When spring came, I was elated.  I had been cooped up, unable to play, for about 4 solid months.  It was more than I could take.  You can only putt in the garage so much before you admit to yourself that it’s a pale substitute for being on the course.  I had 4 months of pent up disc golf aggression to get out.

On top of that, they were starting to finish up the redesign of my local course.  A two year project that the entire NE Illinois disc golf community had anxiously awaited.  The fairways were cut and object golf was possible.  Once the weather got bearable, I started to spend as much time out on the course as humanly possible.

And here enters the problem.  Any of you who have gone from being sedentary for any length of time to huge bursts of activity know what comes next.  Pain.  Sore muscles, sore joints, sore tendons and ligaments.  Pretty much sore everything.  I think my left eyelid didn’t hurt all that much, but that’s about it.

The shock to my body of going from no athletic activity to playing as much disc golf as humanly possible every single day was huge.  My body was pissed.  And it let me know just how pissed when it would barely let me out of bed one morning.  I tried stretching.  I tried walking it off.  I tried Alleve in quantities that could possibly have warranted calling the poison control center.  Nothing worked.

All of a sudden, I was seeing playable weather outside, and I couldn’t play.  I was not a happy disc golfer.  Not at all.

I was complaining about my woeful inability to play one day and one of my coworkers suggested I get a massage.  More specifically, a sports massage.  “What is this sports massage you speak of?”, I asked.  The woman I was talking to is a competitive cross fitter.  Apparently this sports massage she talked about is a thing.  The more she talked about it, the more I thought it sounded like an incredibly good idea.  So I booked an appointment with her massage person that week.

Apparently I should have asked more questions.  My goal was to get out of pain.  I didn’t realize I was going to a distant relative of one of the torturers from the Spanish Inquisition.  She started at my feet.  And that hurt.  Then she moved to my calves, where it hurt more.  Hamstrings, pain city.  Out of the hour I was there, maybe 5 minutes actually felt good.  At the end, she hands me a bottle of water, tells me I might not feel all that good that day, and then asks me for $100.  What the hell kind of racket was this anyway?

I went to bed that night rehearsing the scolding I was going to give my coworker for recommending such a masochistic activity.  I couldn’t believe that people actually paid for this!  I could have paid some thug in an alley to punch me in the kidney a couple times and that probably would have only cost $20 and been more enjoyable.

The next morning, though.  Oh the next morning.  That glorious, wondrous, unimaginably good next morning.  Not only had I slept better than I had in months, I woke up feeling amazing.  Don’t get me wrong.  I was still sore in some of the spots the massage therapist had really dug into the day before.  But overall I felt better than I had in years.  Suddenly my attitude went from wondering if I had completely wasted $100 to wondering why they didn’t charge $500.

I definitely wanted to do that again.  That was a given.  Unfortunately, wanting to do something once a week that costs $100 and actually being able to afford to do that thing ($400 a month is more than my car payment) are sometimes two completely different things.  I could go every once in a while, but with the amount of disc golf I was playing, it just wouldn’t be often enough.  I needed a solution.  Fast.

Enter the foam roller.  That same cross fitting coworker swore by that as much as she swore by the sports massage.  At this point, I wasn’t going to question her.  Especially since a foam roller was $18.00 on Amazon.

Was it the same as the massage?  No.  Was it close?  Sure was.  In fact, the better I got at using it, the closer I got to the relief I got from the sports massage.  In fact, I’m now convinced that sometimes it’s actually better.  The massage therapist can’t actually feel what I’m feeling during the massage.  When I’m foal rolling, I get immediate feedback as to what is working and what isn’t.  I instantly know what feels the best.

Once I got kind of good at doing it, I also got kind of addicted to it.  I was rolling in the morning, after work, after rounds, before bed, while watching TV, and any other spare moment I had.  It was like having my own personal massage therapist.  I was certainly getting my $20 worth.

As good as that was, the foam roller seemed a little inadequate at getting certain areas of my body.  It didn’t do a lot for my feet.  It was hard to get enough pressure to really dig into some of the knots in my back.  A massage therapist has thumbs and knuckles that can get places that no foam roller can get.  So I logged on to the inter webs and started to do some research.  What I found was a world of mobility tools.  The foam roller was just the tip of the proverbial ice berg!

With credit card in hand and Amazon on my screen, I proceeded to order an alarming number of crazy looking implements.  I couldn’t wait to try all of them out.  I was back to playing a ton of disc golf with the help of the foam roller, these could only make things even better, right?

Well, as is my normal pattern, I bought way too many things to try.  Some worked great, others did not.  Some I still use, others are now paperweights or dog toys.  One of my goals here at the Mind Body Disc blog is to save you all the trouble and pain of trial and error.  I want to be the guinea pig for you.  After buying and trying quite a few implements, I’ve narrowed them down to a list of my favorites.

