Rifle Tossing Fix?

[rifleline14]

The guard I'm currently in has a slight issue, most if not all rifles tend to toss low, and no matter how hard they try, they can't get it any higher, and I noticed something... Instead of having their release hand fully extended up, its more so out in front of them (away from their body as far as it can go, i guess its fear of a chunk of wood), so its not going higher, and they can't make it go higher because their arm isn't in the right spot... so i assume, just going on intuition. Also with height, their catches are weak, is this the cause? the rifle to far away from their arms so they have to reach and can't get on top of the butt and nose? Anyway to correct their old habits?

Edited August 3, 2009 by rifleline14

[quegrawks]

Use the wall technique for hand placement (as mentioned earlier in the thread).

Although poor catching can be a result of poor toss technique, it's a separate entity unto itself. Make sure they are "smacking" the gun, not just letting it drop into their hands or reaching up to grab it from the middle of a rotation.

[rifleline14]

Oh great. Didn't see the pitch one. Thanks.

[rifleboypa]

everything u have stated could be the cause of it.. i always tell my kids to pull their shoulder blades together when they toss.. it opens up their chest and makes them pull the arm back... u can also have them think about dropping a ball behind their should when they release.. someone had mentioned that in a previous post and i told some kids and it worked.

as for the catches.. they need to be slamming their hands into it, but also pull the hands apart on the catch. the side to side helps with the wobbly catches. plus.. if they are not throwing high enough to get the rotations all the way around, they would be scooping the toss in and catching with the hands at 2 different times rather than a solid catch with both hands at the same time...

just some pointers.... but it seems like ur eye is working.....

[Musical_Spinner]

Are you teaching them to keep the free arm up or bringing it down? That could make a difference as to methodology.

The one tip I have about catching a rifle hard, (not to toot my own horn but I can smack the crap out of a rifle) is to think about the arms going INTO the gun at the last possible second as opposed to the left hand coming from above and the right hand going from below to meet the rifle on the count.

I am tempted to post pictures of the wrong way vs. the right way.

If you can minimize the amount of movement required to catch, and you have fast hands/arms it'll start to happen naturally.

As for the correct rotation and height double check and make sure that the energy from the dip matches the same energy on the release. A lot of people can have a strong dip but then the energy of the release (how fast the left arms moves to the release point) is weak or not fast enough. The timing of the dip to the release is the same every time. So what does this tell us? The higher the toss and release point, the faster the left arm has to travel to the release point to release on the proper count.

An exercise we liked to do to practice our strong dips is to do a "spin spin flat dip" and on the dip the instructor calls out the toss (single double triple etc.) and we would have to toss it.

[Emmy]

Does anybody have any technical tips on how to fix your pitch? I know to try a wall but my pitch is just awful! Even with my drop spins on flag it was no bueno. I started rifle 3 days ago and my baby on the right had terrible pitch but my baby's on the left had less terrible pitch but still pretty bad. My singles kept going back instead of straight up and catching is a struggle. Any advice would be very appreciated!