Post #5: Switching Sports
… Or "When is a 'Hit Point' NOT a ‘Hit Point'?"
People who have known me for any length of time know that I played tournament racquetball for over 20 years BEFORE I discovered disc golf. That's a long time to "groove in" a swing motion and to create some pretty serious muscle memory. I spent years tweaking both my forehand and backhand mechanics to try to generate more power, more accuracy, and more consistent -- and efficient -- court movement. After a back injury and some personal issues took me off of the court for a period of time (as well as the decline of the racquetball tournament scene that I was so heavily involved in), and thanks to a local disc golf legend, "Wild" Bill Geibel, I started playing disc golf -- and got hooked!
Unlike racquetball, where the competition is "man against man", disc golf was more "man against course." This intrigued me, as I loved my solitary practice time on the racquetball court and the almost meditation-like focus into which I could get lost. Here was disc golf -- where the entire goal was the pursuit of the "perfect" shot, where I could be as competitive as ever, but my opponent was myself, the course, and my last round/hole/shot. I had never been involved in a sport where you cheered on your competitors as hard as you did yourself. This was something that I could get into!
Then I decided to try to improve, and realized that the last 20+ years of racquetball had totally RUINED any natural "Frisbee Form" that I might have had as a child. My arm angles, body posture, and footwork -- that I had worked so hard to refine and perfect -- were so totally wrong for disc golf that I am surprised that I didn't injure myself -- or someone else. (Remember the "What the f*ck, Richard!" video? Well, my name ain't Richard, but...!)
So began the process of "unlearning" 20+ years of carefully-crafted mechanics in pursuit of an totally different set of carefully crafted mechanics. First, it took almost a year before I realized that the disc golf "hit point" -- that spot where the disc leaves the hand -- is IN FRONT of the body, chest-high, instead of BELOW the body, knee-high (or lower), and well behind the front foot. That realization alone -- and the changes that it helped establish -- was instrumental in helping me NOT throw 30 degrees or more outside of my target line!
Next, my first attempt at videoing my mechanics showed me that I was opening my hips WAY too early for disc golf. In racquetball, you open your hips early in your stride while holding your shoulders back as long as possible, creating a coil in your core that then unwinds all at once during the stroke, providing your power. If you do this during a disc golf backhand... well, the aforementioned "WTF Richard" video gets another shout out. It took me quite a while before I was able to relearn the timing between stride, reach back, hip opening, and pull through that let me keep the disc on a reasonably straight line to the target.
Finally, and most importantly, the arm extension in racquetball was completed by the time the hand (racquet) was between the feet, where as in disc golf, to create the mystical "power pocket". the arm extension doesn't even BEGIN until the hand is in front of the chest; anything earlier is called "rounding" and robs the shot of power. Also, in racquetball, the power stroke is "high - low - high". This means that your racquet prep (think "reach back") is above shoulder height, you swing the racquet down so that the racquet head is knee-height or below, then your follow through is high, again chest or shoulder height. Do this is disc golf, and every throw will be nose up and sky high. I still struggle with height control at times, especially when trying to add some extra power behind a backhand throw.
My "sport switch" saving grace was that the forehand mechanics were, shall we say, LESS different than the backhand mechanics. I was able to develop a disc golf forehand rather quickly, and that helped me begin to play competitively while I figured out all of the backhand "stuff." It is only now, after working on my backhand mechanics for 8 years, that my backhand drive distance has caught up to my forehand drive distance.
And I know, without a doubt, that if I went back on to a racquetball court and tried to hit a backhand, I would hear, distinctly and clearly...
"What the fuck, Richard!"