Welcome to this episode of the Disc Golf Answer Man Show.
I am Bobby, Cool Daddy, Slick breeze, and I have with me a
special guest, Mr. Clint Easterly and he has blitz disc
golfer blitz DG on YouTube. OK, so let me tell you a little
back story. So I watch body Cam videos, I
watch police videos, I watch true crime stories a little bit
of I don't know if he ever heard it delivered, but he does like
live car shows. And of course I watched my fair
share of disc golf videos. Well, I was thumbing through
YouTube and I saw this video saying something about throwing
400 feet and I thought I would love to be able to throw 400
feet. I want to hear what this guy to
say. And of course, popped up Clint,
nice casual. Just I think you're, you're in
your yard, right? Your front yard or backyard.
And yeah, it was just you were just talking about some maybe
myths or misconceptions of about throwing far.
And I watched the whole video and I was like, I really like
this guy's approach to things and I want to get him on the
show. So I reached out to you and you
said yes. So thank you so much for getting
on the show. But real quick, just in case
anybody hadn't heard of you, tell me a little bit.
Tell me your kind of your elevator pitch as far as your
disc golf story. Oh, elevator pitch.
OK, well, I started playing disc golf not that that long ago,
about 3 years ago. I was a powerlifting coach
before. I've done a lot of powerlifting
basically, you know, just fitness stuff.
And about 3 years ago one of my buddies from my military service
actually came and visited me and was like there's you got this
disc golf course by your house, let's go out there and just
Chuck some discs. So we rented, you know, some
like super like in of ADX Sidewinder type discs.
We went out there and chucked a few, never played before really
and never like had terrible form whatever.
And I don't know, I just kind of got addicted to it.
So I spent about a year trying to get better, learn to throw
and watch everything I could possibly watch.
I'm a really, I have like a really addictive personality.
So if I get into something, I'm just like laser focused, like
I'll watch 10 hours a day of like form videos and this stuff.
And I had kind of a good background for form in general.
And I was pretty athletic already because I've been
working out for a long time. So I got to throw in pretty
quick, pretty far, pretty quick, I guess I should say and I
started out X step and one day I just tried standstilling like I
always knew my standstill was pretty fast, but I got a tech
disc and I was like, all right, well let's see what the
difference is and I could perform better more of the time
with a standstill than a next step.
So I was like, OK, well let's see how far I can take this.
Did that for a while, broke 70, broke 500 feet, you know, six
months into disc golf or something like that.
And then, you know, as I've watched all this coaching and
disc golf form stuff, I kind of realized that like none of it
was really hitting on like what I found that made me able to
throw far and like how I taught other people to throw far and it
was more about like be exactly like this.
Otherwise you can't throw far. And I, I don't think it's like
that. I think it's so much more like a
fluid movement and creating power the way that your body is
good at creating power instead of just being like really
dogmatic, like you need to look exactly like this.
You need to be balanced on this leg with this leg in the air.
Just never really, I never really had to do any of that.
Like once I got to, you know, 70 miles an hour, I could do it
from like all different positions.
So yeah, I made my first video two years ago.
I think it is. And it just took off.
Like I, you know, I thought I was just making a video just to
ramble on my back porch, you know, And it just took off.
Like people really liked it. And they really kind of, I guess
it, it reached out to them and they learned, you know,
something they didn't know. And then it just kind of
snowballed from there. I started teaching more and more
people and getting really good results and having like a really
good ratio of like people who came to me and increase their
speeds, you know, 5-10 miles an hour pretty quickly.
So I don't know, I kind of stumbled into being a content
creator. It's so funny, 'cause like, you
know, I have a daughter and she's, it's just so weird that
I'm, I'm a content. Creator.
Yeah. Yeah, 'cause I'm like, you know,
previous military, like not very like sociable.
And I'm the guy who's on YouTube, like with a bunch of
subscribers. So it's really strange.
I love it, I love it. That's just way as I've talked
to different people about content creation, it seems like
that's just how it starts is that I just want to make a
couple videos. I thought maybe people would
like it, and then it just it clicks, which is really cool.
So what branch of the military were you in?
I was in the army, I did six years.
Very cool. Did you got to see get to see a
lot of the country or? Yeah, I was at a few different
duty stations, Oklahoma, Georgia, so did a deployment,
that kind of stuff, so. Yeah.
So, and you mentioned powerlifting, so is that
something that you did you just start lifting weights a little
bit then looked into powerlifting or how'd you get
into that? Yeah, I actually was not super
athletic as a kid either. Like I played almost no sports
in high school. I wrestled for like a year and I
was always really big into like wrestling and stuff like that
with my dad. He was a drill Sergeant, taught
hand to hand combat, blah, blah, blah.
So we were arm wrestling and wrestling were like our ways of
showing affection, which was probably not very mentally
healthy, emotionally healthy, but yeah.
Very cool. OK, So the first thing when you
said powerlifting and you know, you, you look like you, you
know, you obviously you look like you work out.
