You might not be able to mimic your way to a World title, but you can certainly get better.

July 26, 2022 by Steve Andrews in Instruction, Opinion with comments

One of the frustrating things about learning a new sport is that it is hard to put feelings, sensations, and dynamic moves into words. Pros in every sport talk about what they do, or what they feel, during an athletic move, but those words often fail to convey how to recreate what they are doing. You can do exactly what you think they are saying and get no closer to improving.

Sometimes, this is because players say they are doing things that they absolutely are not doing. In every sport, you can listen to pros talk about their swing or footwork, and then watch it in slow motion and see that this is not what is actually happening. Athletes often describe their subjective sensations, not objective reality. This is less common now because of the ubiquity of video, but it still happens in almost every technique-heavy sport.

Other times, we can all be led astray by focusing on something that seems crucial but may not actually help us get better. The disc golf swing is a cascade of things happening both simultaneously and in sequence. The thing that looks or feels important may not be crucial in making a swing work. Some moves may be the result, not the cause, of something more subtle that is happening earlier in the swing. Hyper-focusing on the big thing we can see or feel can blind us to what led up to it.

For example, for some players, the sensation of getting the front heel down is very clear. It’s easy to think “aha, if I get my front heel down fast and hard, I will get more power into my shot.” However, the lead foot planting firmly into the ground should be the result of clearing the hips after a good body turn, so just stomping hard on the front foot – without fully winding up and shifting your weight onto your bag leg – results in weak shots that often go right into the ground. Often, the physical sensations or moves that seem most distinct are a result of good mechanics and not the direct cause of anything.

The important thing is to focus on why a particular move is important in your swing. Don’t just mimic some distinctive part of someone’s throw without understanding what that move is trying to achieve. Think of Paul McBeth’s grinding the ball of his rear foot into the ground on a long putt. He does that to make sure his weight…