Tech disc test driven development

[Kjimsern]

Hi Neil,

Nice work on youtube, you are saving me alot of time on my tech disc trying all the different stuff for me. Appreciate that

I saw you tried the scapular protaction with tech disc. I havent tried it just yet myself.

Did you just try to push the shoulder/elbow out?
( check picture down below)

I noticed you gained some speed doing this on the video.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

Right. I putt well. It has never seemed uncomfortable. Why look for a problem that isn't there?

Of course it's easy and good to not think about things much when they are working, but surely, like everyone, including pros, you experience off days and struggle to find the reason why your putting isn't working and if you didn't have a clear idea of what you were doing then the path may not be as clear to diagnose the issue.

Even inaccurate stories / rationalizations people tell themselves of what they are doing are useful in so far as they prime the muscle memory to get back to doing what they actually want to do, even when it's different. But if the story was more precise I think, in general, it's easier to recreate what you are after.

E.g., you can find numerous examples of pros saying they are doing something / explaining how they think about something, and it doesn't map on in some clear cases to what they are actually doing, but when things are off, revisiting those thoughts can still be a useful routine to get back on track. But there's a gap in proprioception going on in these cases (assuming it's not outdated info or miscommunicated), although it's not always necessary to remove that gap in proprioception, such as in coaching, you can get people to do desired things in creative and indirect ways, but for someone to be most empowered to be able to correct their own issues on the spot, having fewer of these gaps is more likely to be helpful. This is partly why we advocate filming ourselves when working on form, so you can see how surprisingly big this gap often is between what it feels like we are doing and are what we are actually doing.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

Hi Neil,

Nice work on youtube, you are saving me alot of time on my tech disc trying all the different stuff for me. Appreciate that

I saw you tried the scapular protaction with tech disc. I havent tried it just yet myself.

Did you just try to push the shoulder/elbow out?
( check picture down below)

I noticed you gained some speed doing this on the video.


View attachment 354409

Yeah, I think I also accidentally leaned my upper body forward a bit more since I was trying to exaggerate it in the throw you saw, so that may have impacted some things as well.

Another way to feel it is to start with the disc perpendicular to your chest and touching your chest (not in a briefcase just for this example), now without extending your elbow, move the disc as far away from your chest as you can. The extra space created between the disc and the chest is directly related to how much scapular protraction you have added.

Also, if you didn't already see these, you can feel how it loads and stretches differently like this:



Pully machine:

Tech disc test driven development

So have you ever played these sports on a serious level, or are you just watching videos? I'm not trying to talk shit to you, but I dont' think you're grasping the fundamentals as tight as you think you are. The techniques to do what you described and what I know are far far far different than...

www.dgcoursereview.com

 

[disc-golf-neil]

Awesome vid, hopefully more pros will start doing this soon:

 

[timothy42b]

Can't tell if you missed the point, didn't read what I wrote or referenced... or were more interested in trying to make some sort of correction.

10k was the average from the study, rounded I'd guess.
I posted that article because it articulates that its a baseline/idea/goal. Might take one person 4,000 and another 20,000. But Ericsson is quoted in it talking about all of that.

The whole point I was making was you gotta put in the time to be good. Doesn't mean it has to be 10,000 hours.

I'm not disagreeing with anything in the two quotes above but, just wanted to add that the musicians studied were at Curtis Institute of Music. Those aren't just the top 1% of college music students, maybe not even the top 0.1%. That is a truncated distribution, the most elite "talents" that the US can produce. (Tuition and fees are high, but aid is on a sliding scale where low income students pay hardly anything.)

 

[Sheep]

I'm not disagreeing with anything in the two quotes above but, just wanted to add that the musicians studied were at Curtis Institute of Music. Those aren't just the top 1% of college music students, maybe not even the top 0.1%. That is a truncated distribution, the most elite "talents" that the US can produce. (Tuition and fees are high, but aid is on a sliding scale where low income students pay hardly anything.)

As example used in the book, The people who are outliers generally are people who were in the right place at the right time and put in TONS of work to get where they are.

It's a fantastic book about basically driving to success. You don't have to always be in the right place at the right time like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, you can literally just put in the time as often as you can and achieve greatness.

I think the main thing that's missed with the 10,000 hours thing is that people think putting in 15 hours is enough, it's not. 100 hours isn't enough. Think about how good you get as a carpenter after 5 or 10 years of doing carpentry every day. That's a LOT of hours.

There is around 260 work days in a year, at 8 hours a day, that's 2,000 hours. You can be pretty good at something after a year of working at it.

But 5 years at a job makes you pretty top notch. 10 years at a trade and you're master level at around 20,000 hours and some change. Being good is a grind. Learning is a grind. Everyone learns different, everyone's skills advance different through different amounts of trial and error.

