Tech disc test driven development

[disc-golf-neil]

That really is the only way to reachback.

Yeah sure, but the way you wrote seems like you're implying subtext: protraction is for the reachback, not for other places in the throw

 

[sidewinder22]

You seem to be more focused on positions rather than motion.

 

[sidewinder22]

Sandstrom and Avery

 

[disc-golf-neil]

You seem to be more focused on positions rather than motion.

Because the discussion I've seen here about retraction recently doesn't give much insight on how much you should focus on it (yes it varies based on body type, yada yada, but there are general useful tips that I think can help).

If people said "at the start of the pullthrough there should be a bit of retraction motion, but not so much that your pocket doesn't have enough space" I would've thought that sounds great.

I think retracting too much is a phase that most AM's are likely to go through, and if retraction is mentioned at all, it would be useful for an AM first reading about it to be warned against some issues they may run into if they were to try to apply that.

Whereas if you focus more on protraction to keep space in the pocket, you'll still probably get some automatic retraction at the start of the pull through, but so not missing out on that, but then be more likely to gain some benefits to the pocket position.

 

[Sheep]

Ya I think you are saying similar things to what I am thinking lol. I think the Beto drill with an in person instructor might be extremely helpful.

When its just someone who doesn't quite get it watching a video though...I think the coiling aspect gets almost completely overlooked very commonly.

Yes, its hard to figure out "how" to do it.

Youre' like. okay i got the disc at my chest.. uhh, what do i do.

And the part that I don't like about the beto drill is that you basically have to throw your hips or spin and throw. And its .. well, not good que's.

The backswing (overlysimplified) is really just there to load and get some level of rhythm for the most part. When we take that part out of the swing, our monkey brains go derrrrrp.

So, when we take away that rhythm, .. I just feel my brain missfire trying to do the drill, after a bit of patience and not overtrying it comes, but good god, its just ... so hard.

Then in person giving lessons. hooooly f... It's even more hard to teach someone to do it without causing them other grief in their swing.

The best method I found to do it is to use rock the baby. but you have to shoulder load without the backswing.

 

[Sheep]

Because the discussion I've seen here about retraction recently doesn't give much insight on how much you should focus on it

The answer of focus is this:

None
Nada
Zip
Zilch
Zero.

You seem to be more focused on positions rather than motion.

^^^This is why^^^
Overly focused on positions destroys the motion as a whole.

You cannot accentuate every key point with flair and bravado without becoming mechanical. That defeats the motion and the flow of the swing.


I don't think its wrong to talk about any of these idea's. But to talk about them like be all end all motions when a lot of what were talking about is pure speculation to start with. All theory. We can try stuff, get data, talk about it. But there is so many statements being made all the time about how stuff is the be all end all or something. Its just frustrating to read all of this.


Jaani teaches it right and people forget his main teaching. "Keep it simple."

He doesn't say to not try this stuff. But to keep it simple. And we start talking about some of these things like they are "must haves" when.. really they are just not really that important.
If you're doing the other things right and keeping it simple, your body will naturally do these things like the scapular protraction.

But people when talking about this in discussion really make it sound like you have to activate these muscles in some magical way to throw far or some crap.

Ehh wahtever.

 

[Sheep]

I think retracting too much is a phase that most AM's are likely to go through, and if retraction is mentioned at all, it would be useful for an AM first reading about it to be warned against some issues they may run into if they were to try to apply that.

This is literally you.
1 year of playing.
Rookie.
Amateur.
Novice.
Beginner.

This isn't being said in a mean way. Just a reminder that the demographic there you're speaking of is you. And you might be the one who's caught up, not the other players reading.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

I'm not overly focused on positions. The positions I focus on are just key checkpoints to ensure the motion through the key positions stays on track.

The key positions are just located at key transitional points which help clock on to timing / rhythm.

Many people can learn motions more quickly when the motions are chunked into smaller sub-motions where the chunking happens at the key transitional moments / positions and then the easier to handle sub-motions can be practiced in isolation until they are smooth. After the sub-motions can be done reasonably well, there's so much more bandwidth freed up to focus on stitching the sub-motions together into one full fluid motions

Of course, if the person already has coordination with some analogous motions, those transferrable skills can be leveraged as shortcuts.

