Eric's Throwing Videos - New Full Round Video

[emiller3]

Aug '11 Video (See page 3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuVKZV26J-o&feature=youtu.be&hd=1

April '11 Video (See page 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4cjmbjq83M

June '10 Videos (See page 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkA8ArZOsXU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX0JgiofjSM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W6BnaOy3pBQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akkRK2k2EmU

March 09 Video (See page 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JhUC5rc8eB0

Original Videos
Hello all,
First time poster, although I've been trolling the site for quite a while, observing from a distance, leveraging comments on other people's techniques before I had to come and embarrass myself. But the time has come. Blake, and all you regular posters, thanks for all of your advice and analysis on this site, it's THE site for technique information!

I've posted two throws, both slow motion and regular speed. I have three others, but it's taking so long to upload them that I haven't put them up yet.

Full Speed Throw 1
Slo-Mo Throw 1

Full Speed Throw 2
Slo-Mo Throw 2

Thanks in advance!
Eric



IF you're interested in how I drive, here's a little about me:

I live at altitude and play between 6000 and 7000 feet. I will be playing Golden Gate Park course at the end of the month, so I'll finally know how throwing at altitude is different.

I played casually a for two years, took a year off thanks to my caddy there in the videos, just started playing once a week in January.

I just got over a severe bout with nose-up issues that still come up on some throws. I try to keep my wrist down, but I forget sometimes.

I am now struggling with off-axis torque.

My grip is getting stronger, but the disc still comes out loose when I'm not paying attention to it.

My good throws will come out flat, turn over gradually for the second quarter of the flight, and fade forward and right (I'm lefty) for the last quarter of the flight. At least, that's how it looks to me.

I have not mastered release angles, anhyzers, or anything like that. I have just started utilizing nose angles in drives and mid-ranges and am not consistent with it. I know what a hyzer-flip looks like because I've done it by accident, and I know what turning the disc over looks like with snap compared to throwing with OAT, but I don't do either well, if at all. My throw is definitely velocity dominated as everything my disc does is gradual, not sudden.

I have measured the the field that I throw on. I throw 50' farther when I'm going the downhill direction, so I've averaged the two to produce these numbers:

25% of my drives fly 350' or less, typically due to nose up issues
60% of my drives fly 350' - 375' in the manner that I described as a "good throw"
15% of my drives fly between 375' and 430', typically when I use the correct disc for the conditions and do things just right (relatively speaking )

[Blake_T]

Eric,

here's some quickie comments that should solve all of your problems and make you poop gold.

-your footwork is clean UNTIL the last step. everything looks like it's going to fire fine but then you seem to slide your step out an additional 6" or so.... couple this with setting down on your heel and you end up leaning back towards your heels.

-due to the lean back your natural shoulder rotation dives your left shoulder down and creates some OAT.

-the other factor from the long last step is that you aren't getting your weight forward, which makes throwing nose down incredibly hard.

your power zone here is excellent arm/elbow/disc position:


however... your center of gravity is about a foot too far back... think over your foot or in front of it.

My grip is getting stronger, but the disc still comes out loose when I'm not paying attention to it.

this happens more often when your elbow comes through late. based upon the last step in your footwork, i'm going to guess that the majority of your errant throws happen due to mistiming caused by that step.

i wasn't picking up any wrist extension either, but that's another can of worms.

for now, shorten your last step a bit (keep a good knee bend like you have going right now though) and work on getting your weight forward. those two factors should probably add ~30-40' of D and fix OAT. also, try to keep your left/right balance with your weight over the balls of your feet vs. back on your heels when you come through.

[JR]

Welcome. You have good distance. I'm interested in how much your distance changes at lower altitudes.

I didn't watch over and over but to me your arm speed seems fairly constant in the end of throw and most of the acceleration of the speed at which your arm is moving comes from lower in your body. You're very smooth with your arm. You could try adding more acceleration out of your arm towards the end of the throw until the disc leaving that is. Searching the forums with power focus and late acceleration as search words should give a lot more info.

