Critical Misunderstood Concept

[Blake_T]

Something i've noticed over the past couple of years is that many people really don't seem to understand a key concept that relates to most of the teaching concepts I've developed recently.

the root of this misunderstanding is: stopping/pausing vs. moving X far.

this happens with with the hammer pounds, shoulder rotation, and related things.

e.g. trying to pause halfway through a 180 degree rotation is DIFFERENT from moving 90 degrees, then moving 90 degrees.

similarly, moving 1' is different from trying to move 4' and stopping after moving 1'.

people as a whole want to move too much and think they have to stop the full motion to make things happen. the truth is you just have to move LESS.

while the result might appear the same, less motion keeps momentum under control, while stopping a larger motion gets your momentum out of control. an easy example of this is trying to jump 2' forwards vs. trying to jump 10' forwards and stopping mid air after moving 2'. it just doesn't work that way.

[Parks]

I think this relates back to the smoothness/flow like water concept. A ton of long throwers say throw smooth, and then people try to force everything. Allowing yourself to follow through vs. forcing yourself to follow through is a world of difference.

[zj1002]

The one thing I teach people with int/adv skills is to stop thinking of the throw as "rotating/spinning the body" and focus of moving forward/linear. It has helped a few guys slow down the actual rotations to a point where they can time and feel it. So many guys want to spin the shoulder al the way back around before the arm extends forward.

[cubeofsoup]

I think this relates back to the smoothness/flow like water concept. A ton of long throwers say throw smooth, and then people try to force everything. Allowing yourself to follow through vs. forcing yourself to follow through is a world of difference.

Getting people to relax is a monumental task. People in general seem to be tight, inflexible, and uncomfortable doing anything other than habit. Getting a smooth looking motion out of an am can be like pulling teeth. When it happens you generally see a huge light bulb go off and they finally understand what you were getting at.

Blake do you use any drills of non-technique-specific movements to teach fluidity or pacing?

[Blake_T]

For disc golf... The hammer and water bottle drills... The right pec drill, etc. they still all fil unless people do them differently than their current throw.

Non dg-related is just about anything that involves movement. Sports, martial arts, dancing, driving a car, etc. all follow the dame rules of physics, so anything applies to doing something else well tends to also apply to disc golf.

Zj: i think people want to believe it's the large muscle groups that do the bulk of the work. The large muscle groups get things into position but it is the timing of the smaller muscles that convert potential energy into kinetic energy. E.g. "The shoulder pulls the arm" should be thought of as "the shoulder guides the arm into position to unload."

[zj1002]

I know alot of folks I teach have trouble with the "pause" so I try to never really talk about it as a part of the throw. Hence why I try to never use the terms pull or spin, as folks take those very literal. I teach the bent elbow as a forward push. The water bottle and some other home made devices helped me, and I have seen really good results in teaching it to others. I try to teach what you call the hammer first(to tourney AMs). then over time as they develop a good base, I go into understanding the shoulder as a guide to set up the pocket. Then once that shoulder slows, we move into getting the extension through the zone. Devices similar to the water bottle are great for this, much better than a towel.

The change in direction happens very fast but its effortless when you understand how and why it needs to be timed. I think the issue is there is never an actual definitive "pause" until you have the right quality and number of reps in. Im at the point where I can feel the disc as it goes through the final power arc. The setup to get to the power zone is muscle memory, when I'm in it I feel the split pause as I staring to unload followed by the arc and extension through the final zone. It's a really sixth sense type of feeling when I can actually feel every bit of the disc weight as I manipulate it. In my mind everything is just a set up to get me to extend forward.

It's my feeling that teaching people literal terms, like pull, pause and spin, gives them a word to latch onto. If I told them pause, then pull, then spin...those terms are easy to visualize and take literally as the motion. I'll really only use those terms with a student when they have a good enough base to know the words are loose terms. Teaching people to move forward(not spinng around) to set up a shift->arc has seen better results

I think it's an uphill battle with these terms because the you always here phrases like "nice pull"

[zj1002]

And in a lot of the stuff people read on the forums I think people look for the easy answer. They read pause and then try to pause for 2 seconds. They don't comprehend the meat of why/how the pause or shift happens. It's really hard to communicate some of this on forums and even I'm video. Seeing it and getting feedback in person hits much deeper. If I tried to hammer every disc my elbow would blow out, it's about getting the reps to understand how the disc/body has to move. Same with the trigger pull I worked on last year. It helped me feel the disc move, but I used it as a practice technique and not part of my throw

[CJ1998]

Seems like perhaps the term "pause" is a bit of a misnomer. Would it be more correct to think of it as two separate motions which overlap?

The first motion being the transition from facing from 180 degrees away from the intended line to 90 and the second being from 90 to facing. They kind of overlap and perhaps there is a perceived pause just before the initiation of the second motion. Also, these motions are initiated in different ways.

Is that close?

[Blake_T]

That is close, Cj, and probably a good way of visualizing.

However, the seconday turn is more of what joins the throw to the follow through. The first turn leads you to the hit. The second turn happens as the hit becomes the follow through.