Tech disc test driven development

[timothy42b]

With flexion forces can actually peel open the fingers, but with extension, my fingers peeling open are not the failing point because the knuckles are locked in and so the failing point becomes friction but I also have more finger pad surface area contact for more friction with extension. In practice, I'm not sure if the disc ejects from flexion more from friction slip or fingers peeling open first though.

That was interesting info about the climbing grips. I didn't know any of that.

For me it raises some questions about what really happens when the disc "rips." Especially after the recent Overthrow thread and some of the Uli comments on upshots.

A climber's grip can support his/her bodyweight one handed. I don't see how a light disc you're waving at the end of your arm can overcome that amount of grip. If I do a max dead lift and hold, my fingers will go from curled around the bar to straight as they tire, and the weight will drop. I think that's the equivalent of what you called peeling open. Probably that doesn't happen with a throw.

I think the actual disc rip might be more of a sideways prying action, where the force becomes friction from your pinch, based on holding a disc and pulling it various directions, but I'm not sure.

 

[Brychanus]

Max grip pressure test

results: unremarkable
conclusion: I already grip hard enough normally to where gripping with max pressure doesn't help but I suspect it could help for some people who are overly loose.

I also briefly tested (not on vid) an initially loose grip and separately my usual grip but more relaxed body, both were slower speeds. I think for me, with a history of swinging hard in racket sports, I'm used to being able to scale up my power without it totally ruining my timing, form, and flow and so trying harder is quite literally the easiest way to actually throw harder since I already have a racket sport history where I learned to swing hard without being overly rigid.

My whole history of speed improvement has a prominent feeling of trying harder each time to break a PR, similar to 1 rep PRing a weight in the gym which is preceded by increasing amount of reps of previous 1 rep maxes which requires a lot of effort to go from 1 to 2 reps initially. Of course, this is all accompanied by lots of focus on form improvements too. Basically, the point I'm making is that, yes, many people do need to learn to relax more and not be too rigid when trying harder, but, sometimes that is over emphasized and you quite literally need to learn how to put more effort in to be accustomed to it so that when you return to relaxed effort it's actually a higher effort that feels relaxed in relation to the higher effort achieved.

However, I am at a plateau in terms of my absolute max and it will probably need to be some form changes to break my absolute max since I think I'm pretty used to close to max effort, but I've been prioritizing walkups instead of full run ups lately for less wear and tear. It will be interesting to do a full run up comparison to my walk up power though to see how much of a difference there is.

The stats have 2 'normal form' comparison because one of the normal forms was unusually high in wobble, so I don't think max grip pressure actually reduced wobble, the high wobble with that one normal form test was just unusual.

View attachment 340017

This is cool. I wonder how it would play out across people.

FWIW I've found that anything that adds to max distance usually follows work on basic movement patterns plus a deliberate intention to learn to throw farther while in good health. I've talked to a couple people who have fairly systemic approaches to this and they tend to use staircasing training for developing players that reminds me of weightlifting cycles. Most other strategies lead to plateaus (for me).

 

[Nick Carroll]

In my experience with grip effort, there was basically a law of diminishing returns. And more to the point it was like hitting a threshold, beyond which was no distance or accuracy, only pain. I got to the point in my testing where I had to wait a couple minutes between throws, and ultimately gave up.

This was actually a year ago, before I had a Tech Disc, but I did a lot of fieldwork testing this and ultimately the juice wasn't worth the squeeze. Pun very much intended.

 

[StupendousMan]

I remember shooting my first rifle at some clay's way back in the 8th grade. Back then, I had to hold on for dear life to control the recoil.
Fast forward to mid-university. At this point, I'd quit running track, started lifting, but was still a ways away from my absolute peak strength. I was about to head out hunting for the first time, and it'd be my first time firing a rifle in ages. My friend was attempting to teach me how to use the scope without having the kickback drive it into my eye in his basement. (Yes, it was unloaded, yes, we checked multiple times, we both take firearm safety very seriously). I remember feeling like I was squeezing the life out of the thing and said "So like, just how hard am I supposed to squeeze this thing, it's been a while" and he reassured me pretty hard, so I kept going. About an hour later, I rolled up my sleeve and noticed a bruise forming on my shoulder. It occurred to both of us then that "pretty hard" meant veeerrrry different things to each of us. This lesson has stuck with me ever since when discussing grip strength on anything. That said, if a skilled rock climber tells me to grip hard, I'm going back to full on bruised-shoulder mode, that is a whole other level of grip strength. As a side note, we used to have these awesome deep dish 45's at my old dungeon gym I trained at. Pinch gripping those things in the middle for grip training was so much fun. I've been on the hunt for a couple used ones for years now to add to my home gym.