Does that mean you need 5 years or 10,000 hours to master something? No. But as a skills trade professional for 20+ years it makes a lot more sense. I'm still mastering my crafts. I'm still learning every day. There really is no end to getting better even when you hit a really high level.

How To Become A Journeyman? | TradesmanSkills

Learn how to become a journeyman and start your career in the skilled trades.

tradesmanskills.com

We can look at journeyman in the trades if you wanna go that route in skills trade. It's usually 4 to 5 years of apprentice work. Which equates to around 8000 to 10,000 hours of work and classes.

I never honestly looked deeply into the study, because I was able to extrapolate the meaning being used in the book without being pedantic about what was behind it. The message of "putting in the time" made sense, and its what makes you really good at something.

It's possible that he was trying to use it more seriously in the book, but I never viewed it that way. I don't generally hang on the words people say as gospel, but use them to educate myself and ask questions.


Neil here, while still new, is trying to put in the time. Even if some of us dont agree with what he's saying. You cannot deny he's putting in the time. And in time some of the discussions in here when he grows, he will look back and be like "omg, I was dumb." Because I did the same thing with Sidewinder a few times and some other coaches I've had discussions with where I thought I was right.

Time is everything. How valuable is your time. How much do you want to learn and grow. Or do you want to blaze your own path.

I'm just here for the chain bang.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

Interesting form comparison, especially disc orientation and space wise during the pocket:

They all looked to throw enough speed to get a pushing hyzer to have pin distance (some limb snags interfered with seeing full distance potential).

We've got Eagle and Evan Scott who both come in on a good bit of briefcase, but it looks like Eagle tries to bring the disc closer to the chest while Evan Scott tries to keep more space.

Alden with the anti briefcase elbow dip. It's possible to anti briefcase without a dipped elbow but much more straining supination to be in that position.

Casey also looks like he has a lot of space between the disc and his chest, some of that, I think comes from him keeping his elbow a bit more bent and then not bending it further on the way into the pocket.

Casey also doesn't have as much significant briefcase on the way into the pocket. I initially thought he was pretty neutral in terms of not briefcased and not anti briefcased, but I think it's actually a decent bit more briefcased than not briefcased. Imo, no brief-case and no anti-briefcase would be the disc close to perpendicular to the chest at the start of the pocket. I tried to draw the red line to be the rough angle of the upper body / chest, but it's hard with his shirt moving, so that's why I put it on his side, but you can see the blue line would be closer to perpendicular to his chest, and the disc is quite a bit more in the briefcase direction than that:



Casey's disc orientation there to me, when I do it something similar, feels like a balance of comfort from being more in the briefcase direction and therefore less supination tension at that time, but not so briefcased that it feels like a lot.

Frames from brace toe touchdown to release:
Evan: 10
Casey: 10
Alden: 10-11
Eagle: 12

I don't think Eagle was throwing slower, kinda feels like his form bringing the disc in close to the chest is like trying to hold it in tight for a bit longer as the rotation builds up more centrifugal force to launch it out, not sure, what do you guys think? Especially compared to Evan who has a similar briefcase position initially and on the way into the pocket, but then doesn't bring it as close to the chest.



26:49

 

[Sheep]

Casey White has atrociously bad form. He makes it work, but it's not sustainable.

Maybe he's worked on it some, but when he was doing a lot of simon video's, his form was really bad when he started touring.

 

[Sewer bill]

Casey White has atrociously bad form. He makes it work, but it's not sustainable.

Maybe he's worked on it some, but when he was doing a lot of simon video's, his form was really bad when he started touring.

He has definitely worked on it. When I played the west Virginia open this year he was bombing hyzers with low effort over the 400 foot water carry on hole 18 and his form looked smooth. He still has a funky run up but I think it's that topic @Brychanus addressed about the shuffle jumpy start to get loose and aligned.

 

[Sheep]

He has definitely worked on it. When I played the west Virginia open this year he was bombing hyzers with low effort over the 400 foot water carry on hole 18 and his form looked smooth. He still has a funky run up but I think it's that topic @Brychanus addressed about the shuffle jumpy start to get loose and aligned.

Oh okay, thank god.
It used to be so violent and aggressive for no reason.

I couldn't honestly understand how he got any level of distance with how bad his form was before.

Then again, there are tons of folk out there who throw pretty far with really really bad form. Always fun to play with the hard air bouncers who throw 400-450. They usually gassed out by the 15th hole, but their atrocious form works.

Just always frustrating having fairly clean form but such low speed in the throw and not throwing far. when someone just throws like a lunatic and it goes far.

