horizontal vs. vertical - upshots & body type
I saw SW say that horizontal form might be more likely to spray left & right, and vertical form to spray up and down. That has to do with how you land in the plant and the relative margin of error. So keep that in mind. I'm finding it to be true.

I switch to a more horizontal form at most upshot distances. I use vertical form for power drives. With my body type I am not getting a lot of momentum moving horizontally - I can't move very quickly fluidly, my legs are short etc. But I can easily get momentum spooled up moving compact and vertical. Your body type would make me guess that you could stick with more horizontal, but my guess is that it may be worth experimenting with more vertical to help optimize the move off the rear leg. Over time I noticed that I think about it less because my brain kinda automatically parses a shot and knows when I need more or less power. And I do think that working with the more compact horizontal style (like Simon shifted to over time) probably comes with some consistency advantages. But I bet going through the vertical phase taught his body a lot about the shift and gravity.

And again, it is taking me a tremendous amount of posture work and retraining to even do it once, much less every time!

 

[SmileyBoy]

I used to try out crow hop in the past though. I switched to horizontal style due to teepads not being long enough here where I often played at. Teepad size is PDGA length and width but it's 2 inches up in height from the ground so you have to step on it as if you were stepping up on stairs.

This is me in the past with the crow-hop experimenting and it did not change a thing. Video is 1 year old and no distance was gained from this . I got the video from discord and put it on YouTube today.

 

[Brychanus]

I used to try out crow hop in the past though. I switched to horizontal style due to teepads not being long enough here where I often played at. Teepad size is PDGA length and width but it's 2 inches up in height from the ground so you have to step on it as if you were stepping up on stairs.

This is me in the past with the crow-hop experimenting and it did not change a thing. Video is 1 year old and no distance was gained from this . I got the video from discord and put it on YouTube today.

Yeah, still were not getting off the rear foot so well there.

If you do ever tinker with vertical again (and to some extent horizontal), I used shorter teepads as a way to challenge & test how compact I can make the move.

But in general I think it's the right think to keep working on beating your power stance and defeating the posture. Legs play better after that.

 

[SmileyBoy]

Yeah, still were not getting off the rear foot so well there.

Correct. I didn't go down on the front leg there. Pushed myself off from back leg which is no-no.

If you do ever tinker with vertical again (and to some extent horizontal), I used shorter teepads as a way to challenge & test how compact I can make the move.

I will tinker with vertical again in the future. After learning that I need to go down in the front leg and eventually that makes my knees go in, I just want to test it out. I'm curious.

That's also a nice way of looking at it with shorter teepads challenge to make your move as compact as you can. Motivational

 

[sidewinder22]

I used to try out crow hop in the past though. I switched to horizontal style due to teepads not being long enough here where I often played at. Teepad size is PDGA length and width but it's 2 inches up in height from the ground so you have to step on it as if you were stepping up on stairs.

This is me in the past with the crow-hop experimenting and it did not change a thing. Video is 1 year old and no distance was gained from this . I got the video from discord and put it on YouTube today.

FYI that is not a crow hop. That is a normal x-hop or shuffle hop. Crow hop the legs do not cross behind.

IMO the actual crow hop is great for helping learn balance on the rear leg because you fail miserably when out of balance. You landed so far behind your rear foot on your x-hop there, so the crow hop should help.

This is Uli with the old crow hop:

 

[Brychanus]

Smiley, elsewhere SW also pointed out that after Ulibarri changed from crow hop to x-step, his PDGA rating never really recovered to its pre-June 2012 peak in the 1030s.
https://www.pdga.com/player/27171/history

Here's something that might also help you see it. Interestingly, Ulibarri's shift off the rear leg seems to have gone through ups and downs over the seasons since 2012 and he's had on and off injuries. E.g., in this little montage I cropped from SW's and others, notice in the side off tee view how much less clean his move looks. You really want to learn what he's doing in the true crow hop, then have it apply in the x-step. You can skim through some shots in the round below. Compare modern Ulibarri's move off the rear leg to McBeth's in a few shots in that round - I see a difference in terms of their balance and posture in favor of McBeth. Then look at Crow Hopper Ulibarri from 2012 and compare to modern Mcbeth - very similar action between when the the drive leg inherits Ulibarri's weight and the plant to what McBeth is doing to my eye.

