Nice writeup
@BenjiHeywood it made the whip analogy much clearer to me.
What trips me up is the opposite of smooth, and its often called muscling. Obviously in a smooth throw all sorts of muscles are involved in an intricate timeline including relaxing them at the appropriate time (for example arms and shoulders are relaxed at the peak of the backswing) and contracting them again. Even a smooth thrower cant throw max distance all day. Muscling is really just breaking the chain either by contracting a muscle at the wrong spot in the sequence of a throw or not relaxing it in the first place. Maybe the better alternative is to just call it stiff throwing and stiff throwers might also hold static cues for their throw in their mind, thereby making them stiffer.
All the curves Sewer Bill posted is how I imagine the muscle tone in a throw works. Muscles going from relaxed to contracted in a manner that is impossible to consciously control and if everything works out, a smooth throw is achieved.
From personal experience, my shots feel the smoothest when I stretched the day before and that stretching includes some exercises for the rotator cuff, some for hips and some for legs. Maybe stretching the day before helps with keeping the muscles relaxed. And in smooth throws I would also feel the dynamic loading in a throw the most like feeling the drive side stretched out and the resistance of the brace against the mass im throwing into it.
You can argue there is a difference between stiff throwing, ala, low mobility throwing, vs muscling throwing.
Muscling has a lot to do with over use of the muscles in general in the throw, not only at wrong times, but in low amounts vs large amounts.
So, a good powerful smooth throw, lets make up some numbers, is using 50 different muscles to apply leverage to the disc, while a muscled throw might be using 10-15 muscles.
Lets assume were applying the same amount of force overall with those 2 throws.
You're gonna gas out quick.
The idea of applying a load over many muscles is what we want to do to stay fresh, loose and relaxed, but also allows us to generate more force with less effort.
When we muscle, were essentially throwing with the arm and a few shoulder muscles. As we are trying to contract all these muscles to be big and strong and powerful, we reduce mobility to a level that is not suitable for speed and leverage.
This is why it drives me nuts though people with just atrocious muscled form and they still are somehow able to throw far/well, and play for some level of time.
But I really do wonder how much their shoulder hurts the next day.
At one point when I was on my disc golf learning journey I was there.
I kept blowing my shoulder out though because I have a really old injury in my right shoulder. I was throwing 400 feet back then.
I'm lucky to throw 350 a lot of times now, but I can throw all day. And the next day and the next day.
It's pretty easy to gas people out endurance wise over time now, they can't keep up.
So, taking that rambling of whatever to the next spot.
When we muscle and use less muscles to generate that power, were usually using them out of sequence for starters, but were using them so out of sequence, by the time we are supposed to engage them, they are tired. Disc golf is about fast twitch muscle use if were talking about efficient powerful form, not muscled form like brodie/ezra. 2 different categories of throwing.
So, less muscles, overworked, being used out of order, over stressed to generate not a lot of mobility and flexibility because they are clenched tight. I think i'm repeating myself, i'm not going back to review this before hitting post.
While in a smooth more efficient throw using as many muscle groups as we can, we can lower effort, increase mobility and flexibility and this also allows us to keep the muscles out of strain allowing us to fire the fast twitch muscles in the correct order to achieve maximum efficiency, even if we dont throw far, like me, but were able to casually throw with no effort.
And to be honest.
I really really enjoy no effort golfing. It's far more fun to hit lines even if you dont throw far. Though.. it is nice to throw 450+ sometimes. And.. Some days I can. but rarely.
