3 Things I Wish I Learned When I Started | Disc Golf Tips

These are a few tips on some things I’ve learned this offseason that I really wish I had prioritized when I started playing disc golf.

0:00 Intro
0:34 We have to Brace!
4:41 Aim with your Feet!
7:20 Buy A Net
8:53 Check Your Grip
10:37 My Grip Change
12:31 Leverage?
15:06 Long Winded Outro

Welcome back to the channel everybody it’s snowmageddon 2024 here in Knoxville Tennessee conditions not ideal to play disc golf but I figured I’d take advantage of this time off and share with you guys the three things that I’ve learned fairly recently that I really wish that I had prioritized at the start

Of my game so if you’re new to the sport or you’re just wanting to learn some more stuff this off season I think at least one of these tips might help you guys out let’s get right into it So the first thing that I want to say is you guys know I’m I’m not a form coach and my form is nowhere near perfect but I do enjoy sharing my journey with you guys quite frankly I’m kind of embarrassed that I just seem to have completely missed this tip uh and it’s

Not even really a tip it’s just good form so the first thing we’re going to talk about is bracing I essentially had no brace whatsoever i’ say that that comes from me having an athletic background and I watched enough tips and tutorials on YouTube and kind of just

Went out and had fun which there’s nothing wrong with going out and having fun but I completely missed the concept of the brace now what is the brace the brace is essentially when you are stopping your momentum whether you’re doing a small little xstep or a fast run

Up with the next step you have to stop all of your momentum in order order to inject power into the disc y’all it’s the simplest concept it’s it’s super simple and it makes tons of sense that you have to stop all of your momentum to inject power into the disc but I simply

Wasn’t doing it and I have a couple of theories as to why I was not doing this coming from an athletic background I was comfortable throwing footballs basketballs baseballs you know skipping rocks growing up as a kid and all of that stuff has something in common to

Throw far throw well you brace here’s the issue that I think I was running into let’s say that I was throwing a snowball that’s East Tennessee snow right there it’s not going to work um oh I should not have done that that was cold that was cold if

You’re going to be throwing a ball as a right-handed person and you’re throwing the ball with your right hand then your left foot is going to plant and then you are going to throw that ball it’s that simple you learn as a kid in sports being athletic you just learn that as

You throw you stop and you throw and all of your momentum stops with that front leg so the issue with that is that as a right-handed player playing disc golf you aren’t bracing with your left leg unless you’re throwing a forehand when you’re throwing backhand you’re bracing with your right leg essentially that

Means that your lower body is having to learn the complete opposite movement that you’ve learned your entire life do you have to brace with your opposite leg that all of that momentum has to stop and I think that really caught me up because my brace was

Non-existent if you go look at some of my old videos You’ll see all of my power is getting leaked because I was not bracing on this leg I was leaning into my throws and I was letting all of my momentum carry out over this leg as I

Threw now granted I was able to have fun and throw that way and I didn’t get injured but I did hit a plateau and I wanted to move past it and it wasn’t until recently I learned wow I have zero brace whatsoever so practically what does this

Look like for me it meant slowing down my runup when I slowed down my runup but actually focused on my brace focused on shifting my weight from my back leg into my front and throwing I found that I could throw my Max distance lines that I was throwing

Previously by taking tiny little baby steps that’s it you don’t need a super fast runup to throw far however what I learned is that it was much lower effort I was not having to run into that throw I was not having to yank my arm I was

Just letting my body do the work the big takeaway from this is you should only run up as fast as you can stop your momentum start small and then work your way up and get that brace feeling comfortable because we have to be able

To stop to put all of our power into the disc so tip number two is going to be learn how to aim with your feet and this is how we’re going to do that so again we’re not super focusing on throwing right now you can do this drill in your

Living room anywhere that you want put some tape down on the carpet find a parking lot find a nice line somewhere and what’s worked for me is I like to take my first step and I’m going to cross the line starting my X step I’m going to come slightly behind or sometimes in

Line with this foot but we kind of want to be moving along this line the last step is the most important because we need to get that toe down so that our hips can rotate we want our hips to move so that when we drop our