I recently re-learned this same lesson getting an in person lesson on throwing a forehand better.

I finally bit the bullet and bought a tech-disc. It comes in June. I'm curious to play around with it.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

I recently re-learned this same lesson getting an in person lesson on throwing a forehand better.

Definitely curious to hear some results from your tech disc.

To be clear, what did you end up doing with your FH grip? Were you not gripping tight enough?

 

[StupendousMan]

Definitely curious to hear some results from your tech disc.

To be clear, what did you end up doing with your FH grip? Were you not gripping tight enough?

No no just the opposite, I had gone back to full shoulder bruise mode and was seemingly death gripping it beyond recognition without even meaning to lol. Gripped it lighter and suddenly it was only bad and not embarrassingly abysmal .

 

[disc-golf-neil]

No no just the opposite, I had gone back to full shoulder bruise mode and was seemingly death gripping it beyond recognition without even meaning to lol. Gripped it lighter and suddenly it was only bad and not embarrassingly abysmal .

I've been meaning to start testing FH stuff too but I have too much BH stuff to test but when I get around to it I'll try a looser FH grip too, but I suspect it will be similar for me like with my BH results where loosening the grip just made it harder for me to go full power. I've done some FH tinkering with the tech disc here or there just while warming up or in between BH stuff, but not very focused.

I also want to test, with the 2 finger stacked grip and a power grip, having the thumb further forward vs further back. Like in the stacked grip, the thumb can be pinching closer to where the fingertips are underneath, or a bit further away from the fingertips. Someone I met on the course asked Gannon Buhr in one of his clinics about his FH grip and Gannon mentioned his pinch point on his stacked grip was between thumb and index fingertip and ever since then (a few weeks) I've been intentionally sliding my thumb up further to pinch at the fingertips. If I'm not careful, when sliding the thumb up, my middle finger's middle joint will want to bend to help the thumb reach further forward, but instead, I bend the base knuckle (bottom of finger) to allow the thumb to reach forward more.

Part of me feels like having the thumb back should make the middle finger in the stacked grip more prominently positioned to sling the disc out, but in reality I think it's just less solid and slips more easily under the weight / momentum at higher speeds compared to the thumb pinching closer to the fingertips under to secure it.

I haven't done any significant FH formwork or filming, but whenever I warmup or throw them on the course (much less than BH) I'm still always trying to throw them better and further. It will be interesting to see how close I've gotten to my FH speed plateau from all the FH work being during rounds or warming it up with the tech disc before a round compared to when I start to focus on it more with the tech disc. It feels like I'm already close to a plateau but I'm hopefully there will be at least a few gains here or there when I focus on it more.

I just recently for the first time did enough max FH speed throws with the tech disc to get a baseline stats set and lately, since I slightly injured my knee, I've been doing more putting practice and when I get bored of that (frequently) I've been ripping FH's with the putters too which feels like it's helped a lot.


Jake puts his middle finger pad on top of his index fingernail similar to Ryan Sheldon (IIRC) and he thinks it helps lower his wobble. I briefly tried the grip and other variants of it like Sextons but


IIRC, these lower wobble ones below for me were with the FH power grip (2.05 avg wobble from this grouping) but I grip lock late with the FH power grip b/c I'm not used to it being easier to get a stronger grip with it and it feels like I have to focus more on pushing the disc out with the middle finger since the index is pinching more.

Hyzer came more natural on FH for me and since I didn't really practice FH much, I didn't learn anhyzers really but just now started to while messing with putters like I mentioned above, that single cue you hear of 'following through with the palm up' was huge for anhyzer forehands for me, but I haven't tried any high power anhyzer FH yet.

 

[disc-golf-neil]

Short one. Many putts called 'nose up' are not actually nose up.



Also posted it to discuss over in this other thread. Just before I saw that thread I putted with the tech disc for the first time and was surprised about the nose angles and this other thread gave me the idea to do this comparison vid: Nose up to flat to nose down putt

 

[disc-golf-neil]

Follow up to the last video (with added clickbait, lol) showing practical examples of the nose neutral-to-slightly-nose-down-high-launch-angle stroke vs actually-nose-up-lower-launch-angle stroke: