starting the lawnmower to hinging back to pulling? ACE IT Disc new series Help

[jerkwagon]

so i have been playing for 3 years now, athletic my whole life, hockey baseball, snow/skateboarding, surfing etc, Started playing DG for fun and only threw stupid nose up hyzers.

Ok youtube, watched a bunch of videos, (before there were coaches searchable in the aglo) found an old video that said, reach straight back and start the lawnmower, so i started that, I was getting about 220ft max sometimes more but 200 on the reg. after a year and half of watching others just throw 350 at the course with no effort, it made me realize that im not doing something right as i should be getting better, my accuracy was pretty decent but still i should be throwing farther..

so i made a post on reddit asking for what i should be doing. mixed bag of stuff, one guy described it as elbowing down a door, (pulling more)

Then i found Overthrow, Josh was able to translate drills i could understand (well mostly) i could see my form improving and i finally understood that "you never pull" because when you do , you tend to release late etc.. You turn your hips and it puts your in the pocket and then you release. For 5 months of field work i thought i was doing this, until people said i was still pulling, Then it finally hit me, my right arm (bicep) should stay 90ish degrees from my chest until i release (dont flame me , yes i know pros go past this, but my point is you dont ELBOW to 140 degrees) I FIGURED IT OUT, focused the hell on this, but again not much for gains,

this jouney took me from 220 to 250 avg, but my form looked very smooth, and still maybe 260 avg, im in a few discords and people said, my form looks like i should be getting 300+ easy. I have been suffering from nose angle and thats kinda another story.. Posted another for review and everyone said my timing was off and my hips were not being used.

Here is a sample of my hinge form, not really cherry picked as my "best" i sometime use the bonepane grip with long distance drives as its help "ME" with nose up issues, its actually day and night, but im not really here to talk about that yet.. (nose issues)


Thats where i found Ace It disc golfs videos, From what i have gathered Its just Seabass's drills with bit clearer explanation and more vibrant. But the way he explains and shows you right there with the progression, makes sense,

so this is what im doing, standstill, pendulum back, to about 6/7 oclock (if my target is 12) as its going back, i plant my toes and at the peak, thats when i drop my heel and shift my weight, turn and let the disc rip out.

Here is me attempting his standstill, again i know there is a lot wrong and im going to work on things, im not really looking for help yet,

now after watching my video of me trying this, some of the discs are ripping out of my hand, some are flying less nose up, and some are going about 290.. (i tend to throw 20 discs at a time and i can get a few that far but teh avg is 265) My issue is, when i start my right hip is pointed towards the target and 90% of my throw end up at 2/3 oclock, which is from my elbow going well past my body and not releasing at 10, but 12/1 oclock..

so my question is, how does one prevent the late release with this drill? He says in his video that hinging is not a great source of power,

this is a sample of his drill, and you can see his elbow , goes way past his hip, (this might be an overexaggerating for the drill) but again from my understanding, this is the biproduct of pulling and a late release..

please keep this discussion to the release point and timing, i really want to discuss this topic and not my hand grip etc..

 

[Brychanus]

Thats where i found Ace It disc golfs videos, From what i have gathered Its just Seabass's drills with bit clearer explanation and more vibrant. But the way he explains and shows you right there with the progression, makes sense,

That's me! Hey, I recognize you from the channel comments. IMO, Seabas22 is perfectly clear in most of his content. The problem sometimes (especially for beginners, as it was for me at first) is that it can be hard to find some kind of "backbone" for form development to stick to, and a progression of motions to work with to help people get less tangled up in stuff. I fully attribute and link Seabas22/SW22 drills and other stuff here and elsewhere in the video comments. In life and in DG, I believe that it is important to refer to & build from good foundations & citations. I also sprinkle in bits and pieces from elsewhere in the vids and comments.

I had mixed feelings starting this series now while I'm still in raw form development. The reasons I did were:
(1) there are very few examples of instructional series rather than collections of drills/ideas;
(2) doing so in my "raw" stages of development allows me to demonstrate some things that are hard to do when things are all tightened up/pure muscle memory (e.g., SW22 has to pretend to be a new learner in his "ground forces" video, but he can only approximate it since his form is in fact pretty high level/tight) and
(3) I believe that people don't spend enough time with the "throw like it's heavy" system to realize that it can teach you very fast and save you a lot of frustration and injury. I think that different communication styles and contexts might help different learners.
(4) Last but perhaps not least, sometimes we understand things better when we attempt to teach them to others.