 

[Brychanus]

^ *wanted to clarify since I wrote a little fast and my main thoughts might have been muddy:

The above was agreeing w/SW about experimenting with a true crow hop.

I was trying to say that in some ways it looks like Ulibarri was doing that move better than his modern X-step in terms of the fundamental action. It's important to note that he was younger when he was learning to crow hop and developed into a high level of play with it, so he's probably had to battle trying to apply that good muscle memory from the crow hop all along after switching to an x-hop.

Usually when the body or mind are struggling, weak areas in the form become more obvious. Speculating on that basis: that might be part of what has been going on with Uli in the past couple years with a lot of body use, recurring injuries, and recent performance declines. We have also seen him teaching squishing the bug, so there may a bit of legitimate training confusion in that rear leg.

I find this all kind of tragic because most serious players would kill to play 1035 golf no matter what their Hogan power move looked like.

I'm going to try this again myself on a few tees next round and report back.

 

[SmileyBoy]

I see so that's the true crow hop and mine was a shuffle hop. Gotcha

I'll experiment this all that has been talked so far and I haven't forgotten to do Dragon drill for a week and swivel stairs video before reporting back either. Just waiting for my lower back to be fully healed

So far all I've been doing is learning to have a correct pitching form from one book and convert it to disc golf forum. The main keys are hip/shoulder separation which I want to learn for the sidearm and the pitching book talks about it a lot.

I'm also trying to make my putts more consistent so that I'm hitting the basket more than missing completely. Trying to make my missing rate go down overall.

And then I'm just here learning new things while healing so that when I get back to backhand, I have some ideas I want to try. I already have one idea I want to try and it's that when doing x-step, I want to land on my rear leg toes first and later heels or land with entire rear leg foot (toes + heels down) and then stride forward. I've been doing drills after all in that foot position. Just a thing I want to experiment with. It can make my lower body worse or better, I don't know yet

Looking forward to see what kind of results you'll get from the true crow hop.

 

[SmileyBoy]

Sidewinder, this video



Elbowing the door means that I'm pulling yes?
Not elbowing the door means I'm swinging?

I elbow the door or person's body behind me. I imagine someone is behind the door or me and I need to do something with my elbow.

Basically In order to have a fast arm speed, I elbow the door or the person's body behind me as fast as I can and I let the follow through rotate my body. Until then, my elbow is leading the throw. I'm accurate this way and I've never though about swinging. If elbowing the door isn't swinging. If it is, all good.

Thoughts?

 

[Brychanus]

I did the true crow hop today again in my round. It is a very useful learning aid like SW encouraged. You are looking to stay in balance without tipping or learning. You are also looking to "ride the Brinsterochrone curve" or "down the halfpipe". It made it super obvious what my highest quality x-steps and the crow hop had in common. It was almost impossible to extend off the rear leg with the crow hop and stay remotely in balance and easier to drop into the plant. Whip effect/snap on some of my x-steps went up a bit right afterwards. Very, very useful.

Re: elbow, I would to see how SW answers more fully since I like how he talks about it. Just want to say:

1. It depends how the body gets the force to and thru the elbow into the hit. Need to get posture in a spot so that the legs and core can do most of the work at lowest effort. Even in martial arts there were some people who would do elbow moves that put way too much energy through a power stance or torquing the hips and twisting in the lumbar region rather than shifting like the DG swing. Just mentioning that since I think it's really valuable to use literally hitting things to learn to "hit" the disc and you want the mechanics to be similar in both cases. And yes, get effortlessly pulled into follow through as you hit through the target.

2. Talking lifter-to-lifter again: One of the reasons I liked switching to resistance bands is because it helps train the muscles about building smooth resistance with the peak force at the end of each move. It's not easy to train that with free weights/Olympic weights. So even if you don't want to give those up completely, certainly consider the bands as a DG training tool. By the way, I've done heavy resistance bands for traditional lifts for a little while now and usually don't notice much of a strength difference if I pick up a dumbbell now.

 

[SmileyBoy]

I did the true crow hop today again in my round. It is a very useful learning aid like SW encouraged. You are looking to stay in balance without tipping or learning. You are also looking to "ride the Brinsterochrone curve" or "down the halfpipe". It made it super obvious what my highest quality x-steps and the crow hop had in common. It was almost impossible to extend off the rear leg with the crow hop and stay remotely in balance and easier to drop into the plant. Whip effect/snap on some of my x-steps went up a bit right afterwards. Very, very useful.

