Practice & Drills

Disc Golf Practice & Drills

Practice with purpose: plans, field work, drills and pressure. Below are all 7 lessons in this path, each with the video we teach it from.

The 7 lessons

Building a Practice Plan

Structure practice so it actually lowers your scores.

Practice time divides badly by default: people throw drivers because it is fun and putt because they feel they should. The strokes are in the opposite place. A plan is just a decision made in advance so the hour is spent where it pays rather than where it entertains.

Split time across putting, approaches and fieldwork.
Short, focused sessions beat long, unfocused ones.

Drill · The hour — 25 min putting, 20 min approaches, 15 min field work. Run exactly that hour, with one stated goal, three times in a fortnight. Record one number each time — putts made from 20 feet, approaches inside 15 feet, whatever matches the goal. Three data points is enough to tell whether the plan is working, which is more than most practice ever produces.

Watch: How to practice better! | Disc Golf Beginner's Guide — DynamicDiscs

Field Work Fundamentals

Open-field reps that transfer to the course.

Field work is the only place you can throw a disc fifty times and watch what it does. On a course you get one throw and a result confounded by trees, slopes and nerves. In a field the feedback is clean, which is the entire reason it is worth doing.

Throw every disc in your bag to learn its flight.
Focus on one form cue per session.

Drill · One cue, one hour — 60 throws, one form cue, one target. Sixty throws at one target with one cue held the whole way through, at about eighty percent effort. Pace out the middle of your group at the start and the end. That comparison is the only honest measure of whether an hour of field work did anything.

Watch: Types of Field Work to Improve your Disc Golf — Overthrow Disc Golf

Form Drills

Retrain muscle memory with targeted drills.

Changing a motion you have thrown thousands of times takes deliberate, slow repetition — at full speed your body simply does what it already knows. Drills exist to put the new position into the motion at a speed where you can actually feel it.

Slow, deliberate reps build the correct motion.
Use a mirror or a wall drill to feel the positions.

Drill · Slow reps then real ones — 30 slow reps, then 10 full-speed throws. Thirty deliberate half-speed repetitions of one position, then ten throws at full effort. Watch whether the position survives the speed. When it does not — and it will not, at first — that tells you the drill is not finished rather than that it failed.

Watch: Top 5 best drills to improve your backhand form! | Disc Golf Beginner's Guide — DynamicDiscs

Filming Your Form

See what you actually do, then fix it.

What your throw feels like and what it looks like are different things, and the gap is usually large. Thirty seconds of video answers questions that months of guessing will not, which makes a phone the cheapest coaching available.

Film from behind (down the line) and from the side.
Compare to a pro at the same frame to spot differences.

Drill · Two angles, one fault — 5 throws filmed from behind and 5 from the side. Ten throws, two angles, then watch them once through and pick a single fault. Write it down. Work on nothing else for three sessions, then film again from the same two positions. That is a complete improvement cycle and it takes about three weeks.

Watch: FILM YOURSELF TO IMPROVE YOUR FORM // DISC GOLF 101 — Disc Golf 101

Tracking Your Practice

Measure reps and makes so you improve on purpose.

Without numbers, practice is a feeling — and the feeling is usually that you are improving when you are not, or that you are stuck when you are not. Tracking also does the less obvious job of showing you how much you are throwing, which is what stands between a keen player and an injured one.

Track putting makes by distance to find weak spots.
Manage throwing volume to avoid overuse injury.

Drill · Four numbers a week — 10 putts each at 15, 20, 25 and 30 ft, weekly. Forty putts, four numbers, written down, once a week. After a month you will know precisely which distance is your weakest — and that is where the next month of practice should go. It takes fifteen minutes and it is the most useful record most players never keep.

Watch: Tracking Throwing Volume- Disc Golf Field Work Practice — Disc Golf Strong

Practicing Under Pressure

Make practice feel like a tournament.

Practice putts and tournament putts are different shots, and only one of them is being practised in an empty field on a Tuesday. The gap between them is nerves, and nerves can be rehearsed — but only if practice has something at stake.

Add consequences (games, wagers) to simulate nerves.
Practice the exact putts and shots you fear.

Drill · Five in a row, with a cost — 5 consecutive makes from 20 ft, restarting on every miss. Five in a row from twenty feet, back to zero on a miss, and you are not finished until it is done. Do it at the end of a session with somebody watching. The fourth putt feels completely different from the first, and that feeling is exactly the thing you came to practise.

Watch: Spice Up Your Putting Practice with These Games!! | Disc Golf VLogmas Day 14 — Robbie C Discgolf

A Driving Practice Routine

Turn range time into on-course distance and control.

Most driving practice is a bag of discs thrown as far as possible until the arm tires, which builds fatigue and a max-effort motion you will never use on a course. A routine turns the same hour into distance you can repeat and control you can rely on.

Warm up, then throw with intent at targets.
End on good reps to bank the feeling.

Drill · Warm, work, finish clean — 10 min warm-up, 40 throws at 80% to targets, stop on 3 good ones. Ten minutes easy, then forty purposeful throws at about eighty percent with a target for each, then stop as soon as you have strung three clean ones together. Ending on quality rather than exhaustion is what makes the next session start where this one finished.

Watch: Practice like a Pro: Disc Golf Driving Routine — The SpinTV