Heel we can start to throw with our hips moving our weight forwards with our hips moving into that brace and when I do this properly for me my heel of my front foot is going to be in line with my toe and once that foot is planted then I start my throat I

Think this is something you can work on super super slow and like for me right now we’ve kind of been snowed in so like I can work on these drills in the house it just keeps me from going crazy um but aiming with your feet is so important because when you get your

Timing right and get your release right which I know we’re crazy variables but when you learn how to be consistent with your feet you will start releasing on very accurate lines this tip will really help you guys make progress in the woods it will help you make progress in all

Facets of your game um so tip number two guys is learn how to aim with your feet get your footwork dialed in and get that working with your brace these two things go hand in hand and so I I really wish that when IID first started that I had

Prioritize these things disc golf is supposed to be fun first and foremost and so go out have fun throwing but when you want to start to gain more consistency and work on your form uh if you’re not bracing learn how to brace maybe it’s time for you to check your

Footwork and see how it’s actually doing so how do we actually check our footwork get yourself a camera set it up and go throw so first and foremost we need to learn how to brace second we need to focus on our feet when it comes to aiming and releasing the disc it’s not

Even really snow here anymore it’s just like ice like you can hear me just crunching through that top layer super fun um I will say that the thing that has helped me Implement all of these tools the most recently has been uh I went to Walmart

And I bought like the cheap net that they have just like a baseball pitching net uh and guys it’s it’s really helped me learn how to feel my throw you’re not focused on where the disc is going you’re not focused on what the flight pattern looks like you can really dial

In your footwork dial in your brace and really feel the differences that that happen when you make those form changes uh I can’t really explain it any differently than that is I I thought that Nets might have been kind of gimmicky but now that I’ve used one for

A couple of weeks go buy a net if you want to make progress it’s just the difference between feeling the power coming out of the disc you can put a lot more attention into the intricate details of your throw and it just helps you hone in your game and then

Eventually translate that out into the field and then out into your game so I highly recommend buying a net and filming yourself because your brain is going to tell you that you’re making form changes and then you’re going to film yourself trying them and realize oh

Yeah I’m I’m not making those changes at all but I can’t stress enough how just buying a net recently really really helped me Implement these changes that we’re talking about wow look at this somebody somebody cleared off this teapad how kind of them it was

Me so the last thing that I want to talk about is something that I just assumed I was doing right and I assumed I was doing it right because it’s so selective it’s very personto person based everyone has a different way that they like to do

It um and we’re going to be talking about the grip and how you hold the disc so I think grip is something that people take for granted because I just started playing and I was like oh this is comfortable for me this is how I’m going

To hold the disc but I do think that even though there are differences between person person and how you hold the disc uh there there may be right and wrong ways to hold a disc I released a video a little while back that was a tip I learned from Robbie C’s Channel where

You essentially just grip the disc as hard as you can and you were trying to hold on to it you were trying to see if you could keep it in your hand and the goal of that was to give you a grip lock or the feeling of a grip lock so that

The disc was ripping out of your hands and you felt it rip out of your hands for the first time now I started trying to throw pretty much every throw like that especially max distance and what I learned is that that requires a lot of your mus muscles to be tense um and

While we do need to have an active throw I think that you could be more prone to injury by doing that so really what I found out about that drill was for me personally it was more of a teaching tool that taught me this extreme this is

Kind of what it’s supposed to feel like but how do we achieve that without ripping the disc as hard as we can I think that that video if you’ve watched it or seen any of that I think that’s a really good starting place if you’re struggling with feeling snap but I don’t

Think that that’s the way you need to throw 100% % of the time cuz I think that it can injure you um and it’s just more work it’s just more work it’s another thing you got to add into your throw so the change that I made recently

Was I used to keep my disc really high up in my hand I used to hold it so that I don’t really know how to show you guys this but the flight plate is kind of up here almost it’s it’s touching the bottom of my thumb essentially it’s

Under it um and I watched a video of the disc golf spin doctor um really great Channel love watching his content and he essentially said hey hold your disc and then take your thumb off of the top when I did that my disc fell out of my hand this was kind of revolutionary