Wow. That's amazing result. Motivational

2. Talking lifter-to-lifter again: One of the reasons I liked switching to resistance bands is because it helps train the muscles about building smooth resistance with the peak force at the end of each move. It's not easy to train that with free weights/Olympic weights. So even if you don't want to give those up completely, certainly consider the bands as a DG training tool. By the way, I've done heavy resistance bands for traditional lifts for a little while now and usually don't notice much of a strength difference if I pick up a dumbbell now.

I'm not doing any lifting at the moment in the gym. My membership is expired and I haven't gone back yet.

I have lots of resistance bands with different difficulties. What exercise are you doing with the bands for building smooth resistance and peak force at the end of each move?

Also, good news from my side. I've been able to start throwing backhand again but I'll hold off on that for now. Played a round today and decided to try out how's the healing going.

1) I can start doing the Dragon Drill now and will do Swivel stairs as well. I figured out that I'll just put the mobile holder thing below the stairs and film myself going up and down instead of placing the thingy above the stairs to film me so expect swivel stairs video tomorrow.

2) I guess I'll do door frame drills 1-4 (all of them) as well and put them here.

3) I'll practice dragon drill for 1 hour and put the video here.

4) I'll also put the crow hop video here tomorrow.

I will also put a forehand side and behind view to get help. I have a serious problem with elbow pain and left side oblique hurting. I don't know what I'm doing wrong but throwing sidearm doesn't feel natural movement to me. I throw 300 ft max barely with forehand and can't get more

All I want to do is to throw forehand pain free so that I have a good weapon to switch instead of doing backhand turn over shot. Those kind of throws are very hard after all. Using forehand to get the flight I want is easier and less riskier.

Expect lots of videos and I hope everyone whoever it is can help me out. Looking forward to tomorrow and I appreciate it.

Edit: My timezone is GMT +3

 

[Brychanus]

Wow. That's amazing result. Motivational



I'm not doing any lifting at the moment in the gym. My membership is expired and I haven't gone back yet.

I have lots of resistance bands with different difficulties. What exercise are you doing with the bands for building smooth resistance and peak force at the end of each move?

Also, good news from my side. I've been able to start throwing backhand again but I'll hold off on that for now. Played a round today and decided to try out how's the healing going.

1) I can start doing the Dragon Drill now and will do Swivel stairs as well. I figured out that I'll just put the mobile holder thing below the stairs and film myself going up and down instead of placing the thingy above the stairs to film me so expect swivel stairs video tomorrow.

2) I guess I'll do door frame drills 1-4 (all of them) as well and put them here.

3) I'll practice dragon drill for 1 hour and put the video here.

4) I'll also put the crow hop video here tomorrow.

I will also put a forehand side and behind view to get help. I have a serious problem with elbow pain and left side oblique hurting. I don't know what I'm doing wrong but throwing sidearm doesn't feel natural movement to me. I throw 300 ft max barely with forehand and can't get more

All I want to do is to throw forehand pain free so that I have a good weapon to switch instead of doing backhand turn over shot. Those kind of throws are very hard after all. Using forehand to get the flight I want is easier and less riskier.

Expect lots of videos and I hope everyone whoever it is can help me out. Looking forward to tomorrow and I appreciate it.

Edit: My timezone is GMT +3

Yeah get a SW FH look too.

Exercises - really anything with resistance bands b/c that's how they work - resistance is at its peak wherever the move ends.

I became a fan of doing various swing-like pulls against a band anchored by a poll or door frame. Mind your posture but moves like this, then also one-handed moving in backhand direction:

Do some starting with the anchor at around or just above navel height like a door frame drill/DG BH backswing. Also work anchored low or high and move from floor toward ceiling and vice versa. These have been really good at building up my core strength which was also in bad shape when I started out.

 

[SmileyBoy]

How do I keep my shoulders on same line as Eagle's? My right shoulder goes up like that mostly because my upper body is tilted back and not coming along or something else. I'm not thinking about it consciously but seems like it's happening and I need to fix it.

 

[SmileyBoy]

Or I'm probably elbowing the door upwards instead of forward.