[SkaBob]

I'll second what JR said about your acceleration. Both throws your arm speed looks pretty constant start to finish, instead of accelerating through and past the rip.

[black udder]

Doesn't look like there is a powerful finish or much follow through either.

I wouldn't think the throws are going as far as you claim from watching the throws. They look super casual. Not doubting you, just saying that looks can be deceiving. I feel like I look like I'm heaving a VW and it just gets over 300'.

Blake didn't mention finish/follow through, so maybe it's not really that bad and all just my poor observation skills.

Nice throws though...

[emiller3]

here's some quickie comments that should solve all of your problems and make you poop gold.

As you can tell from my face on the picture you posted, this is exactly what I'm trying to do...

Wow, all of you guys are dead-on, thanks. I went and searched for 'late acceleration' and came up with one of your posts, JR. You sited the Jarvis brothers, here. My throw is similar, with the exception of the exact three things you guys brought up here: stride too long, no late acceleration, and balance on heels causing me to tip back.

http://s289.photobucket.com/albums/ll209/ace_dew/?action=view&current=Throws.jpg

They seem to generate the late acceleration by kind of straightening their leg and spinning on the spot, like they're planting their leg into the ground, stopping their body's forward momentum, and transfering all of that momentum into whipping their arm around. I kind of just keep my leg bent and just fall forwards and off to the left, not gaining any acceleration, just riding out what I have left from my intial shoulder turn, which is what I think you guys are describing as constant velocity and a weak follow through. I see that there's a lot of discussion here regarding this issue.

So, shortening my stride and staying on the balls of my feet are something I know how to work on. Do you guys think trying to emulate the legwork of the Jarvis brothers to get that abrupt stop and spin would be a good way to speed up my late acceleration, or is there a better way?

As far as actual distance, I think my estimates are pretty accurate, mainly because they're not estimates, I measured them! I could be off about 10 ft due to my method of measuring, but probably not much more than that. I agree that guestimates could be way off, I used to practice on a football field and found I was overestimating my distance by as much as 80' at times.

[SkaBob]

I think working on your footwork will do more to help your timing and nose angle issues than acceleration. With better timing your acceleration will improve, but really that's more a back/shoulder/arm thing than a leg/feet thing.

[black udder]

As far as actual distance, I think my estimates are pretty accurate, mainly because they're not estimates, I measured them! I could be off about 10 ft due to my method of measuring, but probably not much more than that. I agree that guestimates could be way off, I used to practice on a football field and found I was overestimating my distance by as much as 80' at times.

Don't mind me, I'm just a jealous old man wishing I could throw it that far

From what I can recall, I wouldn't emulate the Jarvis brothers. I think they did some really flexible twisting - especially in the knee area. I'd suggest keeping as much as you can the same and just work on the few things mentioned one at a time. See what happens. Shorten the last step and do that for a little while. When you're comfortable with that, take a video and see if anything else has changed because of that adjustment. Then look at what you want to improve again. If shortening the stride gets you more forward over your plant leg, then you might get the faster acceleration and less nose down that you're after

[Blake_T]

They seem to generate the late acceleration by kind of straightening their leg and spinning on the spot, like they're planting their leg into the ground, stopping their body's forward momentum, and transfering all of that momentum into whipping their arm around.

no. they have a super tight axis and the acceleration is caused by opening and extending their elbow.

i would strongly recommend not mimicing their lower body placement.

easiest way to learn to accelerate is to shorten up.

[emiller3]

I guess I didn't understand that shortening my step will aid in that late acceleration. I like black udder's idea, I'll work on shortening up the step and keeping my left/right balance, and see where my acceleration is at in a while, then worry about trying to increase it.

[Timko]

They seem to generate the late acceleration by kind of straightening their leg and spinning on the spot, like they're planting their leg into the ground, stopping their body's forward momentum, and transfering all of that momentum into whipping their arm around.

no. they have a super tight axis and the acceleration is caused by opening and extending their elbow.

i would strongly recommend not mimicing their lower body placement.

easiest way to learn to accelerate is to shorten up.