 

[itlnstln]

Good to know, thank you. I watched the video and I'll work on those 2 options a bit today. I've been dealing with bursitis caused by my backhand form for a year now, and that's why I've been reluctant to just put a lot of reps in, unless they're quality reps. So I have to do it right in the first place in order to keep doing it. What I have to do is get a good form that's slow, and then start increasing speed as a means of progression.

(Maybe I missed this earlier in the thread, so I apologize if I'm repeating an earlier observation)

One other thing I noticed this morning when thinking about this: when I shrug, my elbow dips. More specifically, if I hold my arm in the power pocket position and shrug my shoulder, my elbow dips, I believe, due to external shoulder rotation.

So maybe, for some subset of shoulder dippers, fixing the dip may involve fixing the shrug and less so trying to do something with the elbow itself

 

[Sheep]

I'm not overly focused on positions. The positions I focus on are just key checkpoints to ensure the motion through the key positions stays on track.

The key positions are just located at key transitional points which help clock on to timing / rhythm.

Many people can learn motions more quickly when the motions are chunked into smaller sub-motions where the chunking happens at the key transitional moments / positions and then the easier to handle sub-motions can be practiced in isolation until they are smooth. After the sub-motions can be done reasonably well, there's so much more bandwidth freed up to focus on stitching the sub-motions together into one full fluid motions

Of course, if the person already has coordination with some analogous motions, those transferrable skills can be leveraged as shortcuts.

There is like 4 key points to a swing. That's it.

Brace, Coil, Pocket, Hit.

Scapular protraction isn't a key point. Stuff like that is more in either posture, or theory.

 

[Sheep]

(Maybe I missed this earlier in the thread, so I apologize if I'm repeating an earlier observation)

One other thing I noticed this morning when thinking about this: when I shrug, my elbow dips. More specifically, if I hold my arm in the power pocket position and shrug my shoulder, my elbow dips, I believe, due to external shoulder rotation.

So maybe, for some subset of shoulder dippers, fixing the dip may involve fixing the shrug and less so trying to do something with the elbow itself

If I'm understanding what you're saying.
Youre suggesting that a lot of the people who have a drive shoulder shrug tend to try and dip their shoulder to correct it vs relaxing and getting their shoulder in a more better gooder position?

Well, if that's what your suggesting, I'd agree. Especially cause I did it and.. it was long before I knew anything. And now that stupidity plagues my throwing because I did it for a while. So my body movements are not always good and clean, they can be sloppy back and forth.

Generally when we engage muscles incorrectly though, we start to bunch up in that shoulder.
It's a clear sign of either bad posture, bad timing or muscling.
Usually the later 2 if you were to ask me.

Muscling generally, because people are not engaging their body. And bad timing, where the body is trying to protect itself and bunches up.

 

[itlnstln]

If I'm understanding what you're saying.
Youre suggesting that a lot of the people who have a drive shoulder shrug tend to try and dip their shoulder to correct it vs relaxing and getting their shoulder in a more better gooder position?

Well, if that's what your suggesting, I'd agree. Especially cause I did it and.. it was long before I knew anything. And now that stupidity plagues my throwing because I did it for a while. So my body movements are not always good and clean, they can be sloppy back and forth.

Generally when we engage muscles incorrectly though, we start to bunch up in that shoulder.
It's a clear sign of either bad posture, bad timing or muscling.
Usually the later 2 if you were to ask me.

Muscling generally, because people are not engaging their body. And bad timing, where the body is trying to protect itself and bunches up.

Other way around. The shrugging action, whether to protect the rotator cuff, weak shoulder muscles, whatever; dips the elbow

If you hold your arm in the right pec drill position and shrug your shoulder, your elbow will dip.

There are probably a bunch of reasons someone may dip their elbow, but for some group of elbow-dippers, fixing the shrug will fix the dip

 

[Sheep]

Other way around. The shrugging action, whether to protect the rotator cuff, weak shoulder muscles, whatever; dips the elbow

If you hold your arm in the right pec drill position and shrug your shoulder, your elbow will dip.