[tweetthis]A foam roller can be a disc golfer’s best friend.[/tweetthis]

As you build your disc golf home gym, mobility tools like this will be a necessity.  While not technically a piece of work out equipment, no work out or home gym would be complete without at least one or two of them.

I’m putting this list on it’s own page (click here) and linking to it on my resources page.  That way you can get back to it quickly and easily any time you want.  I suppose I could have just skipped the last 1,200 words and told you this at the beginning of the post, but that’s just not my style.  I have yet to find the piece of equipment that keeps me from talking too much.

[wysija_form id=”1″]

Disclosure of Material Connection: Some of the links in the post above are “affiliate links.” This means if you click on the link and purchase the item, I will receive an affiliate commission. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will add value to my readers. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.”

The post Building a Disc Golf Home Gym, the Mobility Tools appeared first on Mind Body Disc - Disc Golf Blog.

I made it to the car without incident and without running into anyone who wanted to chit chat on the way out.  I headed straight to the nearest decent course for a round of 18.  Looks like I was going to get started just in time!  I jumped out of the car, grabbed my bag, and jogged to the first tee.  On the tee, I lined up my shot, visualized my line, took a breath, and…

Not only did I early release the heck out of that disc, but the sharp and debilitating pain shooting up my back was telling me there would be no disc golf that night.  The snap I heard as I pulled several muscles in my lower back was not the snap I was hoping for.

It took 3 weeks to get over that particular injury, and that was minor.  This kind of thing used to happen all the time.  You name it and I’ve pulled or strained it.  I’ve also been dumb enough to try to play through minor injuries only to make them major ones.  3 years ago, that all changed when regular stretching became a part of my life.

This was not by choice.  I was not trying to get in touch with my inner Chi.  I was recovering from some crippling disc issues in both my upper and lower back.  If I didn’t stretch daily at that time, I couldn’t walk.  Kind of made it worth the time.  Over the years, regular stretching became something I just did.  Always at the gym, often in the morning, always before and after any kind of disc golf.

Everyone knows that they should stretch before playing, but few people do.  We know we risk injury, but for the vast majority of players it’s not until they suffer an injury or three that they take stretching and mobility seriously.  For all of you out there that know you should be stretching, but maybe need that last little push to actually do it, there’s another great reason to stretch besides injury prevention.

Last spring I was playing in a tournament in early April.  It was a cold morning and I made a point to arrive early to allow for some extra warm up.  I have a pretty set tournament prep routine, so I got to it.  When I got to the stretching portion of my warm up, I noticed another golfer doing the same thing behind the car next to me.

“Stretching out?” He asked.

“Yeah, got back issues, it’s the only way I can play.  How about you?”, I asked back.

“I don’t have any back issues, I just want to win.  I have no accuracy when I’m tight.”, He said casually.

“Helps accuracy?  How so?”, I replied.

We had a good conversation that day.  I got a lot of food for thought that I’ve been able to test out over the years.  For me, the results are pretty conclusive.

Stretching improves your accuracy.  There is not a professional athlete in the world that doesn’t warm up and stretch out before activity.  For those that want to perform at the top level in their sport, warmup is critical.  It helps in a million different ways, but for me it helps accuracy the most.

You see, your muscles, when cold, are like a new rubber band.  Each time you stretch a new rubber band, it lengthens just a little bit more.  Each time you stretch it, it gets longer.  With every pull, it moves a bit easier and freer.  The same is true with your muscles.  Injury and other issues aside, let’s review what happens with your muscles when you hit the first tee cold and tight.

Your throw power and accuracy are determined in large part by your reach back and your follow through.  The distance from your reach back to your follow through is determined by how far your muscles allow you to stretch, pull, and twist through the full motion of the throw.

If you start on the first tee cold and tight, you are making each of your first 20-30 throws with different potential distances between your reach back and your follow through.  You also see wild variances in how “smoothly” a muscle group can fire.  In other words, even if everything else was perfect, you have introduced a variable that will alter not only your power potential, but also your release point and therefore accuracy.

By warming up and stretching before you play, you are eliminating variables.  Maximize your range of motion prior to playing by committing to a good stretching routine.  Your body and your scores will thank you.

In a future post we’ll go over some recommended stretching routines that I think most people can live with.  For now, remember to warm up a bit before your rounds and field work.  It’ll not only keep you healthy, but it may shave some throws from your score too!

Do any of you have any other reasons for stretching out?  I’d love to hear what you all are doing out there.

The post The Worst Kind of Snap in Disc Golf appeared first on Mind Body Disc - Disc Golf Blog.