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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".
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!
Eagle has always claimed the "elbow through the door of a burning building" as part of the power source in a throw along with the lower body. From everything I've gleamed, I think what they're both going for isn't the 90 degree angle trope or chicken winging, but the feel of the elbow and disc being deep in the pocket mid throw and lagging before the disc redirects out of your hand. His examples on video are hard to see, but Gannon really redirects his throw similar to Eagle (Yes I l know he's a Will S clone). I think he's trying to teach that leverage. I took a couple screen caps. The yellow disc was his "straight arm" throw vs the blue being his normal 60% aka 500ft throw according to him.
You can really see the difference in hand position on the disc. Forgive the slight timing indiscretions.
Only tagging you Bry because you posted the vid and already broke down most of it.
Eagle has always claimed the "elbow through the door of a burning building" as part of the power source in a throw along with the lower body. From everything I've gleamed, I think what they're both going for isn't the 90 degree angle trope or chicken winging, but the feel of the elbow and disc being deep in the pocket mid throw and lagging before the disc redirects out of your hand. His examples on video are hard to see, but Gannon really redirects his throw similar to Eagle (Yes I l know he's a Will S clone). I think he's trying to teach that leverage. I took a couple screen caps. The yellow disc was his "straight arm" throw vs the blue being his normal 60% aka 500ft throw according to him.
You can really see the difference in hand position on the disc. Forgive the slight timing indiscretions.
Only tagging you Bry because you posted the vid and already broke down most of it.
I realized I'm still slightly unclear about a couple details in the arm mechanics, and this nice breakdown might help me ask the question.
Is the distinction between his "straight arm" and "high leverage/deep pocket" throw entirely due to posture heading into the plant/brace? E.g., I have Feldberg in mind here. I think posture + backswing mechanics prior to the swing gets the lion's share of the variance, but now I'm curious again.
I try to get people into loose/dingle arm mode and not to focus too much on arm details, but sometimes they come up in my form or others' too.
There are a lot of interesting superficial differences, but each one of them appears to have a high-leverage process off the drive leg that fluidly and quickly transfers force into the plant ahead of the swing. Some of them appear to load/have last point of contact more toward the heel, some more even toward the instep, some loaded higher on the ball. But I still see very simliar basic hip action and plant leg mechanics leading the swing.
Oman's continues to get more interesting to me - our bodies are very different and I can't get anywhere near that posture w/ my legs, and I don't get much power from the ground of the heel in the drive leg. But he also has incredibly long leg levers.
It's maybe a weird thought, but Oman also has very long feet - I wonder if like in some NBA players that's a liability since a lot of those bones/ligaments/muscles are small and can take a lot of abuse with high-force motions (ankles too). So it could be he's already getting tons of force from long leg levers, and leaving some on the table by driving off the heel may protect him somehow (obviously weekend speculation here).
We recently discovered in my form review that I need much more ball of foot/calf loading to get good pogo-like action and stability. I'm also finding I need to generally be more upright to find stability, balance, and power overall. Not sure what I'd conclude about that yet compared to these other examples, but it's very interesting.
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.
Yeah, I'd say the goal isn't necessarily to hit the chest, but getting the posture somewhere between hitting it and swinging out too wide/out of balance gets you into the correct pocket. It's easy to find standing and slow (like SW22's Inside Swing drill) but takes practice & tweaks when throwing.
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?
I think similar to the earlier Q's: they're still getting a nice ground force & transfer/weight shift forward into the plant/brace. So the "big pieces" of leading with the center of gravity and interaction with the ground are there. The hip motion is a sign of getting ground force transfer into the chain in a functional sequence.
