This is a refrain in disc golf describing the approach to properly development throwing form. It’s typically attributed to Philo Brathwaite, a particularly smooth player out of northern California. It feels self-evident in the world of disc golf mechanics1Taken to the extreme, you get Eagle McMahon and Albert Tamm, two of the farthest throwers, neither of whom ever seem to “run up” for their throw like most high-level players. as you watch different players, but its applicability beyond this origin knows no bounds.
Starting slow allows you to establish a proper foundation from which you can scale. It lets you isolate issues that you could ignore at the start but will cause a plateau—or worse—later on.
Most recently I’ve connected this to improving my guitar skills. I’m going back to basics, learning fundamental techniques and improving my base knowledge so that I can properly take a larger step forward once I’ve connected the dots. This requires patience and a long-term view, paired with a desire to truly improve. Without taking lessons or having some other form of external accountability, this requires self-discipline and fairly strong motivation, both of which I’ve lacked in some degree over the years.
With the exception of percussion—I did have some lessons and external accountability to give me a good base—I’ve learned instruments with an eye towards accumulating individual songs. I’d self-select music that seemed to be essentially doable, and over time my confidence increased along with the difficulty of the music I tried to play. In order to play certain songs, I needed to learn a handful of skills to a basic level. However, I did not isolate learning those particular skills or passages, and had a strong sense of “good enough” that would make it harder to learn something similar in the future.
While it’s hard to break those habits—after all, learning and playing a specific song is so much more fun than scales—I’m at the point where doing anything but the proper approach will halt any real progress I wish to make.
Framing more parts of my life as building a strong foundation is healthy and, in the long term, more fulfilling and efficient than just trying some stuff and seeing where it gets me. One would imagine that my background in math curriculum would give me that insight, but sometimes you need a proper nudge from somewhere new.
I encourage you to find a specific skill or goal you have and go to pains to apply slow is smooth, smooth is fast ethos to it. It will both get you farther in that skill, while also having adjacent improvement to how you approach other parts of your life.
- 1Taken to the extreme, you get Eagle McMahon and Albert Tamm, two of the farthest throwers, neither of whom ever seem to “run up” for their throw like most high-level players.