RHBH 300 Ft Max

[Brychanus]

Love "Shifting underneath" as the phrase. Adding something to the Repo!

@DWhitt I guess I'm kind of talking around it but I agree with @sidewinder22. Over two years he has gradually been turning me from a weightlifter into a thrower. I'm not perfect but somehow, it's working.

This may or may not help you, but if I didn't share before, my body intuition about grip, weight shifting, and power changed after 2-3 months with this exercise series. Then I started to figure out how to get it into the disc better. I was having a hell of a harder time before that because I was never really connecting my balance with what my arm was doing for a low-effort, high power move. I needed tons and tons of reps moving my body around and swinging in all directions for it to get the "point" of what my body needed to do to a disc thrown more horizontal(ish). Sometimes I needed to let the club pull me off balance to find new and faster balance. I don't owe David Weck any money (but I guess I owe him thanks). Everything I say below I think I 'understood' better after I started doing it in my own body. Do/see/feel first.




Tip-o-the-whip and avoiding bodybuilder-level "death grip": Normally I'd lead with a hammer but I think you have almost the opposite problem and you're just muscling the crap out of your grip, which means the arm won't have the right level of tension to throw. Watch a Graham Russell standstill. What's going on there in his hand and wrist at the "tip of the whip"? It's got something in common with hammer throws, believe it or not! Ignore his weightshift there.








Just a couple deeper context points you might come back to later:
1. To me, your grip looks like it's going to try and pull directly horizontal out of the backswing toward the target as flat as possible. I don't think I've looked at a single pro yet where the swing plane is truly that flat even when throwing flat(ish) for power [ref1 ref2 ref3]. Bodies just don't actually seem to really move that way in advanced motion. It's not like I just took Sidewinder's word for it - I think he had it mostly nailed down in the first ref there, and I have just been trying to understand how and why it interacts with other parts of form since then. I'm not sure if he agrees with what I'm trying to show/speculating in ref3 there yet.

2. I find grip still hard to completely understand in disc golf (it was way easier to think about in golf), but recently it changed fundamentally when I started trying to understand the grip/thumb action related to what the lower body and ground forces were doing in the move. Your action from the lower body goes "up" in the plant while the grip and arm apply force "down". The net effect is to provide a sudden spike in force out away from the body/center/chest. You generally see this in very vertical and very horizontal players so I am gradually starting to believe this is at least often a fundamental thing for power. I think there are probably a lot of acceptable grips that achieve this effect. Time will tell hopefully.

3. And actually, I think this image I just sketched alone helped me understand even better why my body always seems to respond way faster to more verticality than horizontality in my form. I have a very long torso and short arms, so I naturally benefit from more hammer "drop" out and away from my chest than even GG, with a relatively weaker leg base and poorer mobility in my lower body. My shoulder angle is ridiculously wide in the most powerful/fastest swings. Intuitively that's what I "feel" and accelerates the club head in the Weck drills too. I can probably get even more out of this in my own move, methinks. You can probably get away with more Klein. Just another semi-crazy Forces hunch. @sidewinder22 can probably whack me upside the head for that hunch if needed.

 

[sidewinder22]

Love "Shifting underneath" as the phrase. Adding something to the Repo!

You can steal my phrase bro, I've been saying it for years!

 

[Brychanus]

You can steal my phrase bro, I've been saying it for years!

I think I've probably seen you say it over and over and I literally might Understand it for the first time this month. I'll never get over how weird brains and bodies are, man. Whether I remember everything or not, you will continue to see me be a credit-giver ;-)

 

[DWhitt]

I think I've probably seen you say it over and over and I literally might Understand it for the first time this month. I'll never get over how weird brains and bodies are, man. Whether I remember everything or not, you will continue to see me be a credit-giver ;-)

I keep re-reading the posts since my last one. I can't say that I get it yet...

Grip: it seems like my beginning wrist position is the intended end grip? If so, I'm skipping out on whatever force it is that going from start to finish (some kind of specific elbow or shoulder action?) imparts...?

Plane: Trying to throw the disc forward on a line is bending my arm too much? I'm not getting the fulcrum-esque catapult power of a straight arm?

Shift Underneath:

 

[Brychanus]

I have spent a long time here working to get it and I have to say that people with "weightlifter syndrome" like us can think all we want, but you have to do different to move differently.

You might want to show your kick the can drill and one leg drills. Sidewinder can show you how to succeed in principle. Maybe the "athletic" move of kick the can will help shake up your muscle memory.

Shift underneath is the balance idea. Yours is inverted. You are in the "power stance" Pratt talks about and shows. Then Pratt show the correct balance. Every top pro uses some version of that. That's it! Then you do it in disc golfing posture.

Grips will change with the motion of the body because the swing plane changes. If you want to dispel the weightlifter stance you'll need to fix it. They're related. Mine used to be a weightlifters death clutch. Now it functions closer to other athletic throwing motions. All learned here from Sidewinder with an occasional outside intervention in my case.

One way or another you/we need to teach your body that muscle is only helpful if it builds on balance and gravity advantages. Your body thinks this is a weightlifting exercise. Needs to be taught otherwise. Your brain might catch up afterwards. Mine did. But it was a motor retraining exercise first and foremost. My post may make increasing sense to your brain and body down the road if you change how you move.

 

[DWhitt]

I have spent a long time here working to get it and I have to say that people with "weightlifter syndrome" like us can think all we want, but you have to do different to move differently.

You might want to show your kick the can drill and one leg drills. Sidewinder can show you how to succeed in principle. Maybe the "athletic" move of kick the can will help shake up your muscle memory.