To me I was like okay maybe this guy’s on to something like I I should experiment with this and check it out so what he said is instead of keeping it up high in your hand the disc kind of needs to sit so that you can grip it with your

Fingers but you need to be able to take your thumb off of the disc so I don’t know if you can see the difference between me holding this is a fairway driver uh just like this and I’m kind of resting the blade in my hand I can

Actually just take my thumb on and off at will but I can press down to give me more more pressure on the disc but I’m just holding it right there whereas with it being higher up in my hand I can’t do that it literally slides out so

Naturally I went to my net uh and I started messing around with this new grip just holding the disc there and then letting it rip and what I found was that I was consistently getting that feeling of snap that feeling of the disc absolutely ripping out of my hand pretty

Much every throw it was like a miracle for me it was like a whole fix overnight was just changing the way I was holding the disc I’ve been doing this wrong for you know almost two years now I’ve been holding the disc in a way that was

Comfortable to me but it wasn’t giving me as much power and I do have some theories on why that was not giving me as much power so what I believe was happening is if you look at your hand and think of your fingers to your palm

As a lever when the disc sits higher up in your palm the way I was holding it I was using more of my fingers like my fingers are kind of bending at my palm and if you guys know anything about leverage the longer this is here the

More power you have to open it um so you can apply more pressure like like I I think of like a big old like breaker bar or a torque wrench you know but kind of the opposite is true too is that it takes less Force essentially put on top

Of this to open this up and so that’s what was causing me to have those feelings of maybe I’m just opening my hand on release I don’t think I was I think I was throwing the disc hard enough that it was causing my hand when

It was like up in my palm like this I think I was throwing with enough force that as the disc came out I was using more of that lever and it felt like I was just opening my hand and I wasn’t really getting snap so what changes with

That when I switch to this other grip well now I don’t know if you guys can see but look at my lever so instead of using my entire finger connected to my Palms I’m kind of just using those first Knuckles so now we’ve essentially got like that that is what’s holding on to

The disc not this you know not more of this cuz the more leverage we’re putting into there the harder it’s going to be to kind of keep a hold of that disc so letting it sink lower into my fingers actually let me hold on to the disc

Longer with less effort and I was getting that snap off of my fingers uh and this is one of the main tips I wanted to share with you guys is if maybe you think you’re keeping your disc up really high in your palm like try

That like hold it and then like yes I can I can put the disc up as high as I used to throw it and I can kind of keep it there but it’s uncomfortable and it’s hard whereas when I keep it lower that’s effortless right there that’s just absolutely effortless that one grip

Change essentially gave me more consistent snap and more consistent feel out of my hand uh I couldn’t believe it I really couldn’t I can’t believe that I just needed to make this one simple change after all this time of feeling like I had plateaued and now I’m consistently getting more RPMs on onto

The disc watching it stay in the air longer and getting more snap I it just it blows my mind so really kind of the takeaway for this whole video is like if you feel like you’ve plateaued in any way um we’ve still got some time left in the offseason like maybe film yourself

Get a net look at your form make some adjustments and don’t be afraid to look at the things that feel comfortable because it might just be the things that feel comfortable that you need to adjust so that’s kind of what I have for you guys today there’s a lot of things

That I didn’t cover uh you know there are so many different little intricacies to the backhand throw um but hopefully in future videos we can talk about those more uh but I hope these tips were helpful for you guys learn how to brace learn how to aim with your feet and if

You think your grip needs to be changed go ahead and try it if anything feels comfortable maybe just try and make a little change see what happens I do highly encourage you guys go bu a net film yourself throwing when you’re trying trying to make changes so that

You can see if you’re actually implementing them or not and really focus on the feel of your throw how powerful does it feel um because when you go to a field or you’re in a casual round or even a tournament round like you can’t really think about those

Things and I feel like more often than not we’re focused on the Flight of the disc instead of the feel um so I hope these tips were helpful for you guys I’m freezing uh I’m going to go inside uh cuz I can’t feel my fingers anymore

Until next time have fun get better stay Decent