I totally understand what this means after todays round. That super tight axis generates effortless power. It also almost forces the elbow out. Once causes the other.

[JR]

They seem to generate the late acceleration by kind of straightening their leg and spinning on the spot, like they're planting their leg into the ground, stopping their body's forward momentum, and transfering all of that momentum into whipping their arm around.

no. they have a super tight axis and the acceleration is caused by opening and extending their elbow.

i would strongly recommend not mimicing their lower body placement.

easiest way to learn to accelerate is to shorten up.

I totally understand what this means after todays round. That super tight axis generates effortless power. It also almost forces the elbow out. Once causes the other.

When you do it standing on a carpet without shoes very little straight line motion concentrating on rotary part of power generation(pivoting on plant step) it's fairly easy to feel what readysetstab and I discussed in an earlier thread. It's like your muscles are being pulled away from the bones of the throwing arm opposite to the direction the arm is moving. I haven't tried this more than twice on a filed and man it requires a totally different timing than trying to run as fast as you can and throw on a direct line much/most of the power coming from the linear part of the throwing. So called muscling if ever there's a worse way to waste tremendous amount of used muscle power and not get the resultant distance. Let me illustrate.

I took a video of myself at 60 pictures per second. Using a program called Media Player Classic I started the video. I pressed arrow right to stop the playback. Each consecutive pressing of the button advances the video by one picture. I got to where the disc releases out of my hand and from there counted how many pictures it took for the disc to land on the ground. That gave me the amount of 1/60ths of second. Multiply those and I got the time the disc was airborne. Having a GPS measurement of the distance allowed me to calculate the average speed of the disc in the air for the flight. This is accurate information. I made an estimate of the distance of the throws on one hole of USDGC 2005 video. Dave Feldberg on the 420' hole where Barry Schulz overthrew the hole by 10' with a Roc. And said it is downhill. Not by much I think. I don't know with which disc Feldberg threw. And I suppose he wasn't throwing at full speed. I used a Wraith. I lost by 4.5 MPH in average speed to Feldy and others and even more to Schulz. Oh boy... The comparison was even more humiliting against Christian Sandström doing a 360 throw at Tali Open 2006 final hole of the finals. IIRC he threw with almost 50 % faster average speed than I do. An even more unflattering is the time it takes me to move the front edge of the disc from my left side to the release in FOUR TIMES longer amount of time it took Sandström. I'm not 4x shorter than him

People have stopped to watch me prcatice disc golfers too because discs do leave my hand at a quick pace. They just don't keep up the speed for more than maybe the first third to half of the flight and start to fade earlier and harder than Jussi Meresmaa's and Sandström's 360s in practice at Tali Open 2007 did. They threw around 500'. Meresmaa used Discmania CD for those throws. Their discs were horizontal at much lower speeds than my discs start to fade. Obviously Wraiths and Destroyers have a much higher cruising speed than CD. Their hyzer flips flew level and higher than mine and started to fade very late in flight at very slow speeds. I've never witnessed such an obvious benefit of high spinning rates on the disc.

It's obvious that I need to start to lessen linear speed to try to learn the timing and generation of more rotary power. It's easy to see what it does spinning on carpet with as little contact to the ground as possible. Incorporating that into an effective throw is another matter completely. I've noticed that my run ups tend to somehow confuse me or prevent me from pushing hard with my left leg into and after the plant step. I manage a good push spinning on the carpet. Linearly fast throws with even half of what can do on the carpet would benefit greatly so I'm really not sure where the optimum balance for me lies. The reason for my zeal for more rotary power is mainly the obvious lessening of the time it takes for the arm to move from back to release adding tremendous initial speed. But more important than that is keeping up the speed and being able to use discs that have a lower cruising speed and don't fade as early and as hard. If that doesn't help in D I don't know what does beyond the standard advice here.