Tell me because that's as my years in in in disc golf and
talking to people on the podcast, it does seem like a
misconception that to get distance you have to have a lot
of power in the sense of somebody with muscles.
It would make sense that they could RIP the disc and make it
go far. Tell me your stance on that.
So I mean, there's some truth to it for sure, 100%.
Like I think that your ceiling is going to go up the more power
you can produce, like muscularly for sure, OK.
But generally, like the most important thing in my opinion is
like coordination. So you can be athletic and not
be super strong. So there's tons of, I mean, all
kinds of like track athletes. They're not super big, bulky,
strong, but they're extremely coordinated.
And like you see this, you know, in all of the really good disc
golf players, the pro Tor players, they're not huge bulky,
but they're really well coordinated, like probably way
more than people think. And it's because they started
doing this when they were kids. So I mean, when you're that
young, like your neuroplasticity, right, is just
so like anything you do, your body is just like super
computing all these micro movements to make it efficient.
So their coordination when it comes to throwing disc is just
like top, top tier. And I think there is carryover
though from like, like lifting weights.
It's not really the strength that's going to make you throw
crazy far, but it is being able to use your muscles and
coordination, right? So even if you're not that big,
if you do sports, if you're athletic in general, you're
going to be able to learn the movement better because you're
just able to coordinate your body parts better.
That's just part of being an athlete.
Yeah, I, I noticed that a lot of times we at first when we
started disc golf answer me, it was a lot more of people sending
in a lot of questions, right? And the biggest question that
came across was always, how do I get more distance?
How do I get more distant? What would you say is a basic?
What is a misunderstanding that most people have when it comes
to achieving distance? OK, I think the most blatant one
that I probably talked about the most is like the misconception
that you need to throw with your hips.
Like I think that I think there was a lot of coaching done.
I don't know when like I'm not super like ingrained in the
history of this sport. But throwing with your hips,
like the idea that you like rotate your hips forward and
then your body follows or the disc follows is just like you
can see in the data in the mocap stuff we have.
It's not true. Like you were not initiating
your hips and then ripping your torso through and ripping your
arm through. That's not how you achieve like
the highest speeds in disc golf. So like, I think a lot of people
get caught in the throwing with their hips mindset where they're
really just trying to like wrench their hips through first
thing. And that's all it does is like
collapses the geometry of like their upper body.
So they're not getting as efficient of like a release.
And that's the most important thing.
Like, I like to describe it like you can make, let's just say
like 100 lbs of power, 100 kilowatts of power, right?
However, what percent you use of that, like that's actually going
to the disk is the most important thing, right, 'cause
if you're not being efficient with how much of that force is
actually getting to the disk, you can add more and more and
more leg power and it's just, it doesn't really matter, right?
And there's like there's a point where you're adding so much
light power you're you're taking away from the efficiency.
So it's like you're adding a bunch of like effort, but you're
actually getting less distance. And that's kind of one of the
things that I focus on on my channel is like efficiency in
your swing path and your upper body mechanics to actually get
as much of the energy as possible to the disc is the most
important thing. And then you add more light
power once you already have that efficiency, and you only add
what you can keep that efficiency with.
Interesting, very interesting. There's something you did
mention in that one video, I believe it was that particular
video. Is that how some people don't
understand or don't think about it, that there's so many
variables happening? There's so many things happening
in your body when you have a good throw, right?
There's so many things, timing and, you know, movement.
So if you don't mind, I'd like to start like from the bottom
and kind of work our way up the body of like what are the best
practices or things to keep in mind?
So let's start with the feet, the stance, or even the walk or
X step or whatever step you're you would suggest.
Walk us through the mindset of what you need for that.
OK, so I think for one, most people in my opinion just
started a standstill. It is much less to manage when
you don't need to be like dynamically affecting your
balance into the throw. Like it's it's extremely hard to
get an efficient X step and it takes like years even for a top
tier athlete to get a really good X step into brace where
they're using the momentum effectively to add power to the
disc. Most people are just X stepping
and messing their mechanics up. So they would throw farther if
they just made it less complicated and got the
mechanics right, I would say. But starting from the bottom,
it's kind of hard to go through every single thing in detail.
I've actually thought about doing a video like this before.
There's just so much going on. It's really hard to like hit
everything. But generally what I like to see
is the first thing is your lower body needs to be sturdy and
stable. That's kind of like, and there
are other coaches that talk about this now too.
It's kind of a recent thing where it used to be everyone was
just like rotate as fast as you can.
And now people are understanding it's not really rotate as fast,
as fast as you can. It's like you want to be sturdy
and stable in your lower body so that you're actually able to use
your torso and configure your upper body correctly.
And only when you can do that do you add some momentum.
So I kind of preach simplify your lower body like a wide leg.
Standstill is the best place to start.
You're going to have a ton of angle on your brace leg, so
you're not going to be able to kind of go past it.
It's going to be really easy to stay in balance and allow you to
figure out kind of your torso power and the geometry kind of
of your upper body, which matters a lot for efficiency.
The majority of power is coming from your arm.
