Snap. You hear about this subject all the time in disc golf tutorials, but it remains one of the most confusing and mysterious aspirations in the sport. Youtube is filled with videos explaining how to get “more snap”, but few of them actually relay what you’re trying to achieve, and why.
In this video, I discuss what “snap” really is, and provide an explanation for the confusion. I also suggest retiring this antiquated terminology, and suggest something far more flavorful and accurate.
***Warning*** I start talking in detail about Street Fighter 2 near the end of the clip. If you don’t care about fighting games or fighting game history, feel free to jump off at that point. Thanks for watching!
All right today I’m going to talk about an interesting subject that nearly anybody who has ever played disc golf or at least played disc golf and tried to learn by using you YouTube is heard about and that’s the idea of snap snap what is snap if you if you look at those
Videos on YouTube You’ll see all of these titles like how to get more snap how to feel more snap in your throat how to get louder snap etc etc people have been talking about snap in this sport I think probably since the 197 but the interesting thing is that when
You’re discussing the subject of snap and dis golf there’s two factions of people actually there’s probably 99.999% of the dis golf population at this point that is doing the first version of snap and that version of snap is essentially indistinguishable from this they’re making snapping sound when the disc
Ejects from their hand imagine the guy who sits there gets ready on the teapad he holds his disc back I’ll pick one up for example all right it’s actually look it’s a tech disc I’ll do a video about a tech this soon this was lent to me by a
Wonderful gentleman in New York City and I will talk more about his company in an upcoming video but for the time being I’m just going to use this as a demonstration uh that guy’s standing on the teapad and he’s got his disc in his hand and he’s gripping it tight as hell
He’s been told to use the power grip grip four fingers tightly on the rim grip the disc tight as hell so that you can hold on to it really long to put a lot of force into it and so on so when that guy barrels down the teapad and he
Lands and he plants with his foot open this way and he spins around with his arm actually whipping behind his body and going fast over here but the disc is long away CU it came out here he hears that sound amplifi that but just way louder cuz it’s going a lot faster it’s
Indistinguishable from just snapping your fingers and it has absolutely nothing to do with making the Disco faster or throwing it harder at all in fact it’s often subtractive because when you’re gripping the disc super tight and you’re killing it with your arm your whole sequence gets broken and you’ve got your arm
Ahead of the legs and the legs never have time to generate power so a lot of people that are gripping the disc tightly and seeking this idea of snap are actually behaving in a very counterproductive way and the problem too is that you get positive feedback from your friends I’ve had this happened
Myself countless times I’ve been playing disl since 1998 and because I gripped the disc so tightly I made lots of snapping sounds when I threw it it would snap like crazy it would sound like snapping a towel it was really audible because I gripped it so tightly in this
Riit thinking that that would help and people complimented me on my snap all the time and I never threw faster as a result of it because why would snapping your fingers around the rim of a disc matter at all about mechanically so getting back to the other faction the
0.001% maybe it’s not that tiny but it’s a small percentage those guys are doing something differently and for a long time they’ve also referred to it as snack so when you see guys that know how to really bomb the guys who throw 500 plus and they talk about snap they’re
Talking about the other version of it they’re talking about the biomechanical version which actually isn’t even a sound it’s not on aop it’s actually a feeling it’s a feeling that you get this bizarre feeling of elasticity through your body when you brace properly and you use the
Biomechanical levers of the body and the sequence of a cascading energy wave coming up your body to add a huge amount of inertial mass essentially weight to your throwing arm and also to the disc as the disc accelerates and flies in front of your body all of that mass in
Your arm in your throwing arm and in the disc gets Amplified as the disc accelerates and your body pushes even more kinetic energy into it and all of the tendons and ligaments and muscles and even the bones and the blood that form your arm Compact and compress under
The energy under the energy and extra weight of that acceleration it all squishes together at the end of your arm and as the disc releases and it releases all that kinetic energy everything bursts apart like a rubber band snapping open that is real snap as it’s called in