Then again, when i started golfing years ago. I threw 400-450 without much issue. But I also kept blowing my shoulder out.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

Casey White has atrociously bad form. He makes it work, but it's not sustainable.

Maybe he's worked on it some, but when he was doing a lot of simon video's, his form was really bad when he started touring.

Def a bit unconventional looking with the bent elbow, but it looks controlled to me. Maybe a little horizontal collapse but hard to tell. Elbow looks a bit pointer down but a decent amount of that I think is deceptive from body posture—sidebend while coiled points the elbow more down without much external rotation. Probably a combo of both but not as much external as it seems, not as much as Calvin, I think.

When I test keeping the elbow bent more it sometimes feels like I've removed a distraction and a variable. Like sometimes I get more undesirable disc and arm movement during the elbow bend into the pocket if I'm not focusing on preventing what I don't want to happen, but if trying to keep it bent it kinda stays in place more controlled.

For example at 1:24 I was trying to keep it more bent (was thinking of Calvin, it still extended a more than intended but others I finally got it to stay more). Reach back to power pocket felt easier / simpler because it was already closer to the power pocket.

I even hit 65 that session which is really good for me. So no noticeable power loss it seemed.

Surprisingly hard to keep it bent but when trying to do so, I felt more like I was keeping things tighter but not overly tense, like tighter in a tightly coiled kinda feeling but that feeling. It's controversial to even suggest feeling any of that in the arm as opposed to a loose arm, but I haven't had much power differences comparing loose for more tense and in the timestamped throw the elbow extension to flexion has a nice looking springiness to me which happened due to trying to not let it fully extend.

Also, the last throw in that vid I put an extra flip a da disc for ya

 

[disc-golf-neil]

@jaypay85 one tech disc test, as requested

I was also trying a bit higher of a pull through on all the throws but anny probably makes me want to go a bit higher than the hyzers too, but the elbow height on the hyzers look much lower than they actually were compared to the anny ones due to camera angle and hyzer posture leaning towards the camera during the pocket.

Net height became an issue, wasn't able to comfortable throw as high as I wanted to for the simulated flight path to have enough height for the disc to flex out of the amount of anny I used (a lot of anny, like most discs would be a roller or cut roller at least with this much anny).

Hyzer vs forcing over an extra over stable disc on a lot of anny:

 

[jaypay85]

@jaypay85 one tech disc test, as requested

Hyzer vs forcing over an extra over stable disc on a lot of anny:

Will send you thoughts on this soon.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

I was also having unusually low wobble, I think the additional change I was testing, a higher pull through, helped with that in a few ways, first, reducing elbow dip tendency, secondly, if you hold the disc higher up in a power pocket position, like at your upper chest, compared to just under your chest, the higher physician is quite a bit harder to supinate enough to get the disc perpendicular to your chest, compared to the lower position, this feels like it helped steady my disk orientation on the way into the pocket with a natural prevention towards accidentally supinating and elbow dipping towards some anti-briefcase position which often happened unless I actively turn into a briefcase on the way into the pocket, and when that early anti-briefcase starts to happen, it's easy to get to bouncy back-and-forth with forearm rotation leading to more wobble.

However, I was also focusing more than usual on hooking the last digit of the index finger and clamping down with that last knuckle flexion in addition to thumb being directly on top of that index finger which put the thumb almost completely on the rim but also barely touching the flight plate. I always hook. The last digit on the index finger on driver rims, I just had extra focus on that knuckle flexion this time and the thumb pinching it.

The other times I've gotten unusually low wobble I did not have that extra focus on the grip, but I was focusing more on scapular protraction during the pocket which also tends to bring the elbow up more and so I probably had a higher than usual pull through on those throws as well, so I think that's likely the bigger factor on lowering wobble.

it's of course, possible to get very low wobble on low, medium or high pull through, but it just seemed that the high pull through it easier than my normal medium height pull through Makes me wonder if the medium is a little too much on the fence between and makes it easy to wobble between heights and unsteady disc orientation changes during the pull through. I'll see if a higher pull through replicates the lower wobble again and then also try a lower than usual pull through to see how that compares to my usual and the higher pull through.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

Frame 3 looks like very minor briefcase, I didn't notice this initially in his form because it just looks so pure and on plane without much disc orientation changes.

frame 4, looks like the disc is rising into the hit without the tail dipping down. If you hold the lid of a pan like a disc, or something else heavier, or 3-4 discs stacked up and go into the position in frame 4, then move the disc back and down a bit then forward and up a bit back to this frame 4 position with a little motion to really feel the weight, you'll feel the heavy tail pulling you towards pronation nose up. This is why at higher speeds making the disc feel heavier and throwing positive launch, you must have more supination/external rotation effort just to avoid nose up, and even more to throw nose down.