We have study, we have data like Chris Taylor, Eunice Merlis,
they're doing kind of studies on mocap stuff and muscle
activation and the majority of your powers coming from your
arm. So like the idea that you're
throwing with your hips and rotating in your arm as a
noodle, It's, it's just not true.
Like you're the muscles activating in your arm are, I
mean, they just are activating and they are the majority of
power. And we've done a bunch of
testing to like, how far do you throw a standstill to X step on
your knees? Like we, we do these tests to
see what percentage of power you can throw from each position,
right? So on your knees, you're just
unable, you're much less able to use your hips as a power source.
And we're still seeing people throw like 80% of their Max, you
know, from their knees. So it's like your hips are
adding much less than people originally thought, I think.
Yeah, That that, that surprised me that you said that because
that's always what I, I would think is that the, the rotation,
the power, the whip or whatever comes from the from the hip.
But it's a cultural thing too. Like everybody thought that,
right? Like everybody has thought that.
And it's only recently that people are starting to realize
like it's not as much rotation equals power.
And like we see that in we have like angular velocity metrics on
throws, right, where hip rotation does not equal more
mile per hour out of your hands. So it is not spin faster to
throw harder, right? It's a lot more about coordinate
everything, be efficient and you just need kind of not that much
hip rotation. So that's the first thing I
would say be stable, be sturdy, get it wider base where you kind
of can't mess up. Learn to use your torso for a
good majority of the rotation. Your torso is is a huge
contributor to rotation, probably much more than your
hips. And learn to use your arm
effectively because you have to use your arm like it is.
It's not debatable when you look at the data that you're just,
you have to be pulling forward, you have to be using your arm
and you have to be rotating a lot with your torso and your
hips are kind of like along for the ride, adding a little bit.
It's not the opposite like I think was originally thought, I
don't know how many years ago where you're just cranking your
hips and everything else is kind of just following.
That's just we don't see that in the data.
And you know, shout out to the other coaches out there who are
looking at the data and like changing their views too,
because there are some coaches who started out very rotational
based and just recently have switched like, OK, you're not
rotating as much as we thought. Use your arm more.
You need to pull. We've recently saw in the last
couple years kind of people pivoting to this is what we see
in the data. So this is what we should start
teaching. Interesting.
I'm looking at your YouTube channel and I see one called
It's Leg day for Disc golfers. So talk to me about what?
What is something we have to keep in mind when it comes to
our legs during the throw? Yeah.
So I would say the biggest thing to focus on when it comes to
your legs is you need to be stopping is the biggest thing.
I would say it's not about rotation, it's about just
stopping. So like if you're running up or
you're walking up, you want to be basically hitting a wall kind
of right where you're not continuing forward so that you
can give yourself that stable base and convert at least some
of that momentum into the disk going farther.
I think that's what you're going to see in a lot.
And I should not say say it the way that I said it.
You should be slowing down. Decelerating is kind of the the
key because when you see people throw three 60s, they don't
stop, right? They they slow down when the
brace hits as much as they can and then they spill over with
everything that's left. So it's not about like a
complete stop. And there are coaches who teach
that as well. Like you want to stop the hips,
you want to end like basically stonewalled behind your brace.
And I think that's also kind of the wrong direction.
It's about like pushing back as much as you can and then leaving
yourself kind of a safe release outlet so that you're not like
putting too much stress on your body because like full bracing.
If you just Sprint up and try to full brace and stop every bit of
momentum behind your brace, like it's hard on your body, your
hips are going to hate you. And you know your lower back's
going to hate you. So you need to make sure that
you're also like following through.
And if you bring in too much momentum, you need to let some
of it through. So OK then then moving up to the
hips, you you've already mentioned that to the hips
aren't at aren't as important as once we thought it was, but what
is something to keep in mind when you are rotating the hips?
What is something to keep in mind when you are rotating the
hips? I would say one of the biggest
things that I kind of brought light to was like using the
posterior chain more so anteriors like quad chin,
posteriors like glute hamstring and getting kind of posterior
chain involvement. So I think like for a long time
there was a lot of like you want to be on your toes, right?
That's an athletic movement. And what you'll see mostly in
really high level throwers is they're not on their toe,
especially on their plant foot. Their whole foot gets down,
right? It's it's a lot like a single
leg squat. You want all three kind of the
tripod on your foot, right? You want all three points down
so you can engage both your hamstring, your glute and your
quad to all press into the ground.
Not, you know, like hit with your toe and brace a lot with
just your quad because being on your tippy toe makes it really
hard to use your hamstring and glute to help you press down.
You could think about like leg pressing.
You would never leg press on your tippy toes, right?
So it's the same concept. You really want to get into your
posterior chain so you can use your glute and your hamstring to
like assist in that downforce. Very interesting.
What? What are?
OK, so we moved up from the hips.
Now what about I guess, my torso?
What's going on there for you? What would you suggest?
OK. I think torso rotation is like
super underrated. I think you can generate a butt
load of power with almost just torso rotation.
So a lot of people are trying to overuse their hips and they're
not taking advantage of the very strong muscles in their torso.
So you can train this by doing lots of different stuff.
