Several years ago, I blew out 4 discs in my back. It was a very dark time in my life filled with pain, a loss of hope, and the inability to play disc golf. It was horrible and I don’t wish an experience like that on anyone. If you have ever had any disc issues in your back, you can relate. It is not a fun experience.
Like everything else in life, finding the silver lining is key. The bright side here was that the injury and subsequent recovery forced me to learn a standstill shot. It was the only way to start playing again. It was slow going at first, but it was better than being face down on the living room floor and stupid on pain meds.
If you are looking for a single activity that can impact every aspect of your game positively, learning to throw from a stand still is a great candidate. By removing most of the moving parts of the throw (and they are the moving parts that contribute to distance and accuracy the least), you can really pay attention to the things that matter most. You can further increase the effectiveness of this skill by learning it with a putter first.
It might take a while, but throwing a putter 250’+ is a completely learnable skill by almost everyone. If you were to dedicate a good amount of time to this, and then pick up a driver or mid, you will be shocked at how much better your throw is. Throwing from a stand still will teach you a lot:
- Weight shift.
- Involving your whole body.
- Keeping the disc close to you.
- Pulling on a straight line.
- Timing.
- Imparting snap and spin on the disc
- Keeping the nose down.
- Throwing smoothly with no flutter.
- Hitting your intended lines.
Want to learn to throw from a standstill? I talk a little about it, and my back injury, in a post I wrote about controlling your upshot distance. But if you really want the master class, here it is from Will Shusterick:
Now, shut off whatever device you are reading this on and go do that. Follow his advice and do it until your arm falls off! Once learned, you will cherish the stand still shot as one of your most valuable disc golf weapons!
Another valuable disc golf weapon is a subscription to this blog! You don’t have to do anything until your arm falls off for that, just enter your email below!
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Just wanted to chime in and say thanks for talking about this. Learning a stand still really helped me learn to engage my feet/legs/hips properly without the complication of the x step. Then, when you add the x step back in, you understand what you are trying to get out of it. I love Will’s video on this! Although I do think with him you have to WATCH what he’s doing and take what he is saying with a grain of salt. He gets in to talking about the back and arm muscles, and I think that can be a bit misleading. I’m sure he is using those muscles, but the focus really is how he is driving off of his back foot, the transfer up to the hips, and how that all gets the upper body moving. Great read again, thanks!
That’s a great point about how much he emphasizes things verbally. I also noticed that if you watch him throw, there are a few differences between the video and what he actually does.