This is why he throws -5 nose down. It's not extreme nose down to be very noticeable and so it can look like a pure simple form without very noticeable disc reorientations to make it more clear what's going on.

If you are very used to throwing -5, the feeling I described above could easily be unnoticed by the thrower, especially because it's a comfortable / easy level of effort to do -5 when you have the strength and range of motion available to do much more.

IIRC, he said in one of his recent instructional videos to pour the coffee for nose down, so if that's what he actually thinks is his source of nose down, he is distracted by that and the actual source is even more easily unnoticed since it's already just intuitive muscle memory.

Now that he has the tech disc, if he keeps thinking about pour the coffee as nose down, since he already throws nose down, it will act as confirmation bias, unless he tests things more thoroughly, especially testing extremes like -10, -15 nose down where you'll be more likely to be forced to find what actually works and then realize what seemed to work before wasn't a strong effect, or was leading to a side effect form change that wasn't noticed as the but was more the cause.

That's why I really like trying to do extreme exaggerations of things, it's more likely to reveal what is actually effecting what, and make it easier to realize if you've misattributed something.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

In the part 2 video he starts off talking about trying more scapular protraction. Pretty cool to see and hear his thoughts:

 

[disc-golf-neil]

This is why we never stop testing, bois, eventually you're bound to find something helpful that was missing.

SIX new speed PRs in one session.

Second session trying a higher pull through though (thinking upper chest). First session I felt something was there but it was a short one and didn't go full effort. 2 other things I was focused on but had been focusing on for a bit before the higher pull through were trying to sink lower into the back leg (not obvious especially on the faster run ups) and then also pre-emptively more core engagement which also helps reduce lumbar extension which I get when I'm more relaxed.

Didn't try a higher pull through much before because I was focused on just getting the arm more under control but also have seen a high pull through seemed kinda common with people who had lots of other form issues.

 

[Sewer bill]

The disc flying back at you was hilarious that was a good catch.

Have you tried yelling yet? It definitely adds an mph or two.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

The disc flying back at you was hilarious that was a good catch.

Have you tried yelling yet? It definitely adds an mph or two.

Connor O'Reilly is a big grunt fan hah.

I'm grunting a bit but haven't tried really exaggerating it lol. I'll try it when I have a spot to myself hah.

 

[Brychanus]

This is why we never stop testing, bois, eventually you're bound to find something helpful that was missing.

SIX new speed PRs in one session.

Second session trying a higher pull through though (thinking upper chest). First session I felt something was there but it was a short one and didn't go full effort. 2 other things I was focused on but had been focusing on for a bit before the higher pull through were trying to sink lower into the back leg (not obvious especially on the faster run ups) and then also pre-emptively more core engagement which also helps reduce lumbar extension which I get when I'm more relaxed.

Didn't try a higher pull through much before because I was focused on just getting the arm more under control but also have seen a high pull through seemed kinda common with people who had lots of other form issues.

Nice work!

This is increasingly subtle, but if I may, your front shoulder still tends to shunt up/skyward relative to the brace/axis of rotation rather than clearing forward and through more like Simon. You tend to get slightly caught behind the brace than completely follow through, and the clearing action of the throwing arm is slightly sawed off as a result. This is related to why your rear arm tends to drag behind and slighty down to counterbalance the skyward action rather than maintaining posture. So there's a little more on the table there.

You are probably getting load through the oblique slings and lats, but the motion through the scapular range of motion looks either slightly off plane and/or (more likely causally) is lacking a degree of freedom somewhere in the shoulder assembly somewhere in the depression/elevation and/or downward rotation/upward rotation cycle.

Visually (these are persistent regardless of camera angle. I am looking at the mechanics in motion and pulling out images for emphasis, not just cherry-picking images):
1. The yellow line is the balance point over the front leg through the motion. You have a bit of rearward balance relative to Simon (biased East along the tee) as an effect of the shoulder action. Notice how much more stacked his balance line is from foot to the top of the head
2. Notice that the relationship between the shoulder line and forearm are opposite in Simon's as an effect of the diferences in shoulder action.
3. Overall, notice the very large space between your leading shoulder and leading hip. Simon's is much smaller/more compressed.
4. The sweeping arrow near the shoulders represents the path through the motion. Simon's tows/windmills/swings/pulls/whatever slightly downward and then upward maintaining intact posture, whereas yours tows more upward off plane (again, an effect of the lack of shoulder degree of freedom.



Your problem is somewhere in the last two images here:


This is fixable in principle of course. As fair warning if you ever get it, it will feel very weird and your balance will take a little time to adjust to it.

You're familiar with dingle arms (not sure how much you use them); you can also play around with racquet backhand, golf club, hammer, etc to identify it.