Post #1: Pushing Cars Is For The Young

I could call 2022 by many names: "The Year on One Leg"; "Pushing Cars is for the Young"; and even "Why I Hate the Schuylkill Expressway"; but regardless of what I call it, 2022 saw me lose half of the year to a complete rupture of my right achilles tendon. The story is a long one, full of absurdity and hilarity — and too long to relate in detail here. The short version is that I tried to manually push my stalled car onto the shoulder of a busy freeway, and in doing so, ruptured my achilles where it attaches to the calf muscle. This resulted in a three month convalescence, with no disc golf other than what I could watch on DGN and YouTube, and another six months trying to recover my form, mechanics, athleticism (such as it was), strength, and endurance. When I *was* able to get back onto a course, I was limited to standstill backhands for a few weeks, then slowly began to try out various form modifications in an effort to return to competition.

With these limitations, I was only able to manage 20 tournaments last year:

5 unsanctioned

10 C-Tier

5 B-Tier

I was able to win 3 of the sanctioned events (two of which were pre-injury), however, my rating dropped from 909 to 902 -- not bad given the extent of the damage to my leg; and it may well drop further as more of my early season scores from last year drop from the calculations. This is not a complaint, however, as I am back on the course, enjoying the game and working on recovering and improving. (There was a point immediately after the injury that I thought that my "disc-ing" days were over -- and I'm ecstatically thankful that I was wrong!) At the time of this posting, my leg is almost 100% in terms of strength, and about 80% in terms of flexibility, but the damage done to my game was substantial and is still coming back. My ankle will probably never return to its former rotational strength or flexibility, so adjustments have been/still need to be made to accommodate the "new normal." I've already made changes to my putting routine (altering my stance to remove some strain from my right leg) and slowed my drive mechanics down to avoid re-injury while the leg strengthened. Now that the off-season is here (such as it is), I'll begin working on quickening the pace of the run-up, as well as improving arm mechanics and working on core strength.

With the injury now in the past and the recovery well on it's way, it's time to look to the future -- and therein lies my BIG NEWS!!

After discussions with my family, i have decided to focus very heavily on disc golf this year. I want to see how far I can push my game over the course of a season, and since technology still hasn't found a way to reverse the aging process, this year may be my best shot at doing something special. I've spent a few weeks planning and researching appropriate training routines, likely tournaments, and possible travel, and I think I've settled on a basic outline for the year that (hopefully) will take me as far as I can possibly go. This outline includes plans and goals for fitness and health as well as skills and mechanics training, tournament prep, and competitive play.

Also, I plan on documenting the entire year via writings and videos that I will share on social media -- both to help keep myself focused and accountable, and to have something to look back on when the season/year is over to see how far I was able to go. This post will be the first in what I hope will be weekly written updates on my progress as well as thoughts on aspects of the sport that I feel haven't been addressed enough, such as tournament preparation, the mental/emotional game, fitness/nutrition/health, and anything else that pops up over the course of the year.

So here’s to a year of sore muscles, frustrating practice sessions, rainy field work, MORE sore muscles,… and watching the plastic fly!!!

Next Week: “THE PLAN”