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Building Consistency: Visual Aiming by Cody Lee Posted: 4-29-06 It has come to my attention that the physical aspect of throwing a disc accurately has become the forefront of disc golf improvement. While proper technique and coordination play a large part in the manipulation of the wrist, elbow, arm, shoulders, torso, hips leg and feet, people often look to manipulate these through speed and angle of movement in order to fix problems with accuracy. However, if you are using correct physical form, there is another solution to further improve accuracy that people know about, but rarely associate with disc golf: hand-eye coordination, or more correctly body-eye coordination. Most people are familiar with body-eye coordination as they grew up with some sort of background in sports whether is be soccer, basketball, baseball, or whatever sport that was popular where you grew up. Take baseball for example. You are taught how feet positioning, leg movement, upper torso swing, arm movement and wrist snap all come together to create the baseball pitch or throw. You start out by learning how to aim with your body, and slowly begin to incorporate how to visually target and aim and inherently “teach” your body how to propel the baseball in that direction, and ultimately accurately. However, you see people often forgetting or ignoring this method when they consider improving in disc golf in favor of aiming strictly with there body since this is the mainstream method that they are most familiar with. While physical aiming plays a dominant role in disc golf, there is only a certain limit that can be reached with this method. People often grab a disc, step up to the tee pad, line up physically in the direction they want to throw, check disc hyzer and nose angles, and expect the disc to do a certain thing when they throw because they have lucked out and had the disc fly perfectly once before. They then stand there wondering why the disc is not where they want it to be, or where it needs to be, and what is that key secret that they are looking for to fix the problem. That key secret that most disc golfers are lacking is visual aiming. This is something that most advanced players have not completely figured out, but the majority of the pros seemed to have grasped. Scott Stokely talks very briefly about this in both his videos and disc golf book by explaining the focal point, but spends the majority of the time discussing the slingshot technique, a form of physical aiming. What is visual aiming? It's the next logical step to breaking through accuracy plateaus by gaining disc control, which is something that everyone is looking for or wanting to improve. Visual aiming is something that the competitive player can work on immediately by practicing, or the casual disc golfer can work on over time during play. Visual aiming is achieved by creating a focal point to which your disc will pass on its way to the basket. The focal point is generally the position, spot, or area in which you need a disc to pass through before turning, flipping, rolling, skipping, or to merely ensure the disc has the largest margin of error when approaching the basket. More commonly people tend to pick a spot that will ensure the disc can make it around or past a few select obstacles like trees, bushes, O.B., or through a gap. Focus in on this area and imagine a 1' x 1' box. This is going to be your focal point for your throw. The trick for visually aiming with a focal point is to maintain visual sight of your focal point for as long as possible before your reach back, and immediately as you start your pull through. Your head should always be the last part of your body that rotates on the reach back and pull through. How to Visually Aim: While I will go into further detail about how to practice and train for visual aiming, let me first talk about the fundamentals. While you will see some small immediate results, such as more confidence in your throw and some improvement in accuracy, you will need to practice to see any real improvement such as consistency. Visual Aiming Practice: There are several different ways to train for visual aiming. While they may seem weird or funny to you, its simply because you are not use to doing these kinds of practice drills. Putting and Approaching Practice from 5 feet to 30 feet: This drill is the cheapest and easiest training aid to set up and use. This exercise allows a simple way to practice putting indoors or out and practice hitting small gaps that you might encounter from behind a bush, tree, or other natural growth. Take a blanket and suspend it from a doorframe, the ceiling, rafters, or any elevated point. The heavier the blanket the better it stops discs. Using masking tape, make a 1 foot by 1 foot square and place a small piece of tape dead center of this box. This box is your focal point and the small piece of tape is your focal point for putting. Since the tape is removable, you can change your focal point to be high or low for either up or down shots for approaching or putting. Hyzer, Anhyzer, and Gap Approach Shot Practice from 10 feet to 60 feet: This drill is very inexpensive to set up and use as well. For this you will need a Hula-Hoop and either rope or a cinch strap. The hula-hoop is then attached to a tree, tree branch, telephone pole, or suspend it from an object. The hula hoop now becomes your area of error around your focal point which you will visualize in the middle of the hula-hoop. With this setup, you can practice throwing straight, hyzer, or anhyzer gap shots. This practice alone will rapidly improve your ability to hit gaps on approach shots. Once you feel comfortable with this drill, you can position your practice basket in a location behind the hula-hoop and attempt to either park the disc under the basket or actually hit the chains to increase the difficulty and skill needed. Drives and Approaches from 60 feet plus and Driving through Mandatory Objects: This is one of the most overlooked training aids that most people have probably owned, currently own, or know someone that has one: The Sports Net. These can run about $40 to $50 at any Wal-Mart or sporting goods store and is usually found in the golf section. This is a loose net that is staked to the ground and is designed to catch anything from golf balls to soccer balls. Set the net up and practice throwing shots that hit the net area. The idea is to treat the net as being the discs landing area around the basket or as a mandatory area between two trees. This drill can also help your long-range accuracy on throwing hyzer, anhyzer, or straight shots. While these practice drills help to train and coordinate your visual aiming with your physical aiming, you will find your ability to control your discs will greatly improve. You will notice that your sidearm and backhand flicks, hyzers, anhyzers, lobs, tomahawk/thumbers/hammer shots (the beginning of the flight path), pancakes, flick rollers, and any other shots you practice not only perform better but are more consistently accurate. Back to Articles Back to Main Page |