 

[SmileyBoy]

Adding a list of videos for myself to watch, understand, do and try to recreate the motions. The goal is to exaggerate the feeling and fix my form. I won't compete this year. It is a tough choice to make but I'll lay low on playing and focus more on fixing my form, otherwise I won't be seeing myself playing for long term at this rate with all these injuries I'm getting which I'm not supposed to get.

Videos are in random order and I particularly don't have a must watch videos here because I'm not knowledgeable enough to know what to watch so I just gathered videos here to help me with lower body, stance, posture, upper body and swing. Good luck to me and I hope you guys won't mind if I will also add videos here showing myself how I'm doing the drill and if I'm doing it correctly.

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[SmileyBoy]

I can't delete the comments I've made so just note for myself which I forgot. This link for SW drills. Starting from scratch.

https://www.dgcoursereview.com/forums/showthread.php?t=119328

I also bought a 4.5kg (9,9208 pound) hammer for hammer drills.

 

[bryantlikes]

How do I keep my shoulders on same line as Eagle's? My right shoulder goes up like that mostly because my upper body is tilted back and not coming along or something else. I'm not thinking about it consciously but seems like it's happening and I need to fix it.

https://www.heavydisc.com/2019/01/getting-to-work-on-cam.html

Read the whole post, but this is the part that answers your question:

You've got to wait and use the body's momentum, not your arm's muscles. By-Product of using your arm: leading shoulder raises up (Your Frame-2). By-Product of using your body's momentum, leading shoulder stays nice and even (Simon's Frame 2) which is a little hard to see in the black jacket.

 

[SmileyBoy]

https://www.heavydisc.com/2019/01/getting-to-work-on-cam.html

Read the whole post, but this is the part that answers your question:

You've got to wait and use the body's momentum, not your arm's muscles. By-Product of using your arm: leading shoulder raises up (Your Frame-2). By-Product of using your body's momentum, leading shoulder stays nice and even (Simon's Frame 2) which is a little hard to see in the black jacket.

I use my arm muscles. I don't use my body momentum. I bought the hammer which will arrive in 2nd may or earlier. I can't use arm muscles for hammer drills or else I'll hurt myself with the hammer. Overall, what I've realized is that my swing and motions are wrong. I need to start from scratch

 

[SmileyBoy]

Hello,

I have two videos here. Slow mo and fast mo are two different videos.

Fast mo video is a long video because it contains everything I wanted to try out. Just like the title says.




My hammer hasn't delivered yet. Had to try out something new without it for now.

In the videos, you'll see me crouching down at the end a lot with my rear leg. I'm taking off the pressure with my rear leg instead of my lower back receiving it because my right lower back hasn't healed 100% yet and it will hurt.

I've been focusing on not offsetting my plant step and just striding forward. That bad habit isn't still fixed unfortunately which may be one of the causes for my back issue.

Please let me know how's my form and where can the improvements be made for more distance. Right now, I am really accurate with my own form but maxing out at 400 ft

 

[Brychanus]

I will remind you that throwing while injured is usually not a good idea for either your form or your body.

Your rear leg is still doing pretty much exactly the same thing I'm battling now. Your back will continue to feel better and be less likely to get reinjured if you learn to drop in doing the Buttwipe on the tilted axis rather than extend off the rear leg. Still need to keep developing posture and the body moving in more like Double Dragon. I'm going to defer to a SW triage on the specific mechanics. But I wanted to share another big picture/feel thing that took me a while to see & get:

It really does feel more like getting "seated" toward the rear leg. Watch PP here. She's more "seated" into that rear leg as her body moves forwardwhich is part of why she can (1) stride much more directly toward the target than you and (2) the rear leg abruptly deweights and even slides back East. I'm not saying you need to do exactly her move, but you do need to do what she's doing getting off the rear side. It looks kind of like you're trying to do Simon's modern move, but instead you're kind of falling/tipping a bit off that rear leg while extending at the knee and then rising in the plant rather than landing and swinging compact like Paige or any other big gun.



Feel: as I've been working on almost exclusively this move a lot this month, I tend to feel it in my calves, hammies, and glutes the next day more than you will be there. It feels totally effortless when throwing despite the work those muscles are doing because that leg is basically just sending the body down a curved ramp rather than shoving off. I'm sore there the next day because I wasn't using that muscle chain nearly as much before this month - it's like I just did a thorough leg workout at the gym the previous day. Back feels great.