There are probably a bunch of reasons someone may dip their elbow, but for some group of elbow-dippers, fixing the shrug will fix the dip

I don't see dipping elbow with shoulder shruggers in the 100's and 100's of lessons I've given.

I'm not saying it can't happen.
But we also might be saying one thing, but both of us are defining a completely different muscle group action.

Then we also have to take into account a few other random things.
So I'm not saying your wrong, but the only time I see people drop their elbows, is when they are trying to squeeze their back muscles together and do some silly stuff.

Which from what I'm reading in this latest thing in the thread, that's what is being talked about.

And the annoying part of a lot of any of the conversation is a few things like what you and I are discussing here. Were probably talking about different things despite saying the same thing for it.

Secondly, the need to use "fancy words" to describe some things ... which most of the time when I'm reading people or watching youtube video's. It's people using fancy words to sound smart, not actually learning to describe what is actually going on.

So, since were not describing well, just throwing a word out, we might have a different representation of the meaning all together from each other.
And because were not making video's to talk to each other, because... It's obviously not worth it based on the time and effort it takes for me to shoot a video, upload to youtube. ..
I'm just gonna go on through my day.

So, what I'm saying is. There is a large bit of communication breakdown as were trying to explain physical actions through text where we might all have a slightly different view, or even a very bias or skewed view of an action which causes us to argue about stuff vs gain understanding.

So, uhh.
TLDR.
I think were talking about different actions but saying the same descriptor.

 

[sidewinder22]

Zach Nash shoulder motion retracts from reachback to the release. Looks a lot like a wide bench press position at release.

 

[Brychanus]

(Maybe I missed this earlier in the thread, so I apologize if I'm repeating an earlier observation)

One other thing I noticed this morning when thinking about this: when I shrug, my elbow dips. More specifically, if I hold my arm in the power pocket position and shrug my shoulder, my elbow dips, I believe, due to external shoulder rotation.

So maybe, for some subset of shoulder dippers, fixing the dip may involve fixing the shrug and less so trying to do something with the elbow itself

This made me curious - I tried this with unweighted shrug (like the "I dunno" gesture), weighted shrug, and then disc around power pocket/2nd frame down of Zach Nash SW posted. I let the disc be a little pronated like him or Simon or GG for this part.

Unweighted: seems to slightly externally rotate unless I consciously do the opposite.

Weighted: when I grab the weight overhand it starts somewhat internally rotated, then I think goes more IR as I move the weight. If I switch to underhand I think it's more initially ER and tends to go slightly more ER, but then my elbows tend to grip my body to help stabilize.

Pocket shrug surprised me: I actually tend to IR a bit from the initial posture as I start to shrug, which seems a little closer to what happens somewhere before the shoulder transitions to the ER phase heading into the release. But I don't think that's a guarantee for everyone and is probably a result of all the tool use/drills/swings/pulls/weighted throws I've done the past couple years. There's some role of the deltoid and stabilizers there as I move through the shrug motion. It's now generally unconscious unless I focus on it. In the DG throw it seems more like a stabilizer than a shrug, but it's a complex flow. My guess is that if I tried this a couple years ago it would be more like the "I dunno" tendency to ER as I shrug in the pocket range. Very interesting. I think that's part of what I was trying to describe a while back about the interaction between the brace/leg resisting the ground and the "downward" force of the arm mass coming down to create this "explosive" part of the end of the move. To some extent I am always trying to work "backwards" from this effect entering the release to optimize the potential power I'm bringing into this late phase of the action and trying to get my posture to square everything up better by the time the disc hits the release:

Obligatory "not sure if this generalizes," and I suspect that this works especially well for me in part due to my body composition. I think SW's is similar but he has somewhat longer limbs and probably a slightly lower CoM than I. I think there is more variability in absolutes in the lankier bodies/people who didn't start out physically stout and heavy. I am still currently fascinated about how this part of the thru the end works or varies for people. For instance, since this is @disc-golf-neil's topic, I still suspect he will get away with a more horizontal optimization, and it is possible that if I weren't as massive I would end up in a different spot (as GG might have - Sheep mentioned that somewhere along the way).

