I was recently talking with someone that was at the recent AC seminar. He was also a primer and has been practicing since the seminar.
He brought up something that made me think about an element of the throw. He said, and I am paraphrasing, something I have noticed while practicing is the backswing, why do we need to do it? He went on to say, it is not like these things are heavy or we have to move them a long distance. It seems to me that the backswing may create something else to think about, or more motion that could possibly affect the roll. He continued to say, in other words if I have already squared the dice up and then come back for the backswing and I twist my wrist just a bit then my throw will be off, on the other hand if I square the dice up and just forget about coming back and just shoot from the squared up position then I know the dice are squared up. He said, to me it would seem like less motion would create less room for error.
I told him that I can see his point but I thought that the backswing is an important part of the throw in order to create the pendulum swing that GTC teaches. Personally I practice exactly how I was taught, or at least as accurately as I can. I did throw less than 5 times without a backswing and it felt like the throw was forced and not natural.
Please do not be too hard on me as I am just the messenger. I would like to know if anyone else has ever thought of this and if so have they ever tried it?
Thanks,
Jason
Replies:
Posted by: Dominator on November 7, 2017, 12:44 pm
The backswing shouldn’t be more than 4 inches. If you can not go back 4 inches straight, practice, practice, practice
Dom
Posted by: Drummer on November 7, 2017, 1:06 pm
This is exactly the answer I expected. Thanks for taking the time to reply.
I remember when I was at an instructors table (for the life of me I cannot remember his handle) I was having difficulty with the dice consistently flying to the left when I was throwing. It was a problem that I had been having since the start of the seminar. If I remember correctly the instructor looked at everything I was doing and said my stance was correct, my backswing was correct, my grip looked good, everything looked good but I was alway throwing to the left, even when targeting a specific point on the rig.
We discussed the issue and he asked if I could stand on my toes. I explained that I do have low back pain and that standing on my toes was uncomfortable. We discussed adjusting my stance to compensate my tendency to throw the dice to the left. He wanted to call you over and get your opinion, you came over and looked at my throw, saw that I was throwing to the left, asked why I needed to adjust my stance and how my stance had anything to do with my low back pain. I explained that it didn’t, and that only when I got on my toes is when it bothered me. You said, don’t adjust your stance, practice not throwing to the left. You also reminded me to throw with a clear mind.
You watched my next throw and it was dead on. I threw maybe ten more times at that station after you left and each throw was right down the center and right on my target. It was amazing to me that just one minute of your time improved my throw so drastically.
Posted by: Dominator on November 8, 2017, 1:01 pm
My answer is always the same with these t hing – "You get to Carnegie Hall with practice" . You know you can do it!
Dom
