We’ve spent a lot of time talking about course management here on the blog. We’ve talked about improving your putting by throwing better up shots. We’ve also talked about improving your upshots with better placement of your drives. It’s a vast topic with a lot of nuance and detail. I like writing about it. You like reading about it. We could all get a lot better by actually doing it.

There’s no doubt about it. Better course management leads to lower scores.

[tweetthis]Better course management leads to lower #discgolf scores[/tweetthis]

But before we get too much further into course management, we need to back up a step. There’s something we need to cover first before we can ever expect to manage the course well.

Great course management begins with knowing what the best shot is in any given situation. It’s knowing what to throw and how to throw it so that you put yourself in the best possible position for your next shot.

Knowing what’s needed is good. There’s a certain confidence that comes with standing out on the course and knowing exactly what you should do. As GI Joe used to say, “knowing is half the battle.” (for all you old school cartoon folks who knows where this comes from, you need to know that this exists!!!)

Unfortunately, what GI Joe said doesn’t help us execute. If you know the shot you need to throw, but can’t throw it, it’s almost worse than not knowing in the first place!

There is knowing, and then there is doing. It does you absolutely no good to know what to do if you can’t do it.

Sure, you can try to throw a shot you aren’t practiced at. But we all know how that usually turns out, right? Rarely is that going to end well.

How many times has this happened to you? You’re standing at your disc. You know the shot that is needed. You’ve seen other people throw it before. You even have an understanding of how to throw it. You might have even tried it a couple of times before. The problem is you don’t really have this shot in your arsenal.

When it comes to course management, there’s a catch…

If you don’t have the shot you need, you can’t throw it. It’s as simple as that. And that leaves us with the question of how do you fix it so that you never find yourself with this problem?

Disc Golf Practice.

Here we make a really good case for disc golf practice. But not just any old practice. We need shot specific practice. We need practice that is tailored to the shots we are going to see while we are playing.

Do you have a hole on your course that requires a long turnover shot? That’s what you should be working on out in the field.

Do you have a course full of low ceiling tunnel shots? Start doing your practice inside of a tunnel with a low ceiling.

Is your home course open and full of nothing but spike hyzers? Make sure you have that shot dialed in.

What do I usually see when I watch people doing field work? Usually, it’s someone out on a football or soccer field working on distance. They have their bag of discs and they are hucking them up and down the field, end zone to end zone.

Typically they are just trying to push their distance out a bit further. There is usually no goal other than adding extra length to their throws. If there is some aspect of form being practiced, it is usually related to getting the thrower more D.

What people are not usually practicing is individual shot types or shapes. They are not envisioning real world situations they might face (or have already faced) out on the course.

A big part of course management is being ready to manage the course in the first place. Distance has little to do with that. Shot shape and type are much bigger players.

More important than distance.

What if the best shot for a particular situation is a high anhyzer, out around an obstacle? One that flexes back to flat and sits down without skipping or rolling? Oh, and thrown with a putter? Hopefully, we have practiced that shot and are ready to throw it.

I mean REALLY practiced it.

Last summer, a friend of mine and I decided we needed to work on this exact shot. We grabbed a stack of 5 putters each. We went to a local course and picked out two baskets about 300 feet apart with a big tree between them. We then threw putters back and forth from basket to basket using a high anhyzer line around that tree.

We did that for about 3 hours that day. Then another 3 hours the next day. Later on, I put in another couple of hours by myself on my home course. We must have thrown that single shot hundreds of times. Just that one type of throw with that one type of disc.

I can guarantee you that both of us throw that shot with confidence now.

Too many times we go out and throw a shot a handful of times and call that practice. Then, when we find ourselves in need of it during a round, we get upset that it doesn’t turn out as planned.

If we want to be good at course management, we have to be able to execute the shots we determine that we need. The first step is loading those shots into our arsenal. That means lots of shot specific practice.

What shots do you need?

The second step is compiling a list of the shots we need. More specifically, the ones we need to play the courses we face on a regular basis.

What we should be doing when playing rounds is making mental notes of what shots we find ourselves most in need of. Then we should be taking those notes with us to the practice field.

A big part of why people don’t practice is they don’t really have a clue what they are supposed to be practicing in the first place. When that’s the case, most folks either just head straight to the course to play a round. Or, they fall back to the old stand by of throwing for distance until their arm hurts.

I’m guilty of both of those, how about you?

One of the keys to getting practice in is to have a plan. It’s knowing what you are out there practicing in the first place. If you have trouble figuring out why you are standing out there on the football field with a bag of discs and a sore arm, try starting with a better plan.

Make a list of shots that you could actually use. Throws that come up a few times every round. Then head to the field and see where you really stand with all of them.

What percentage of the time can you throw each of those shots and have it land where you want? I’d suggest that if it’s under 75% it’s time, dedicate some effort to it. Some serious effort. Like in the anhyzer shot example above.