One possible option for Neil's macromove might be closer to Klein's profile, but IMO that remains to be seen. Notice from the pocket to release the relatively more vertical deflection of GG's disc relative to the yellow parallel, but there is a similar dynamic from the ground up. Notice also that despite differences in how they posture to load the backswing/reachback, they end up "swinging upward nose down" posturally. For me this was/is one of the weirdest things I learned. Subjectively it was surprising because it was suddenly like the disc was there, and then it was gone before I knew it until gradually my brain caught up with the prediction error.

The problem with testing this kind of thing by isolating variables is that the parts need to function well as a chain, which is why it "suddenly" (after thousands of hours of practice, but then all at once) started working for me and I have been trying to understand it better after the fact. In some ways that was really the first time I stopped thinking and started throwing. But it still annoyed me that I couldn't fully explain what was happening in terms of the parts vs. whole, so here I am again lmao.

Not sure if these helps anyone, but I am finally realizing how to convert GG-like mechanics to flat(ish) shots recently and put a few thoughts here. I like this because it seems more likely for me to get a low-effort reasonably powered shot at intermediate distances, and lines like GG is throwing here are essential in many cases. Also functions similar to the idea in SW's Whip Step drill. GG tends to do the same for true anhyzers and rollers (which at long distance still tends to be less extreme than some other players and still relying a lot on turn rather than an extreme anhyzer angle. Still worth a reminder that many players are actually on shallow hyzer in terms of the plane for long distance "anhyzer" shots; notice some potential adjustments at the wrist and variances across players [1 2] - tinker & be aware of your own options). I still universally find it lower effort to get a distance shot on hyzer and plan around that on the course; working on the flatter planes has also been giving my body important feedback a la Whip Step. Messing with the wrist a bit more to get the posture & gravity advantage of hyzer but achieve less hyzer/anhyzer is also useful.

 

[Brychanus]

And speaking of bench presses, just to get this off my chest. These are all just observations/hypotheses worth testing. I'm almost ready but not quite to articulate what I think is the main disagreement between swing-like theories vs. abduction-pull theories. If it isn't clear, this isn't remotely intended as coaching advice, just DG form philosophy I wish we had a science for.

I think many people see/try to achieve the force vector depicted in yellow here. They imagine/throw trying to exclusively yoke the tail of the disc around to pivot on the fingertips.

From a physics perspective (check my work) I don't think that this can be optimal in principle if there is any force whatsoever against the ground. SW's hammer drill here exaggerates this - his vertical force complex will be perhaps higher than McBeth's right next to him.

But if for instance McBeth does a horizontal version of this on the disc, and only emphasized the yellow force vector, his body would only have a counterforce away from the disc and not also against the ground. So there must be some downward/vertical force, minimally from "drop" of mass if not contractile force. McBeth just stretches the wave out much more horizontally, and I still suspect his mega-sub-1st percentile levers give him options other people don't, especially being below avg height.

This is why SW likes to emphasize what he does including thumb pressure against the disc (which is kind of like a "down, out, and away" countering the ground and your own body mass in the context of gravity), and probably part of this long and confused debate about when, where, and how the forces are happening and why certain hands and arms do what they do when they do it in which people. My guesses are that Climo is the most extremely horizontal here in actuality. Wiggins remains an enigma to me in part - SW and Taylor and others have pointed out the massive deflection, torque, and stretching he enacts on the disc. Notice that there is even more complexity in his forearm and disc orientation than these other high-power throwers. He's got what SW is emphasizing, what the other guys all enjoy with long levers, plus whatever athletic nastiness is happening involving a kinda-but-not-exactly-like-a-corkscrew from this point forward. Awesome.



Friendly reminder that Wiggins' whole form looks like a double helix unfurling against the ground toward the heavens. I bet his arm move doesn't work that well if the rest doesn't also work this well, and some people have speculated that even then he has a couple leaks in the system.