But Eunice, the Finnish head coach, he likes to do like from
the knees throws to really train acceleration and deceleration of
the torso. So you're basically training
your abdomen, your ABS, your lower back, your whole core to
both spin fast and stop fast. And that power is really useful
in the in the backhand, I think. And in the forehand, really,
it's much more useful than people get it credit for, I
think. And then, OK, so now we'll go up
to the arms. How am I holding it to make sure
I get the most spin out of the disk?
Spin, OK, spin's a good one. I think there are two main
things that you want to do to get spin.
One is risk oil, you know, wrist curl.
So your goal would be to have and I wouldn't, I shouldn't say
like the maximum amount because you can't like overdo it and
like touch the disc to your forearm.
But you want a good amount of risk oil as late in the throw as
possible. You want the wrist to be the
last thing to unravel. So as your arm comes out, you're
unraveling your upper arm, then your lower arm and your wrist is
curled to the last bit. And it's the last piece of the
whip that transfers the last bit of energy to the disk.
So you want to go from coiled to flat basically right at release,
holding that as late as possible.
Super important. And the other one is just deep
pocket. Getting deeper with the disk
generally makes you have more spin.
And when I say deep, I mean. Farther forward or a greater
angle between your bicep and PEC, right?
So this is 90°, this is like 130.
Getting to here with a curled wrist will give you more spin.
And that's why you see like Thomas Gilbert crazy spin, Zach
Nash crazy spin. They're really deep, right?
Their wrist is super curled all the way to the last second.
And it when I very first started it, I I was under the, I don't
know if someone taught me or just the way I just started
doing it, but I would have my hand and I would bring the disc
tote close to my chest. But I think I need to start
putting it outward. Would you agree?
Yeah, I think the best way to learn is to give yourself a butt
load of space. You only want to start getting
closer and closer to yourself kind of as you start really
going to the advanced side of things.
I think most beginners are probably like collapsing and
coming in too close. Yeah, you could throw really
hard being really far from yourself.
So I would probably advise learn to throw like with a more space
than you need and then trim it down from there once you kind of
get to that advanced level, I'd say.
Gotcha. OK.
And is anything happening with the shoulders?
Is that just kind of part of the arm?
There's a lot happening with the shoulders.
Hey, let's let's go there's. There's external anterior
rotation which does need to be managed some.
I like to teach as neutral as possible.
One of the most important thing is depressing your shoulder.
So there's elevating your shoulder.
You'll see this in a lot of amateurs where they shrug as
they pull once. It's not very safe for the
shoulder. Elevating your shoulder out of
the socket puts it in a little bit more of a dangerous
position. Also, it makes your body cut
power to it 'cause it doesn't want to hurt you.
So keeping it depressed is really good.
I like to keep it protracted for a good amount of the throw to
give me more space for my chest. And then there is some
retraction that happens at the end of the throw for sure.
And if we're just going to, if we want to talk about upper body
the most, I think managing your angles is extremely important.
So when you reach back, you don't ever want to get this
bicep to pack angle inside of 90° ever through the whole
throw. If you do that, like let's just
say I start at 90 and as soon as I start turning, it collapses
some. So now we're at like, you know,
45 or something. The more collapsed I get, the
weaker I am in this position. So the more collapse I get, the
weaker my muscles actually are. OK, so once you collapse a
little bit, it becomes you can't pull out of it because now
you've weakened your position and now you can't recover from
the collapse. So it's much better to stay on
the good side of 90, the whole throw where you're strong, than
to let yourself collapse a little bit and then try to dig
your way out of it. And there are really good pro
players who dig themselves out of it after collapsing a little
bit, but generally it's not the most efficient and effective way
in my opinion. Got you.
OK, so finally we're up to our my head.
What am I doing with my head? Am I looking at where I'm going
to throw? Am I looking back behind me?
Because I've heard all different advice as far as like not
looking behind me, not, you know, you know, whatever.
So what? What's your advice?
I think obviously there's like you want to keep your eye on the
target as long as possible. I think that can be overdone.
There are some, like a lot of students that I have, it's like
they're trying to look at the target all the time when they
should be kind of committing to their coil.
And when I say committing to their coil, it's like, yeah, we
want to look at the target as we're walking up.
But once we start striding into that last step, we need to take
our eyes off the target to actually get a good coil.
It's very hard to turn yourself back as much as you need to
while keeping your eyes forward on the target.
So generally eyes on the target till that last stride starts.
And then you want to let your head allow your coil so you can,
you can even look backwards if you need to.
And then you, the only other real thing to manage is you
don't want to be leading the throw with your head.
So I like to say if your eyes are on the disk or farther back,
right, you're in a good spot. So when I'm reach back, my eyes
are on the disc. When I'm in the pocket, my eyes
are generally neutral. And I don't ever want to be in a
position where like, let's say I'm in the pocket, I don't want
my eyes to be here in front of where the disc is going because
generally your body like follows your head.
So if you reach back and start the throw by looking forward,
you can see I'm going to immediately collapse my arm.