We could go into a checklist of what types of shots all disc golfers “should” have in their bags. Heck, we might even make that into a post of its own someday (*note to self… make post about needed shot types next week). For now, just make a list of the shots that you use on your home or most played courses.

Now, pick 2-3 of those shots and head out to the field. Own those shots. Make it so that the next time you step out on the course and have to throw one of them, you will have all the confidence in the world.

Once you do this, you’ll be surprised at how much easier course management is. You’ll not only step up to your disc and know what you need to do, you will also have the important skill of being able to do it!

Oh, and bonus… You’ll score better and have more fun too!

You know what doesn’t take a lot of practice? Subscribing to this blog! You actually only need to do it once and then we take it from there. Just enter your email below and we’ll make sure you never miss a post. We’ll also send you a weekly newsletter full of things that will improve your mind, your body, and, of course, your disc golf game!!!

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The post The Disc Golf Practice That Lowers Your Score and Makes Course Management Easy appeared first on Mind Body Disc - Disc Golf Blog.

The missing element in disc golf course management.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve posted several articles on course management. We’ve covered leaving yourself a quality putt after your upshot. We’ve covered putting yourself in position to make a quality upshot in the first place. We’ve even covered how the wind effects some of those decisions.

While that’s a good start, there is an important dimension of this course management equation that we haven’t covered yet. It’s quite possibly the most important part too. It’s what allows you to do those things in the first place. It’s playing with your head and not your ego.

[tweetthis]You can’t let your ego make decisions for you on the #discgolf course.[/tweetthis]

You see, your ego is the one that wants to throw your approach shots at the chains instead of nestling the disc under the basket. Your ego is the one that wants to run that long putt even though there’s water 10 feet past the bucket. Your ego is the one that says all 600 foot holes need a driver off the tee.

Guess what?

Don’t get me wrong. There is a time and a place to take chances. There’s a time to be aggressive. It’s just not every time you have a disc in your hand.

Are you trying to win?

Is your goal as a disc golfer to be the one who threw the most memorable shot of the tournament? Leave your brain in the car and let your ego play the whole round.

If your goal is to win (or at least post the lowest possible score you can), then your brain has to come along. It also has to be in charge. At best, your ego gets to ride shotgun.

Let’s look at that 600 foot hole as an example of what I’m talking about. Most people, regardless of how the hole lays out, will step up to the tee with a driver. This might even be the right approach if you are playing a park style course with zero chance of punishment for a bad shot.

What is probably the better choice, though, is to head to the tee with a mid. 2 controlled 300 foot shots that land within feet of where you aimed put you right under the basket for a drop in 3. There is a saying that I repeat to myself many times over the course of a round…

“There in two is there in two.”

Nowhere on the score card does it say how you got your score. No one hands out trophies at the end of a tournament based on the longest average throw of the event. Lowest score wins. Period.

A great example…

If you play on wooded or technical courses this is especially true. Michael Johansen just won the 2015 Hall of Fame Classic. MJ is one of my favorite players to watch. Especially on wooded courses. He absolutely destroys his competition…. With a Comet.

When he’s in the woods, he’s not trying to eek out a few extra feet off the tee. He’s trying to thread gaps, not hit trees, and land in the spot that gives him the best possible approach shot to the basket.

Meanwhile, his opponents are throwing drivers. They find themselves deep in the woods, scrambling with trick shots and utility discs. There they are, far off the fairway, hoping to give themselves even the smallest look at a par putt.

MJ is the man. If you haven’t watched him play a wooded course, take the time right now to watch this video. Pay attention not only to MJ, but to just how many 500+ foot holes are started with mids and putters.

Most of the holes we face in disc golf are pretty straight forward. Often, we are trying to get under the basket in one shot from the tee. As our sport matures, we will face more and more holes where it’s our second shot that is king. Unless you are Johnny Mutant Arm, you aren’t parking a 600 foot hole.

Why a driver?

That begs the question of what do you gain by throwing driver off the tee? Why not two midrange shots? Most of today’s mids can be pushed out reliably and accurately past 300 feet. I know I can throw the Truth and the Claymore on most shots 325 feet and in and be very happy with the result. I learned to play disc golf watching Barry Schultz throw Rocs on shots up to 400 feet.

We got a lot of good feedback on our recent posts about disc golf course management. Lots of people chimed in with comments, emails, and other feedback. They talked about learning to throw placement shots. They described setting themselves up for their next shots successfully by thinking before throwing.

All those people have at least one thing in common. They have started to think their way around the disc golf course. They understand that the flashiest shot is often not the best choice. They get the fact that ego needs to be kept in check during a round.

In the end, what your ego doesn’t understand is that accuracy trumps distance in most cases. Your brain gets this point. Your ego fights it. The key is not letting the ego win.

We’d love to hear how you keep your ego in check. When do you decide to let one rip and when do you decide to play placement shots? Let us know in the comments below.

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The post Are You Smarter Than Your Ego? appeared first on Mind Body Disc - Disc Golf Blog.