I've been obsessed with disc golf form for the last 10 years or so. It's really cool to see a more scientific approach being slowly applied to form study, and also hilarious to see this on hackernews (my two worlds never seem to mix). My critical reaction to this piece is that it does not seem to mention how the positions affect nose angle, which is critical to getting discs to fly correctly; professionals are able to manipulate these angles to have their shots behave differently depending on the circumstances (e.g. land flat and soft, stall out, or turn and dive). The best courses have trees mixed in such a way that you need to manipulate the drive to e.g. turn right at 280ft, turn left at 330ft, etc. But more pointedly a disc thrown nose up, despite having a high velocity, will not fly as far as one with a neutral or (slightly) nose down angle.[1]
Some other related context: A good amateur will throw the disc around 300-350ft. Good pros these days are able to break 600ft, despite many of them not appearing athletic or strong. This has led to a natural obsession with "form"
Sucking at something is the first step at being kinda good at something.
You're way out throwing my three year old, about as good as my max throw, and behind a number of my friends. I still show up at the course when my friends go and have a good time. It goes a little farther every time I go.
This article is kind of hilariously like almost every conversation you have at the disc golf course, but it’s always something different. The reach back position, the power pocket, the elbow angle, the follow through, pouring the coffee, turning the key, etc etc etc.
If _only_ it were as simple as one thing. But the truth is that distance can be achieved through a multitude of athletic motions which vary drastically player to player.
Interestingly, when throwing objects (especially discs), the ideal angle to maximize distance might not be 45 degrees for two reasons: the object might fly better at specific angles and different human muscles come into play at different angles. The optimal angle might therefore vary by athlete.
For ballistic objects (so objects where air just acts as drag), the optimal launch angle is less than 45 degrees due to air resistance.
For aerodynamic objects like a disc, the optimal launch angle will be complicated because a disc's flight path is far more influenced by "secondary" (such as angle of attack and spin) compared to say a baseball, or even golf.
An "optimal" description of disc release angle that a player would likely be interested in (I say this as an ultimate player) would be given in terms of release angle, angle of attack (ie: how nose up), spin, and forward velocity.
And then once converted into human terms for all but the most elite athletes, release angle will probably instead be simplified down to windup position and release position/height.
Right. Even something that seems simple (such as a golf ball) is not trivial to model: the rough surface and spin end up creating lift -- the ball is essentially flying.
I've seen the olympic women disc throwing event and it was quite astonishing that they had so many different body types (tall athletic gym type, "fat" strong, rather gymnasty etc.). And of course their results were all within a range of each other. Although disc golf is not quite the same, I think it is similar in that there's probably not (yet) a solved technique that's better than every other :)
If a lifetime of ball golf has taught me anything, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to athletic movements such as this. Even if there was, it would take one many years to find it articulated in a way that made sense to them. I've had certain "breakthroughs" and have been able to look back at professional lessons and see where they may have been trying to get that breakthrough advice across, and it just didn't make sense to me at the time, and thought "why didn't they just explain it like 'this'...?"
I had one of those breakthroughs this weekend. I was hitting at the range with my brother, and I felt a specific cue when I hit a really pure ball. I realized that thinking about that cue caused me to do everything I had been told to do for so long. But instead of thinking about one million things(keep your back leg straight, move your front knee over your toe, bring the driver straight back, etc.), I could just think about the feeling I was looking for.
I've had similar breakthroughs doing the Olympic lifts. After long enough, you realize there are small things you should feel that make a successful lift.
right, but you'll keep using that cue and one day it will fail. It happens to top golfers, then they go away and rebuild their swing from the bottom up for awhile.
Some things you just have to understand on your own terms, in your own time, and no amount of coaching can move you any faster towards enlightenment than your brain will allow.
I mentioned this article to a guy that’s essentially a pro and he said the grip is different based on distance and type of disc and “a bunch of other factors.”
He said an article like this is misleading and incomplete.
It can't be misleading in that way, since it isn't clearly isn't leading towards a conclusion of one grip being the best in all situations or thumb placement being the only factor that matters. It says that when controlling for thumb placement on a "mid-range" disc, "placing the thumb about 3 cm from the outer edge yielded the best results for all the participants in terms of simultaneously high average spin rates and launch speeds."
"Lindsey cautioned that this is a preliminary finding since they only studied one type of disc and plan to conduct further experiments with other disc types. "Considering the lack of data relating to the various details of a disc golf throw to resulting performance, we hope that this study serves as a catalyst for similar research... at other institutions," he said."
My first question about this is what is the status of instrumented discs? Seems it would be straightforward to fit lightweight sensors to measure acceleration, spin, distance, etc., and provide essentially instant feedback.
While I can see reasons to ban that in actual competition, it could still be invaluable in practice, and enable accelerated skill learning. Is this standard and I just don't know about it (entirely possible as I'm not a disc golfer), or is it an open field?
I have one of these, they are great. For those taking their form study very seriously, they in particular can help you understand the relationship between form changes you make as they relate to spin, velocity, nose angle, and launch angle; these can be tricky to fully understand. There's a popular youtube channel (Overthrow disc golf) where they use these as part of their very thorough analyses.
Some other related context: A good amateur will throw the disc around 300-350ft. Good pros these days are able to break 600ft, despite many of them not appearing athletic or strong. This has led to a natural obsession with "form"
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HQt_kIk3-U [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr3DjX3HbNM