This all also makes it even less surprising to me that very far-throwing players often go through some kind of initially more vertical phase before becoming relatively more horizontal. I am still curious about the implications of that in the long run for a F=mv^2 optimizing perspective in a given player, and increasingly less surprising that no one ever pulls exactly in a straight line on the same planes at ultra-high velocities.

 

[timothy42b]

You have succeeded in completely confusing me.

If my mental picture of the swing plane is how the shoulders rotate, and perpendicular to the spinal axis, then the disc path you show here is nowhere near it. (at least, relative to 3D space. Maybe relative to a rotating inertial frame of reference?)

 

[Brychanus]

You have succeeded in completely confusing me.

If my mental picture of the swing plane is how the shoulders rotate, and perpendicular to the spinal axis, then the disc path you show here is nowhere near it. (at least, relative to 3D space. Maybe relative to a rotating inertial frame of reference?)

This is a good point, let me try to elaborate a bit, and I still think there is annoying ambiguity in what I am trying to say, but I am trying to get closer.

I think yes, implicit in what I am saying is that the swing plane is never really a simple as that, and instead is a somewhat more complex biological motion roughly tracking that axis and perhaps passing through it/ending up there at release.

On the way to release, the additional degrees of freedom in aiming to maximizing force of the disc in the context of gravity leads to odd scenarios like I am attempting to summarize there. If the arms were more like a hinge joint appended at the shouder, and the forearm didn't have the ability to pronate, supinate, and the wrist could not deviate while also flexing or extending, it would be much closer to the exclusively "swing plane is the shoulder plane" model (I think). This makes it confusing to talk about, and confusing to learn if anyone is trying to do it from these posts alone (please don't!). So instead I'm trying to make a "fuzzy average" of the force vectors for part of the process there, but it is mediated through more complexity. I personally only had success with that complexity by working obsessively on various instruments and exercises and eventually it got better quickly, but that's not everyone.

At some point @sidewinder22 shared with me a visualization of the idea that in e.g. a golf swing, the "real" plane moves around the body a bit based one the reference point like you are indicating. I'll try to dig it out but my source memory is fuzzy; he is usually faster at remembering so we'll see if he beats me. I think he shared it in a DM with me at first and last time I remember might have been in the thighmaster thread when debating about balance points but I'm not 100% (edit: found it below).

Edit: here we go - links below. Notice in the batter example that there's sorta an axis through the front leg and it sorta tracks the spine, but because we're not a rigid body/pole through the spine, the motion isn't ever exactly perpendicular to the spine. So the hard part in a physical learning sense is finding something sorta like that concept, but mediated through the biology, which means it deviates a bit from that mechanical simplification all along the chain. For me, the arm has been especially weird to think about recently but I'll keep trying. This is also part of why letting my booty waggle/loosen up a bit more like naturally walking helps me cue up the GG-like action - the spine is also just part of the overall motion. The more rigid it gets, the less far I throw more effortfully and more hurtfully.

ThighMaster move from DG Spin Doctor

Some people have anauralia. They have no inner voice.* Those people are all around you being successful in all kinds of ways. How? I saw a reference to this literature awhile back, and surprisingly, it was something like 30% of people have anauralia. Lots of lightbulbs went off in my head...

www.dgcoursereview.com

First form check!

I think once you start getting closer to "flat" release with your gg move you'll find your speed will go up a little and the pendulum pump is going to help maintain tempo but the swing will feel dampened a little, which is probably much safer than just digging in and elbow locking.

www.dgcoursereview.com

Obligatory: I could be getting part of this wrong, but I no longer suspect that it is all wrong. It is also by implication quite possible based on the above that a very horizontal form is placing much less emphasize on the vertical part of the blue arrows there, though I would expect that in general it is greater than zero.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

Zach Nash shoulder motion retracts from reachback to the release. Looks a lot like a wide bench press position at release.
View attachment 356638

Again, I mostly talked about having enough protraction for the pocket to have space, which requires more protraction to be added for many people whose pockets are collapsing, imo.

I didn't say you should keep it the entire time into and through the hit.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

@Brychanus do you know a vid with a good view of Simon throwing hard from the back with minimal camera movement during the runup?