My throw is in winter clothes and on slippery ground with a little less than full power from legs and hips. I won't post that video because my form is messed up. I have to train and wait for firm ground before posting my videos. And try to learn to utilize more rotary power. Obviously.

Eric: Markus Källström also rotates supafast like Jarvis brothers and doesn't step froward after the throw a lot or at all depending on the throw. Källström converts all of his run up and x step power into rotation(pivoting on the plant step) adding spin to the disc. He's a snap monster. He did play injured in the Sugarbush Open. His knee was hurt. I don't know if it's his form that caused that. I agree with Blake that it may not be a technique that is good to adopt. My reasoning is health but I don't know what Blake has as his motives.

Eric, you're right about jamming the leg into ground providing a place to pivot around. That's how I've practiced on carpet. It works like a charm in those conditions. It's probably dangerous with shoes on on tee pads for knees. Trying twice in a field I gave up because I was doing nose down practice and evaluating how removing of flashing from discs made them fly in conjunction with more nose down angle. What I noticed that aborted my attempt at trying to learn low linear speed hard left leg push into a fast pivot rotary power dominated form was that the timing is supercritical. And everything happens at a much faster pace than with linear power dominant throwers. Several times but I don't know how many times faster. Another video is required to determine that but first I gotta learn to throw like that and not fail to move my arm like I did the other time I tried this No wonder Sandström moved his disc 4x faster than I did between release and the disc getting to the left side.

I consider rotary power more important than linear based on what I've noticed so far. Wish I can combine both well enough. In the articles somewhere it was stated in different words that spin on the disc generated by snap reduces the drag on the disc keeping the disc flying faster for a longer time. I've witnessed slow flight without fade too so that helps doubly for distance. Motivation...

Edit: Great. I could've saved trouble had I first read the newest posts from the thread: Snap, arm speed, myths and observations. Blake and Rehder make similar points.

[Blake_T]

Markus Källström also rotates supafast like Jarvis brothers and doesn't step froward after the throw a lot or at all depending on the throw.

kallstrom has very different form to the jarvis's though... especially in that he pivots throughout the throw and his knee is bent. he also leans forward at the rip.

part of both his and the jarvis's lean backs are that they all throw quite high and you can't get way forward like you're throwing a 12' high laser when you are throwing a 50' high hyzer flip or flex shot.

[black udder]

While Kallstrom's form works great for him, I don't know that it's one to emulate just because of how unique it is. I believe he shares many of the same form similarities of other throwers, but is too unique to want to copy. Blake had also mentioned that Barry Schultz was another one who shared points, but was not one to copy.

[JR]

Markus Källström also rotates supafast like Jarvis brothers and doesn't step froward after the throw a lot or at all depending on the throw.

kallstrom has very different form to the jarvis's though... especially in that he pivots throughout the throw and his knee is bent. he also leans forward at the rip.

part of both his and the jarvis's lean backs are that they all throw quite high and you can't get way forward like you're throwing a 12' high laser when you are throwing a 50' high hyzer flip or flex shot.

I know there are differences in position of body parts. I meant that they all seem to plant their right leg fairly stiffly into the ground and pivot around it letting the fairly stiff right leg be fairly constant in position compared with the rest of the body (not totally in one place but close). Letting the sole of the right shoe turn on the ground in one spot dissipating some of the generated power through friction. That is not important. What is is the fact that they have a great smash factor where all the generated power from the run up and x step or shuffle step is used to make the disc fly fast and with great spin rate.

The expenditure of the created power is shown by the fact that Källström especially doesn't have a lot of forward momentum left after the pivot. And the obvious great arm speed after release ending up far to the back.

I'm not sure but I think that Jarvis brothers probably have more arm generated speed than Markus evidenced by how extremely far their arm goes in the follow through. Flexibility helps obviously too. I don't know who pushes hardest with the left leg. I just thought of this being a factor and haven't tried to watch differences in that yet.