This angle that we just talked about, the 90°, as soon as I
look forward, that collapses immediately and then once again,
I can't pull out of there. So now my efficiency just
plummeted and that's all I did was move my eyes.
So it's like it can be such like a butterfly effect doing
something so small. But I have a drill called the
look back drill where you just focus on like basically loosely
gazing slightly behind neutral and you just kind of keep your
arm, your eyes there and let the throw finish before you move
them. And it really helps people not
collapse. It's pretty incredible, like
what the odds can do in powerlifting too.
Wow, I mean, I know most people are like no kidding, Bobby, but
I mean, it's just like so much is like like I've told, tell
people so much is happening and so much has to go right, or at
least be closer to going right to achieve the, you know, the
maximum a distance. So, and I would assume obviously
you probably watch a lot of pros throw.
Give me like a hint like maybe two or three examples.
If someone's like tell me who to watch just to kind of observe a
great form. As far as throwing, give me a
few. I have 3/3 what you got I have.
Three, so the simplest form I think anyone could try to
mirror. So if you're at a very beginner
level and you're trying to learn to throw correctly, watch Nick
Los Angeles. He has by far the simplest
mechanics and he does everything he possibly can to make it crazy
simple and not able like to mess up.
So he's not using any of the advanced mechanics that a lot of
the really, really crazy hard throwers are using.
He's just using just the fundamentals, just the basics.
He could probably touch 70, but he's extremely accurate,
extremely consistent. So if you're looking for a
throat of mirror as a beginner, he's exactly what I would point
any of my students to next tier up.
Very simple, little bit more powerful.
And also someone who probably does the geometric part of like
configuring things so 90° or farther and keeping your elbows
far away from you as you possibly can, getting your your
disk as far away from you at release as you can.
So these are like efficiency cues where like we're trying to
just increase the length of our levers, right?
Zach Nash, he he basically does everything correctly like to AT
and that's why he's able to walk up super slow and throw, you
know, 80 miles an hour ish, right, with 1700 RPM or 1800
RPM. And it the he's a fantastic
example of like your legs, they're just not adding as much
as you think when it comes to like momentum, right?
He's sauntering up the T pad and just throwing absolute bombs
with and his power metrics are giant and power metrics consider
like speed and spin, right, because they both take power.
So his added together are like some of the best in the game and
he's doing it with, you know, a one mile an hour walk up.
So it's like he, it's much, much more about configuring your
parts correctly and letting the energy transfer efficiently than
it is about just absolute B lining at the T pad and then
collapsing yourself. And now you're getting 13% of
the power of your throw, you know, and you're using every
muscle in your body. So third has to be mentioned,
Anthony Barilla. I competed at USD GC with him
this year and he just murdered the field.
It wasn't close. He threw more overstable discs,
harder, lower, and just crushed everybody.
It was a very windy, very hard headwind and his ability to
throw a really stable disc just ultra hard just decimated the
field because we were all trying to throw less stable discs to
actually get our S flights, yadda, yadda.
And he was just like, Nah, I'll just throw, you know, an
overstable nuke, 80 miles an hour, low laser beam, so the
wind can't do anything. His form is awesome.
He does a lot of really good stuff.
And he's just really like flowy, you know, he's, he's really like
clean, not muscling it too much and just good mechanics.
Nice. Who's somebody that like, you
watch their form and you're like, they should not be
throwing that. Well, is there someone out there
like that? Oh, someone out there who?
Oh, that's you want me to call somebody out for having bad?
For well, but I mean it someone who's like they're, they're
doing well and they're and they're throwing far and it's
like, man, there's you. You should not be throwing that
far based on the mechanics of it all, I mean.
Probably me, honestly, I think, I think, I think most people
would probably say me, I think. Like I like, I don't, I don't
observe it obviously as as much as you do as much as a lot of
people. But like someone like James
Conrad with that super long throw and he's just very like
flowy and everything. It's like, I would think as like
if looking at the mechanics, and maybe again, it could be just my
ignorant eye watching, but the mechanics would seem like it
kind of goes against a little bit of what people think it
takes to throw far. I I do agree, I think that if
you actually slow MO his mechanics, they're not that bad.
Yeah, he is doing a lot of like bringing in too much momentum,
bracing just a small amount of it and then letting the rest
just flow over. But we see like AB do that on
three 60s as well. Like AB just flies straight past
his brace on three 60s. So it's like, it's not bad,
right? It's maybe he could get away
with just walking up slower and it wouldn't have any ill effects
on him, that's for sure. But generally.
Unconventional. Maybe a little unconventional is
a better way to put it. Yeah, yeah, I think Chris
Dickerson, he he definitely like, he throws so good and it
doesn't look like he's going to throw so good when he when he
runs up the T pad, but then he's just like a monster.
So I would say like unconventional Chris Dickerson,
you could probably learn a lot about, you know what you can get
away with by watching like a Chris Dickerson?
He he does just enough of the right things where it's like his
throw is still amazing and you don't need to look beautiful.
You know, Silas Schultz famously said like form is for Instagram,
right? And it's it's kind of true.