For context (since it matters to an extent), so far, people here brought me to a current "sitting max" distance of ~330' with neutral midrange discs, and ~400' flat "line drive" golf shots with drivers. So I am a far cry from where I started, but I am currently still working hard on my own mechanics and am developing more control and consistency (mostly in standstills at this stage). I do not know where my "upper potential" lies, but if a 36 y/o guy with no throwing background, two left feet, a body built like a draft animal, and balky knees but a stubborn work ethic can do it, I assume many others can go far too! I recommend you check out the "can anyone throw 500'?" thread on this form sometime.

I was aware that when I started this project, not everything would be perfectly obvious, stated, attended to, or demonstrated (I put this in a Comments disclaimer in every vid but maybe I need one in the intro). Sometimes I'm illustrating one idea, but there's a side effect elsewhere. Your observation is a good example:

He says in his video that hinging is not a great source of power ... this is a sample of his drill, and you can see his elbow , goes way past his hip, (this might be an overexaggerating for the drill) but again from my understanding, this is the biproduct of pulling and a late release..

Correct, elbow hinging is not a great source of power, and correct, there are exaggerations for the illustration. The elbow going past the hip is an effect worth clarifying. I think your screenshot is from the "Hips" video, which I rewrote completely before posting after a nice discussion in the "Rocking the Hips" thread in the forums here if you want to check that out. I want to clarify what you raised here.

In that vid, the point was to exaggerate aspects of the lower body action for illustration. I separated the leg/hips into two artificial "Drive" and "Plant/swing" phases. The idea is that there is problem to solve in force transfer/swing fluidity from leg to leg. Illustrating it as a two-phase process had consequences on my posture/upper body/kinematic chain. What you're observing in the arm here is an effect of it (1) being quite loose and (2) illustrating the two-phase lower body stuff from slightly different postures/flows, where the loose arm winds up taking different paths. Here, you see the "heavy" loose forearm is swinging in toward my chest, led by the shoulder, but in the context of the artificial two-phase process.

In a loose, artificial/discless swing swing here and due to my posture, the arm is getting blocked behind the brace set up by my plant leg. You then observe the elbow moving forward. In a real swing, the brace blocking also traps momentum, but I'd be swinging faster up the chain and on a wider arc (still loose-armed) with ulnar deviation ("pour the coffee") while gripping a disc. I'd be more squatted in the plant and applying more ground force while swinging wide, and I'd be swinging much lower/flatter unless I was shooting for a big anhyzer shot with a very high line of attack. The result in real shots is that the disc will also swing tighter to the chest & the elbow still comes relatively forward of the hip as part of forming the "power pocket". But in any case, that pocket/elbow action should be a consequence of the weight/centripetal force of the arm/disc swinging in then out into the "hit", not hinging the elbow ahead of the shoulder. I'd also have much more momentum pulling me into the follow through/finish.

Your observation about the elbow is important. See the attached img. of Gibson throwing ~350 ft. flat from Overthrow. Due to his brace/momentum block, you'll also see the elbow moving quite forward of his leading hip. It's due to a shoulder-led swing from behind the brace. The disc is swinging in toward him due to his posture & the weight of his arm/disc swinging in toward his chest. I think this is why people get so confused about the pocket and end up "hinging" - it's really tempting to force that position to occur. But if you don't get there with a shoulder-led swing with a loose arm behind a brace, you lose most of the leverage on the disc and might hurt a joint.

All that to say, continue to follow the "swing-wide" advice and avoid "hinging" to actively find the pocket. The correct way to think about it is "swing wide like holding a hammer", and see also seabas22 Double Dragon on this.

People such as yourself seem to be finding some value in this little project of mine (and I'm always grateful for your comments), which is why I've kept it going. I'm reconsidering how I go about certain things. I still have a lot to learn too!

There's a good reason that I plug seabas22 (sidewinder22 here) so much and that I wanted to organize/direct people to his and related content - he's been through it all and knows what he's talking about. There is also a world of sports science out there that DG can learn from, but appears not to (for the most part). I am deeply indebted to SW22 and other very nice, patient people here. SW22 in particular has been uniquely invested in my own development and that of others here, and I will never be able to thank him enough.

I highly encourage you to post in the Form Critique forum here & people can give you excellent advice!

 

[itsRudy]

 

[Brychanus]

... found an old video that said, reach straight back and start the lawnmower...

...so i made a post on reddit asking for what i should be doing. mixed bag of stuff, one guy described it as elbowing down a door, (pulling more)...

