Any disc golfers?

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Originally Posted by ChrisS

Yea I've heard it called that too, I've also heard frolf. We have 2 courses right now, one takes about 2-2.5 hours the other is what I'd call a "putt-putt" course the average hole is less than 75 feet straight on and very open. What discs or type a frisbee are you playing with?

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I've got a set I got at walmart that has a putter, a driver, and something in-between. I forget what's it's called. One is white, one is red, and the other yellow I think. Or perhaps orange. We haven't played since last summer.

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Originally Posted by ChrisS

I haven't played ultimate frisbee in years! You should try disc golf then we can help each other out with pointers.

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Disc Golf sounds like it involves less running. That sounds like more my style lol...

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Originally Posted by jdouglas

Re: Maxing out @ 300ft...

Postby JHern » Tue Jan 19, 2010 5:28 pm
Two facts:

Fact 1: 300 ft is about as far as most men can throw using primarily the strength of their arm to propel the disc. For women it is closer to 230 ft.

Fact 2: The fact that you get the same distance no matter how you do your step implies that you aren't getting anything out of your legs, which drive your torso, which is the platform for your shoulders...

The sum:

Fact 1 + Fact 2 = You're strong-arming, throwing with your arm, and you're not getting much of anything from your torso and shoulders.

Your arm is of order 10X less powerful than your legs/torso. Stop throwing with your arm! Your arm is only useful for positioning and gripping, other than that, it is purely passive. Your arm needs to be turned into a whip that is driven by the powerful motion of your legs/hips/torso/shoulders.

Here's an exercise I might suggest:

Stand still with your arms at your side, completely relaxed. Turn your hips and torso back slowly and then rotate your hips quickly to the open position. Your arms should be whipped out and around in a windmill motion, without you using a single muscle in your arms. That's the feeling you should be aiming for.

Next do the same thing, except extend your throwing elbow out sideways from your body and hold it there (as if you put a vice around your shoulder). Allow your lower throwing arm and hand to hang limp from your elbow. Do it as if your arm were asleep and some mechanical device was locked onto your shoulder to keep the elbow pointed out side ways from your torso. Don't allow your elbow to move forward or backward, nor up nor down. It is completely locked in place, as if you no longer even had a shoulder joint and your upper arm were fused into your shoulder so that it would always point out sideways.

Now slowly turn your hips and torso back, and turn them abruptly open again. Don't use a single muscle in your arm! Now you should find that you've turned your arm into a whip. Your lower arm should be whipping forward super-fast. In fact, you can whip your lower arm forward way faster in this manner than your arm muscles could ever dream of doing. Your arm muscle strength decreases rapidly as speed increases, so they are useless anyways...trying to use them will only slow down this motion. You'll find that whipping your lower arm forward in this manner, with the elbow "stopped," will feel relatively effortless in comparison to trying to throw with your arm as you've probably been doing before.

Practice getting this feeling for a while. (Later you can work on the grip and positioning in finer detail, but for now focus on using your legs/hips/torso/shoulders as the powerful motor for whipping your arm forward.)

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Thanks so much for posting this. I took my son to the park and tooky discs. I threw my wolf over 200 feet and that's 70+ feet further than I've been throwing it, my arm wasn't sore afterwards and it was way more strait as well!

I play casually with some friends once in a while. We only use second hand drivers and midrange discs. A backpack full of beer is our only other piece of "equipment" on a hot summer day. Great game whether you're going to an actual course or taking turns picking holes out in the middle of nowhere.