You can you can get away with a lot if you have just a few
pieces going correctly and the main pieces are like the upper
body timing and like geometry. If you can get those right.
I mean, you watch AB impersonate people's forms.
He can impersonate half the freaking pro tour like to AT and
still throw 70 miles an hour while doing it.
It's like he's not used to that, but once you get the correct
upper body mechanics it's like it doesn't really matter that
much. You can throw 70 from like most
positions. Yeah, another one I can think of
is who who's hasn't played in a while, at least I haven't seen
him, is Eric Oakley, good buddy of mine.
Yeah, I did an episode with him actually on my YouTube I have.
A oh nice. Yeah, his little hop step,
whatever. A lot of people used to really
get on to him for his little hop step, but he still could throw
the disc pretty far. Yeah, I definitely, I think I
think there's a lot of stuff that you can, you know, have
your own style with as long as you're getting these little tiny
key pieces right, it's like it doesn't really matter that much.
That's why I made that video where it's like all these things
that people say you can't do with your feet.
It's like generally if you have good timing and good upper body
mechanics, they don't matter that much.
And like you'll see, you see people patent pending crazy
shots, Nicholas, Angela stanstilling crazy shots.
Like if you have the correct mechanics you can kind of get
away with having your own unique style in other places I think.
Yeah. And of course the other, another
part of the equation is getting the right disk right.
You got a lot of beginners that they see all these big guns
throwing these high speed drivers and they try to grab
these high speed drivers. It's just not working.
And then then you're kind of working against yourself because
in, at least in my observation, then they're then their
mechanics are all wrong because you're trying to make that high
speed disk work for them when they need that they need to be
for working on the form and then letting the disk do the work
with them. Yeah, I think that's actually
one thing I get questions on a lot.
It's like, what disks should I be throwing for distance?
And I generally think it sucks because I know it feels like
gatekeeping when people say you shouldn't throw 12 speed, you
shouldn't throw 13 speeds till you have a certain speed.
But I think like in a perfect world, you're in a field and
you're throwing Max distance, your farthest disk is going to
be the highest speed you can possibly get.
It is for everyone. Even if you throw 50 miles an
hour, if you get the flippiest strike in existence and throw it
perfectly, it's going to be your farthest flying disk.
But the amount of times you're going to have to throw that to
get that exact right, everything, you know, one out of
20 shots is going to go 400 where if you threw even just a
12 speed or an 11 speed a race, you know 5 out of 20 shots are
going to go 390. So it's like you're you're
losing 10 feet on the very, very top end, but your consistency
just shoots up so much. And it's like, I think that's
why we see a lot of pros using 12 speeds because it's that good
middle ground where it's like it's not too squirrely, but it
still goes far enough. And I think the higher speed you
go, just like physics wise, your nose angle matters more, the
height of your shot matters more because they just respond worse
to messing up any small secondary metric of your throw.
Excellent. All right, so I asked you before
we went online if you would take the time to watch my throw,
you'll give me some advice and OK, so we're going to move.
So this is the first time I've done this where I've added a
video while I was talking to someone.
So please bear with me. So also remember I'm a big guy.
I'm I'm, I'm in my mid 50s, just turned 54, but I'm still active.
I still get out there that is kind of an I'm, I'm actually
working on a video called my January Reset where it's like,
I'm ever since getting this job back at Dynamic Discs, it's been
stressful, but it's, it's been good.
But I put on some weight and I'm, I'm getting going to go get
back to my healthy activities, my healthy eating and stuff like
that. So anyway, I'm just let you know
that's what's happening. But I'm going to, what I did was
I threw I think 3 times from the side and then a couple times
filmed it from the back. And so we'll kind of go through
that. OK, hold on.
Let me get this going, see if I can make this work.
Here we go. OK.
And I can pause it anytime you need me to.
Yeah, give me a, Give me a Just scroll through these frames kind
of slowly. If it'll let me do that.
All right, let's see. Yeah, I think the lag time won't
let me scroll or scrub through it, Yeah.
OK, I see one thing already. Show me it one more time or two
more times and I'll try to pick something out each time.
OK, one more. OK, I got you, I got you.
OK, so the big things I would focus on for your Form 1,
uncoiling your hips into the plant.
So this is a super common problem.
We're like we're coiling up, right?
So we're trying to basically face our hips, our front hip
backwards as we stride forward, right?
That's kind of like to simplify, that's what we're doing.
We want to be leading the throat with our heel, right?
So when we plant, we're either like perpendicular or slightly
closed. The reason we want to do that is
it gives us a really good like stopping point for basically our
hips so we can aim better off of it when we have like a sturdy
stop. The more open we plant, the more
we're having to aim like manually, right?
We're having to use like quad power to stop ourselves and
actually release the disc online.
So the first thing I would say is you uncoil slightly into the
plant. So you coil up OK, but then as
you start to place your front foot down, you let it wind open.