...Then i found Overthrow, Josh was able to translate drills i could understand (well mostly) i could see my form improving and i finally understood that "you never pull" because when you do , you tend to release late etc...

I suggest you move the vid/details to Form Critique. But on-topic and concisely - you may want to be thinking of swinging the disc - not pulling or hinging.

The words we use to describe disc golf technique can be really confusing if you don't already know what they're intended to mean. For example, there's a whole thread here about "starting the lawnmower" and the pros and cons of saying it that way.

 

[jerkwagon]

Yeah i guess i should of just stated that my photo of you was not trying to pinpoint "when you did it" but more just an illustration of what i meant. There was a lot of unpack there, but i guess my biggest issue was, when i started at standstill, i noticed the majority of my throws were "late releases" so closer to 1-1:30. instead of 10/11. From what i have been told before thats is due to "pulling" which then put the elbow..... WELL past the body. and im pretty confident that is what i am doing, next time i go out i will film with the drone.

On a side note, I had watched your video again, and noticed you started with your feet quite apart and did the "just lift the foot and let the weight shift over" so you moved your foot like 4-6 inches.. I found that to be more natural and taking a full step from when my feet were together jsut messed with my head. That later developped into me pumping my right arm, and stoping in my x-step then and then going from there, it felt more natural and i know its far from perfect, but at least i feel i like i can control the disc, and its a good starting point.. I plan to change one thing at a time to get it right. Maybe im doing it fully wrong as well, who knows, but ill post it in the form check and see where i should start.

Here is the video of what im talking about. https://imgur.com/0aNxePN


as for your YT content, i think what you are doing is amazing and im still shocked at how damn determined you were in the snow storm! I showed my GF and she was also blown away by it!


I think what you said might be helpful as well, demonstrating what you do for field work etc..

Thanks again really apprciate it all!

 

[seedlings]

Brychanus, that bit where you jab the off-elbow tight toward the hip as a means to firmly plant is a sensation I have not realized before. Well done. It's remarkable how I can hear the same advice, presented in a (barely) different way, and it clicks.

 

[Brychanus]

Brychanus, that bit where you jab the off-elbow tight toward the hip as a means to firmly plant is a sensation I have not realized before. Well done. It's remarkable how I can hear the same advice, presented in a (barely) different way, and it clicks.

Nice! Sidewinder22 is essentially teaching me how to "walk" like a patient saint. Anything we can do to get through to each other is awesome!

 

[Brychanus]

Yeah i guess i should of just stated that my photo of you was not trying to pinpoint "when you did it" but more just an illustration of what i meant.

Totally! I should absolutely be called out on any BS too, since I'm working hard on understanding/doing much of the technique. I want to pay it forward and not do too much damage in the meantime.

There was a lot of unpack there, but i guess my biggest issue was, when i started at standstill, i noticed the majority of my throws were "late releases" so closer to 1-1:30. instead of 10/11. From what i have been told before thats is due to "pulling" which then put the elbow..... WELL past the body. and im pretty confident that is what i am doing, next time i go out i will film with the drone.

I think late releases can happen for a lot of reasons. One of the biggest is when you aren't fully braced you can't "trap" momentum behind it, and might "spin out" over the plant leg. You might be opening the shoulder out early ("WTF Richard"), etc.

Sometimes when I'm working on something new and am confused about my inconsistent mechanics I grab 5-10 example shots since sometimes there's a pattern that's hard to see from one shot alone.

On a side note, I had watched your video again, and noticed you started with your feet quite apart and did the "just lift the foot and let the weight shift over" so you moved your foot like 4-6 inches.. I found that to be more natural and taking a full step from when my feet were together jsut messed with my head. That later developped into me pumping my right arm, and stoping in my x-step then and then going from there, it felt more natural and i know its far from perfect, but at least i feel i like i can control the disc, and its a good starting point.. I plan to change one thing at a time to get it right. Maybe im doing it fully wrong as well, who knows, but ill post it in the form check and see where i should start.

Cool - I inherited the "small weight shift" philosophy from Sidewinder22/seabas22. I start the feet wide like he does in his standstills. This is where I got the "A-frame" idea from and always finding leverage with ankles outside knees outside hips. You can keep optimizing the mechanics from that wide position because it's where the majority of the tricky action happens & can go wrong.