Dis Golf and it’s a feeling it’s not a sound although it does have a sound and at the end of this video right now essentially I’m going to propose that we change the terminology I think that dis golf in general the teaching systems in dis golf have been whay they’ve been
Belayered by old and Antiquated terminology things like the reach back the pull through forming the power pocket these things that sound intentional in the right arm that are almost all biomechanically consequential of the proper sequence and yet their terminology is repeated over and over and over again it confuses everybody and
Snap is no different if you’re just ripping the disc tightly and seeking that kind of snap you’ll never feel the unloading of biomechanical energy into the object so my proposal and certainly people in the comments I’d love to hear your opinion about this um but I wanted
To borrow from my past history as a competitive Street Fighter TBE player way back in like 1989 1990 1991 when I was in my teenss and living in Northern California and I had a good friend of mine and he and I were very high level compe itive Street Fighter players on
The Northern California scene which is still famous to this day if you actually care about this small little ecosystem of gaming but my friend his name is John John and I came up with this term for a strategy that you could do in Street Fighter where you would extend this
Going to get very technical I’m sorry you can fast forward to the end if you don’t care about Street Fighter you could extend a kick into the opponent as their character was coming up off the ground and you knew in your mind how many frames it took for that kick to
Both come out and retract before you could do another action but the amount of time that that kick would overlap with their characters their character came off the ground could be different depending on how early you extended the kick so you imagine it takes eight
Frames to do a low forward kick with Ru and it takes uh six frames to come out of blocking that forward kick but if you start reuse forward kick early and you clip the opponent with the last frame of the forward kick or maybe the last two
Frames of it you have four frames to act while the opponent is stuck in blocks St and you have the initiative anytime you have the initiative in that game it’s a big Advantage cuz you get to press the attack and you can not only just throw the guy well he’s still stuck
Essentially add block because you know when he’s coming out and the other thing you can do is if the guy is foolish enough to try to do something you can hit him with the for kick and then you can combo into like a ducking strong and
A fireball and dizzy him and just win the match on the spot anyway the reason why I mention that street figher anote is because we had a term that we coined for what it was like to stick the frames of your leg into the other person’s body
As and it came up off the ground that term is still used to this day in the whole competitive Street Fighter scene if you watch Street Fighter 6 on Twitch TV or on YouTube and you watch high level competitions the commentators will talk about it all the time getting meaty
Getting meaty on the opponent with this low kick so I propose if you think about what snap is it’s a feeling right but if it has a sound it’s a meaty sound it’s like a wet thud it sounds like that the sound of all that elasticity un loading and going
Into the disc so I propose we call it getting meaty on the disc I know some people absolutely hate that I would love to hear your comments in after you finish watching the video thank you so much for watching and uh and I’ll have more to come very soon about the
Detectives thanks take care
4 Comments
Getting Meaty!
Exactly. A great throw properly sequenced and timed etc. has a very distinct sound. But making a very distinct sound does not make it a great throw. The sound is a by-product of great timing. "Getting Meaty" is when you have the patience with 90% of the throw to allow the confluence of factors to collide at the proper time. Forcing that issue just muffles the inertial moment Find the point where the angle of the the swing must alter, and all the power coincides with the longest loosest cleanest expression, the "hit". Arrange the levers and let that hit come, no rush, no extra tension.
Sorry, but no, I don't like that term and I don't think it would ever catch on.
I think "snap" is a term that could continue to be used as long as coaches get the word out on what it actually means.
I do agree that the term "reach back" should not be used. My local coach told me to think of it as a "rotate step", since what you're really doing is rotating the shoulders back. "Reaching" results in bad form. "Run up" should be called the "X-step". There's no running.
Loving the fighting game terminology. Great explanation of a meaty low kick out of a wake up from the opponent. I propose we call the snap "Wave Dash" lol. In terms of snap it really does describe the same concept in your rubber band effect video. As you reach back or "Cock" your arrow being your arm. It engages like a string on a bow retracting then launching the disc like an arrow as it rebounds.