So you basically give yourself coil and then give it away
before you throw. What I would recommend is
there's I have a drill called the Reaper drill where basically
you're focused on coiling up, shifting forward while coiled
and then throwing. So and you'll see this in in
most pros right there at their Max coil when that foot gets
down. The Reaper drill is just kind of
a simple, easy way to do that. Second thing.
I think your pull through is a little low generally.
I think mechanically, right? You want your elbow as far from
your spine as possible. That's going to make your upper
arm the longest lever it can possibly be, right?
So if you pull through low, you're giving away some of that
distance of your elbow being away from your spine just by
virtue of it being lower, right? Because this is just less room.
So if you pull through kind of belly button level, generally
you're giving away some of that mechanical efficiency.
So I recommend kind of around the nipple to upper rib area is
a good spot where you can keep your shoulder depressed.
So it's not kind of too high up because if you try to go like
throat level, right, you start to get the shoulder shrugging
and things get all whacked. Not good for you, not safe.
I wouldn't recommend that high. But you know, nipple level is
just that perfect point where your shoulders depressed, but
your elbow is basically as far mechanically as it can be from
your spine. That's probably thing #2 you
would be surprised at how much just a smidge of mechanical
efficiency makes a huge difference because it's just
multiplying your power by more. It's like you have like this
rotation and then you have multiple levers, right?
You have your upper armor is a lever, your lower armor is a
lever, your wrist to hand is a lever.
So the more you can add to this upper arm lever, the more this
guy gets and then the more this guy gets.
So it's like it's exponential growth kind of it feels like you
can add a little bit here and by the time it gets to the disk,
it's multiplied by even more. So just making the upper arm
lever longer generally, like you just get pretty effortless
distance, right? And then the last thing is your
braces. Your braces a bit a bit weak and
like soggy, I would say you kind of bend it and spin on it to
where like you're not really pushing back against your
momentum as much as you could. I would say I have a drill
called the Donk drill that's really good for this.
It's basically learning how to use the vertical push of your
front leg to add power to your throw.
Basically you kind of there's a drill called the piston drill
where you think about your legs as Pistons.
When you walk up your, your rear piston is on and you're coiling
so your front Pistons off and it's kind of like folding down
and in. And then as soon as that front
foot hips, you reverse the Pistons.
This front leg becomes the piston going vertically up and
this rear leg falls down and in. And that's why you see that
internal rotation of the of the rear hip.
So there's kind of the three things.
Yeah, nice. OK, so I'm going to, I'm glad I
recorded this because I'm going to going to go back and watch
all of it. So but yeah, part of my goal,
the video that I'm working on, it's kind of a health reset and
then a disc golf reset in the sense that I am not trying to
win any records, you know, distance records.
I'm not trying to GoPro. I'm just, I, I talk about in the
video, it's like when people go out and they go and it's just
their buddies having fun, the cows around and then you're
doing poorly and someone says. Oh well, most fun wins And I'm
like, I'm not having fun getting bogeys and double bogeys.
I at least want to get pars. I'd obviously love would get to
get birdies, but I want to get more pars, more birdies.
And so I know adding a little bit more distance and of course
accuracy is going to help me achieve that.
So that's kind of my goal through this year is to up my,
my distance and I set a baseline.
I, I go out to a field, I throw it three times.
Got a speed 10 disc, I throw it three times and I set whatever
is the farthest that's my baseline distance.
And then from there I'm going to, I'm going to kind of grow
from there. So I'm going to use your advice
and put it, if you don't mind, I'm going to put that in that
video and actually work through some of the advice that you give
me and see, see what I can do now.
I'd give you 1. More tip.
Yeah, one more tip. So one thing you'll see really
good players do a lot is this sideways disc free throw, right
where they're holding the disc sideways like this in their
hand, right? And the reason for this is it's
much easier to keep your elbow up.
Like whenever you have your hand like this, right, when you put
your palm down, right, you're going to find it's easier to
keep your elbow up. It's like a natural thing.
When I try to spin my palm down, my elbow moves upward.
And when I try to spin my palm the other way, my elbow moves
downward, right? It's just natural.
So when you do your pre throw, do this sideways disc right
where you're basically only focused on this space right
here, distance from elbow to spine.
And you literally just do this. Boom, this is where I want you,
where you're as far away as you can in your pre throw.
OK, so just like that, here's my hand.
It's directly sideways, so you don't need to hold it like a
disc golf grip. Yep.
And you just go bang. OK, OK, I'll try that.
It helps a lot with just getting the feeling right before the
throw. It's kind of like a reminder to
your body, like this is what we want to be doing, you know?
Yeah. Nice.
OK, so another question that popped my mind is that so let's
say I go out here or even with your students that you've done
stuff with how like how quickly I'm assuming obvious depends on
how much work you put into. But like, I guess I'm thinking
like if I go out there and do this a few times, if I'm not
really getting better distance. How long do you think it takes
for your body to kind of unlearn the bad habits and relearn the
new habit? OK, so it's it's definitely
dependent on a whole bunch of factors.
And the first one is how long have you been doing the bad
habit? So if you've been playing for 20
years and you've been low pull through the whole 20 years, it's
like it's going to take your body a long a while at least to
figure out how to like on the course, keep that elbow up.