If you can't get leverage in a standstill/small one step, the odds are that you aren't getting optimal power from an x-step. For example, I still only get maybe a 10-15% x-step advantage over standstills because my basic mechanics need work. I can sort of "blast through" some details with my x-step, but they become obvious when I do standstills. My x-step is also much shorter and more vertical than it used to be since it's easier for me to generate power that way (my body type might have something to do with that, though vertical forces have their advantages).

I suggest you stick with small weight shifts since you actually don't need much of one to get power when the mechanics are good. Mine aren't great and I already throw much further than I used to. I'm also mostly practicing standstills right now because SW22 can see all kinds of issues that I can't easily fix yet and it simplifies the troubleshooting. YMMV.

Here is the video of what im talking about. https://imgur.com/0aNxePN

I like that you're working on slowing it down for control and some of your movements. From this angle it looks like you're getting trapped a bit with your weight on that drive foot/x-step. If you post a vid from the side of the "tee" and post a thread in the "Form Analysis/Critiques" it'll be easier to tell/get more feedback!

as for your YT content, i think what you are doing is amazing and im still shocked at how damn determined you were in the snow storm! I showed my GF and she was also blown away by it!

My wife was walking with me on the way to the field. That freak blizzard was starting just as we got there. She said "Are you sure you want to do this?" and I said "Well, I'm already here!"

So, I chose to do disc golf stuff and pretend I wasn't freezing while she wisely went back home.

I think what you said might be helpful as well, demonstrating what you do for field work etc..

Thanks again really apprciate it all!

I've been thinking about stuff to do next, which will likely be:
1. Tricks to get more in touch with ground forces/lag (my current obsession & development)
2. Self-form roast
3. Fieldwork & form rebuild mindset

As my form matures more I'll consider others & will want to know what people getting serious about form work are interested in.

I appreciate the encouragement, just trying to do what I can to help all of us through this darkness!

 

[seedlings]

What to do next? Talk about/describe/illustrate the momentary pause in hip/upper body movement when the shoulders/arm whip out the disc… when the forward weight shift becomes a throw.

 

[Billbox]

ideas:
how to find the swing instead of pulling
elbow height from diferent angles and what muscles to use to keep it high

 

[Brychanus]

Saw this vid from Gannon Buhr make the rounds elsewhere and seemed on point w/ this thread. I think it's a good example for tensions in the language that we use, what we see, and what we do:


Gannon is saying he "pulls", and illustrates the distinct "start the lawnmower"-like setup. He emphasizes getting into that 90-degree shoulder position (see today's Cool Images from Sidewinder22 & Navel for a nice cross-reference in Simon's form & the rest of Simon's body).

What does Gannon mean, and is he wrong? I think this is where images are worth 1000 words. If you watch his lower body, he is clearly showing the correct backswing/swing mechanics from the ground up that gets him loaded into that shoulder position and he has the correct posture. It's not a bad thing to practice if you already have the mechanics right. But many of us don't, and intuitively do something different when we "pull".

Is it a pull or a sling? Is it a swing? Is it a whip?

I'll say a few things that others have shared here that have helped me. Imagine a bull whip - is the material like really soft string, or completely rigid like a broom handle? Neither - it's somewhere in between. If you try to whip an over-cooked noodle you'll fail. You can impart force on a rod/bat/golf club, but it doesn't coil & uncoil. I think the problem for most players is that they all have strong-arm tendencies at the beginning (way too "rod-like"), so making them more loose is a main priority.

Think about it like a smooth flow of tension in the arm that is resisting the pocket collapse as your body rotates.

Think about the arm like part of a whip that begins with your feet and is anchored in your center of gravity.

Think about the Olympic hammer thrower or a ball pulled taut at the end of a string, swinging around and around.

If you think about "starting the lawnmower", whatever you do, don't "chicken-wing" yourself into that artificial elbow-forward "gate hinge" position by pulling with the arm muscles. However you get your body into the pocket, you need enough smooth tension in that whip/sling arm to leverage the disc out. But the pocket should be formed by good posture & mechanics. As you transfer ground force & momentum up the chain, the arm resists the pocket collapsing as your plant leg/body form the brace just enough to get the disc snapping toward the target.

Gannon's elbow moves ahead of his hip for the same reason that Gibson and every other top thrower's does - he has blocked the forward momentum with his brace and is holding onto the disc as long as possible.

Also interesting, later in the video, he shows "poor lower body mechanics", which looks distinctly like Paul Oman. To my eye, it looks like "good leg mechanics but at a downtempo with an uptempo upper body swing." Super interesting.