Shift underneath is the balance idea. Yours is inverted. You are in the "power stance" Pratt talks about and shows. Then Pratt show the correct balance. Every top pro uses some version of that. That's it! Then you do it in disc golfing posture.

Grips will change with the motion of the body because the swing plane changes. If you want to dispel the weightlifter stance you'll need to fix it. They're related. Mine used to be a weightlifters death clutch. Now it functions closer to other athletic throwing motions. All learned here from Sidewinder with an occasional outside intervention in my case.

One way or another you/we need to teach your body that muscle is only helpful if it builds on balance and gravity advantages. Your body thinks this is a weightlifting exercise. Needs to be taught otherwise. Your brain might catch up afterwards. Mine did. But it was a motor retraining exercise first and foremost. My post may make increasing sense to your brain and body down the road if you change how you move.

Pratt says to move the bottom of the spine to achieve balance instead of the top. Should I keeping the shoulders more centered and maximizing hip angle (maybe arch is the word) in backswing? After swinging back like that then I would hershyzer rather than starting leading with the butt?
I guess my current throw is moving my booty down the line to sling my arm down that same line.

 

[Brychanus]

Pratt says to move the bottom of the spine to achieve balance instead of the top. Should I keeping the shoulders more centered and maximizing hip angle (maybe arch is the word) in backswing? After swinging back like that then I would hershyzer rather than starting leading with the butt?
I guess my current throw is moving my booty down the line to sling my arm down that same line.

We would have to see the actual moves, but this sounds closer.

 

[DWhitt]

This may or may not help you, but if I didn't share before, my body intuition about grip, weight shifting, and power changed after 2-3 months with this exercise series. Then I started to figure out how to get it into the disc better. I was having a hell of a harder time before that because I was never really connecting my balance with what my arm was doing for a low-effort, high power move. I needed tons and tons of reps moving my body around and swinging in all directions for it to get the "point" of what my body needed to do to a disc thrown more horizontal(ish). Sometimes I needed to let the club pull me off balance to find new and faster balance. I don't owe David Weck any money (but I guess I owe him thanks). Everything I say below I think I 'understood' better after I started doing it in my own body. Do/see/feel first.

Do you own one of these RMT clubs or use a substitute?

 

[Brychanus]

Do you own one of these RMT clubs or use a substitute?

I started with a substitute (shorter indian club and hammers) but then ponied up and bought an RMT club (again, I am in no way a Weck "shill" or invested in him personally). My experience FWIW:

1. The beads might seem gimmicky/silly (and I was skeptical), but they really turned out to matter for me. It helped me understand (physically) when my body was getting the motion as long and fluid as possible without "shortchanging" it. You can feel and hear it as the beads move. They get quieter and quieter and smoother as you get more and more control over the move length, which is directly related to how well I am swinging/throwing in balance it turns out. You learn to power it with momentum and posture and counterbalancing.

2. I did some research on club weights and settled on 4lbs. The reason was I already knew what swinging 10lb+ things was like, and I instead wanted just enough resistance from 4lbs, but it is still light enough that I can get moving pretty fast (for me) in a nice rhythm. Apparently other people/athletes found the same.

3. Obviously not a fix all. I would say that it helped me condition a better, lower effort, more fluid and longer chain. Since discs are much shorter "levers" with different grips, I am still trying to optimize to that problem. But it became a lot easier to understand the overall motion goal after lots and lots of club swings. I still do them when I feel "weightlifter stance" creeping back up on me.

After I did this it got much easier for me to manipulate my athletic movement overall. Win/win in my own throwing and instructive insights for me personally.

Edit: I moved back to add kettlebells again, but my work with those is now substantially more effective after going through the Weck phase. I think it's because I got much better at controlling everything together in a sequence and as a unit, so I could start to work on other and more subtle things with more weight safely.

 

[DWhitt]

Your throw is tipping over instead of shifting underneath. This will likely require a change to your grip and swing plane so I would expect things to be wild for a while. Rome wasn't built in a day.

I threw one leg drill shots and picked a few recordings. It felt like I needed to tip more than before to get a counterweight to throw against.

 

[DWhitt]

I'm so sweaty
I used a 10lb dumbell.

 

[Brychanus]

I'm so sweaty
I used a 10lb dumbell.

Nice dude.

The first time I tried it, I got to the part when he started jumping. I think I said "holy s$%^" out loud and started awkwardly trying to do it. My wife was nearby and said "you know, you can like... build up to it over time."

Got decent at it by about one month in and didn't look back lmao

 

[sidewinder22]

Need more Figure 8 Motion/walk backwards in the backswing moving your whole body counter clockwise behind your ankle.
Note in behind view how your head/shoulder is way over your ankle.

Standstill & Figure 8 Motion Pattern

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www.dgcoursereview.com

 

[DWhitt]

I focused on "shifting underneath" in field work today. I had some long shots with a variety of discs. Is this progress?

 

[sidewinder22]

Looks like your upper spine is still tipping over instead of your lower spine shifting underneath into the plant.

 

[DWhitt]

Looks like your upper spine is still tipping over instead of your lower spine shifting underneath into the plant.

Am I just tipping my upper spine away from target instead of towards it now?

 

[Brychanus]

Yeah, still in the inverted balance but you found another way to do it.

Watch your X-step. You put your foot down, then stand up on it tipping away, then come back down/tip off again.

Instead, you ideally want to be already drifting forward and dropping tilted like his drill.

 

[sidewinder22]

Note how your spine extends and tips over going into the plant - before you plant.