Tuesday, February 14, 2006
A "swing-neutral" throwing motion?
I’m going to build into this topic with a long discussion of golf, a game I am terrible at. (Wait… uh, nevermind.) I guess I started thinking about this after reading posts like this one.
Tiger Woods won the Masters in 1997 as a second-year pro, utterly dominating the field in the process. 1997 Tiger had a big exaggerated swing that wrapped around his body on the follow through. It was fundamentally the same motion that he had had when he appeared on the Tonight Show as a five year-old. So there were two obvious things going for this motion:
1 - Tiger had been using it for at least 17 years and was obviously totally comfortable with it.
2 – This motion (in Tiger’s hands of course) was good enough to absolutely crush all of pro golf on one of the two or three most storied courses in the game.
And yet, a little over a year later, Tiger made the decision to basically dismantle the motion he had used for 18+ years and build a new one. He went through a bit of a mini-drought as a result (by his standards), not winning a major for a year and a half. But when he emerged from his cocoon, he went on a tear at the majors: W, L, W, W, W, W, L, L, L, W, W. Given the context of era and competition, this run is unparalleled in golf history. He’s had his ups and downs since then, but the bottom line is that nobody can reasonably question the success of his decision to re-work his swing.
So, the obvious question is, why did he do it? What was he trying to change? One of the biggest things he was trying to do is found in the title of this post. He was trying to become “swing-neutral”. Like many power hitters in golf, 1997 Tiger’s natural motion led to a small hook – sidespin that carries a righty’s ball from right to left. There are times when this is useful - most obviously when a hole has a left turn in the fairway, but other times as well. But most of the time, a straight shot is best, and at times you want a slice (right to left carry) as well. One of the primary things Tiger achieved with his reworked swing was a motion that does not naturally carry the ball one way or the other. He can still use a hook or slice, of course, but now both are equally available to him.
By now you’ve probably pieced together the connection to ultimate. If you have a “swing-neutral” throwing motion, then your natural throw (in relatively calm conditions) is a straight shot, and all options are equally available to you. However, the concept in ultimate extends beyond just inside-out and outside-in. I think the ideal, neutral motion would allow you to easily adapt to a variety of throwing stances and release heights. A perfectly “swing-neutral” motion should allow a whole range of curves from a whole range of release points.
“Wow Tarr. Being ‘swing-neutral’ sounds awesome. Tell me, how I can achieve this?”
I’m glad you asked. Well, really all the advice that goes into having a good throwing motion applies. But it is possible to be a good thrower and not be at all swing-neutral. (Conversely, somebody could be swing neutral, but have really weak snap and no control on their throws.) I would probably boil my advice on this subject to three fundamental pieces:
1 – A backswing that gets back and away from your body, NOT wrapping around it.
2 – Throwing in a fairly linear motion, with extension. A nice, natural arm swing that stays away from your torso.
Idris has touched on these points before.
3 – A wrist snap that imparts spin without pitching or rolling the disc out of the plane that it starts in at the end of the backswing.
Basically, the result of these three things is the disc moving in a very simple motion. If you were invisible and all I could see is the disc, I would see the disc moving straight forward in the direction of motion, and not tilting at all as it moves forward. Once you capture that in your basic motion, you can adapt it to all sorts of throws.
As an aside, I don’t think I’ve fully achieved this personally. It’s something I think about when I’m working on my throws. I’m getting closer, but I’m not there. But I am increasingly convinced that it's a good thing to think about when you're working on your throws.
Tiger Woods won the Masters in 1997 as a second-year pro, utterly dominating the field in the process. 1997 Tiger had a big exaggerated swing that wrapped around his body on the follow through. It was fundamentally the same motion that he had had when he appeared on the Tonight Show as a five year-old. So there were two obvious things going for this motion:
1 - Tiger had been using it for at least 17 years and was obviously totally comfortable with it.
2 – This motion (in Tiger’s hands of course) was good enough to absolutely crush all of pro golf on one of the two or three most storied courses in the game.
And yet, a little over a year later, Tiger made the decision to basically dismantle the motion he had used for 18+ years and build a new one. He went through a bit of a mini-drought as a result (by his standards), not winning a major for a year and a half. But when he emerged from his cocoon, he went on a tear at the majors: W, L, W, W, W, W, L, L, L, W, W. Given the context of era and competition, this run is unparalleled in golf history. He’s had his ups and downs since then, but the bottom line is that nobody can reasonably question the success of his decision to re-work his swing.
So, the obvious question is, why did he do it? What was he trying to change? One of the biggest things he was trying to do is found in the title of this post. He was trying to become “swing-neutral”. Like many power hitters in golf, 1997 Tiger’s natural motion led to a small hook – sidespin that carries a righty’s ball from right to left. There are times when this is useful - most obviously when a hole has a left turn in the fairway, but other times as well. But most of the time, a straight shot is best, and at times you want a slice (right to left carry) as well. One of the primary things Tiger achieved with his reworked swing was a motion that does not naturally carry the ball one way or the other. He can still use a hook or slice, of course, but now both are equally available to him.
By now you’ve probably pieced together the connection to ultimate. If you have a “swing-neutral” throwing motion, then your natural throw (in relatively calm conditions) is a straight shot, and all options are equally available to you. However, the concept in ultimate extends beyond just inside-out and outside-in. I think the ideal, neutral motion would allow you to easily adapt to a variety of throwing stances and release heights. A perfectly “swing-neutral” motion should allow a whole range of curves from a whole range of release points.
“Wow Tarr. Being ‘swing-neutral’ sounds awesome. Tell me, how I can achieve this?”
I’m glad you asked. Well, really all the advice that goes into having a good throwing motion applies. But it is possible to be a good thrower and not be at all swing-neutral. (Conversely, somebody could be swing neutral, but have really weak snap and no control on their throws.) I would probably boil my advice on this subject to three fundamental pieces:
1 – A backswing that gets back and away from your body, NOT wrapping around it.
2 – Throwing in a fairly linear motion, with extension. A nice, natural arm swing that stays away from your torso.
Idris has touched on these points before.
3 – A wrist snap that imparts spin without pitching or rolling the disc out of the plane that it starts in at the end of the backswing.
Basically, the result of these three things is the disc moving in a very simple motion. If you were invisible and all I could see is the disc, I would see the disc moving straight forward in the direction of motion, and not tilting at all as it moves forward. Once you capture that in your basic motion, you can adapt it to all sorts of throws.
As an aside, I don’t think I’ve fully achieved this personally. It’s something I think about when I’m working on my throws. I’m getting closer, but I’m not there. But I am increasingly convinced that it's a good thing to think about when you're working on your throws.
# posted by Tarr : 2/14/2006 01:27:00 PM