Gannon also throws more than 200' further than me, so as always there's more to learn!

 

[bryantlikes]

Saw this vid from Gannon Buhr make the rounds elsewhere and seemed on point w/ this thread.

For some reason that video wouldn't play for me. Here is the URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MHNaB_AHW0c&ab_channel=GannonBuhr

 

[Brychanus]

Thanks, sorry, not sure why I couldn't get that to embed!

 

[bryantlikes]

Gannon is saying he "pulls", and illustrates the distinct "start the lawnmower"-like setup. He emphasizes getting into that 90-degree shoulder position (see today's Cool Images from Sidewinder22 & Navel for a nice cross-reference in Simon's form & the rest of Simon's body).

Thanks for posting that BTW. In a recent field work session I decided to see what would happen if I slowed down my swing to as slow as I could. Result: I threw farther.

This makes me want to try seeing if I can actually hit my chest with the disc when I throw since I'm assuming that just like being slow, I'm really not actually getting very close.

Real vs. Feel.

 

[Brychanus]

Thanks for posting that BTW. In a recent field work session I decided to see what would happen if I slowed down my swing to as slow as I could. Result: I threw farther.

This makes me want to try seeing if I can actually hit my chest with the disc when I throw since I'm assuming that just like being slow, I'm really not actually getting very close.

Real vs. Feel.

Sweet! We hear it all the time, but when I catch myself getting sloppy I always stop and say (sometimes out loud) "Slow down." Unsurprisingly I almost always throw better/farther after that. Rushing almost always reverts to bad/old mechanics.

Aha, the "see if it hits my chest" game. More advanced players point out that you have to try the extremes to find the sweet spots sometimes, interested to hear how it's going!

 

[SocraDeez]

Also interesting, later in the video, he shows "poor lower body mechanics", which looks distinctly like Paul Oman.

Disagree with the comparison/ the assessment of Oman's lower body mechanics as "poor".

Oman's lower body mechanics are different and do look a little funky with that drive from his heel, but don't forget about the instructive value of outliers. If anything, Oman is shifting from behind the most!

What are Oman/Kuoksa/Corey Ellis doing the same with the rear leg that Brinster/Gurthie/Jarvis are?

 

[Brychanus]

Thanks and oops: what I intended to mean was that Gannon said he was trying to illustrate "poor" lower body mechanics, but to my eye they looked like "good but downtempo relative to upper body" mechanics. I was comparing that to Oman in the sense that Oman would use similar "downtempo lower body mechanics."

But now in your gif, I hadn't realized how Oman is driving entirely off his heel, which is clearly different. The guy's also clearly getting huge force transfer from the ground despite the heel drive.

I wonder at what cost. Would Oman get more power with a ball-of-foot/everting drive leg process? Is his form so developed as an overall system that he's optimized some other properties? I know people have talked about this before but it's still relatively fresh to me and I suspect others here.

In guys like Earhart it seemed clear that his drive leg action/heel push were suboptimal, but other aspects of Earhart's leg action looked like a weaker ground force transfer than in Oman.

Let's talk about this!

 

[Brychanus]

What are Oman/Kuoksa/Corey Ellis doing the same with the rear leg that Brinster/Gurthie/Jarvis are?

I'm going to look closer for that thought experiment, but I also meant to come back around to Kuoksa's form in particular. I find it interesting that he has one of the more extreme "bowling" off arm moves than most players w/out obvious counter-rotation "swim move" mechanics. And he freaking bombs (major understatement).

 

[SocraDeez]

Whoops, sorry for the misread.

Yeah I agree that the Oman/ Earhart heel drive is not necessarily optimal. But!

But now in your gif, I hadn't realized how Oman is driving entirely off his heel, which is clearly different. The guy's also clearly getting huge force transfer from the ground despite the heel drive.

I wonder at what cost. Would Oman get more power with a ball-of-foot/everting drive leg process? Is his form so developed as an overall system that he's optimized some other properties?

(First, Oman/Earhart probably evert the rear foot too much.)

Try thinking about it another way. Why might Oman/Earhart's rear leg action be more optimal than an amateur's rear leg action who makes the opposite mistake? Too much over the toes/ squishing the bug/ shifting from in front. And/or how might this be related to creating force by moving into/away from the ground?

 

[seedlings]

…This makes me want to try seeing if I can actually hit my chest with the disc when I throw …

I absolutely hit my chest with the disc sometimes in real throws (no intention of doing such). In those cases I'm trying too hard and/or my plant foot was too right.