So that's why I have things like that sideways disc drill because
you're on the T pad, your brain seeing the hole, it's seeing the
line and you're reminding at the same time, keep that elbow up.
That's just a little trick that you can do to kind of meld those
two things together. So your body like moves toward
it more quickly, right. And I would say the the how much
like you gain from a change has a lot to do with like how badly
it's kind of messing you up. So for you like your upper body,
change is probably going to make the biggest difference.
Like you, you could see, no joke, you know, 40 feet in like
less than a month. If you got that elbow up and you
actually like practiced it, you did your pre throw, sideways
disc throw and you just increase that mechanical efficiency.
Like you can see really fast gains with something like that.
When it comes to the legs, it's going to probably take a little
bit longer because like learning to brace is freaking hard.
Like really hard. And it gets harder the older you
are, right? When you're a kid, it's easy
because you don't really have a normal and you can adapt super
fast. But when you're an adult, it's
like you've been in balance for 50 years now.
You're trying to teach your body how to throw while you're like
dynamically, diagonally balanced on this brace.
It's like your body hates that, right?
Anytime your head and shout out to Chris Taylor for this
specific quote. Anytime your head is not like
balanced over your body, your body freaks out if you're not
used to it, right? So when you're bracing, you're
basically like diagonal leg. And then your head is here,
right, completely on like a different plane.
And you're in this dynamic balance where the only thing
keeping you balanced is your momentum moving forward.
So learning to be OK with that and not like freak out a little
bit to try to regain your balance is learning how to
brace. So I wouldn't expect to see like
quick brace gains for basically anybody.
And that's why I say like fix your upper body first, because
you can throw 400 feet with pretty crappy brace and just a
really good upper body. And it's not the opposite.
You can't throw 400 feet with just a really good brace and a
crappy upper body. So the best course of action is
fix your upper body first, get all the gains you can reap out
of there. You're going to have fun.
You're going to throw 400 feet, you're going to be freaking
having a blast. And then if you really want to
push for that 500, five, 5600, wherever you want to go, that's
when you can do the six month, one year, 2 year grind of just
slowly getting a better brace. And the benefit is every time
you make a breakthrough on your brace, it will go straight
through because you're already being super efficient.
So whenever you add power, it just goes straight through.
Like out of 95% ratio, right? Like, I recently broke 80 and it
took me like a couple sessions of figuring out something in my
brace because my upper body was already basically perfect.
So as soon as I added that leg power, it just went straight
into the disk. I saw a five mile per hour jump
in my speed and it was, you know, easy.
But it's not the same the other way around, right?
The upper body is bad. It's like you're not going to
see gains quickly. You're going to see like a half
a mile per hour. If you increase your brace, it's
because yeah, you're getting 40% efficiency from it.
Wow, OK, I'll keep that in mind for sure.
Well, I appreciate all this, man.
This That's that's good advice and stuff.
I'm going to actually put in the practice for sure.
I appreciate that. Yeah.
So you do, other than just the YouTube videos and things like
that, you, it sounds like you do some sort of one-on-one
coaching. Yeah, I coached through for
Marrow. I have a lot of students.
I have a lot of reviews so if anyone wants to check down on
there you can go read all the reviews if you want.
It's like a hundreds at this point, so you can see what kind
of what my clients think about me and stuff like that.
It's just kind of just AI mean. I know the buzzword is side
hustle, but is this is this kind of a side hustle for you or is
this something you want to see grow into whatever it can
become? Yeah, you know, it, it didn't
start as anything that I really planned on being.
I still have a full time job, so I definitely like, you know, my
time is stretched, especially with the amount of clients I've
gotten. So it's kind of like after work
knock out as many reviews as I can, try to keep up with the
demand and I don't know what it'll morph into eventually, but
it's been fun. I've been enjoying it so far.
So I'm going to keep doing it for for, you know, at least a
while longer. I've just resigned with
infinite. So that was super cool.
They have been awesome sponsor to me, so shout out to them.
And yeah, I'm going to keep keep going while the getting's good,
right? Absolutely I I think it's
awesome all right, so I know people can go find you on
YouTube blitz DG on YouTube and then I think it's the same name
on Instagram correct Blitz under score disc golf to find you on
Instagram and guys, I highly recommend that you follow him,
especially on YouTube. He's got all kinds of elbow the
disc. Let's see why why lower back
extension is ruining your throw. Fix your plant, plant foot
workout program for disc golf. So he's got a lot of information
for you guys if you want to improve your game.
If you're somebody wanting to GoPro, I think that'd be
fantastic. But if you're just a casual
player and you're sick of hearing most fun wins and you
want to really have at least a more little more fun by playing
a little bit better, then I definitely suggest you check it
out. Well, again, I appreciate you
coming on the show and maybe in about six or seven months maybe
we can check back with you and and I can tell you how I'm doing
with my distance. Be sure I I'm interested to know
so don't don't forget to reach out.
All right, man, I appreciate it. Thank you so much again for
coming on. Thanks, Bobby.