Challenge yourself and your disc golf skills. Get better on the course by practicing your skills off the course.
Challenges are a form of practice. You know that my number one recommendation is always a little bit of practice.
Challenges can be fun, and quantitative and competitive if you want them to be. I remember spending hours in my college dorm room with my roommate Ryan playing a speed run challenge in Call of Duty Black Ops II. We’d constantly play the same minute-long challenge over and over again until we’d beaten our previous time. It got so that cutting 0.1 seconds off your time was worthy of a text to the other person with your new record.
That was practice for a video game that we played together. It made us more accurate and faster, but it was fun to do too.
Challenges are just fun drills that make you better at the sport you love. And if you played any sports in rec, or high school, and even college we used to do drills every single practice.
I notice from the dates these challenges were posted on YouTube that many of these were created in the early days of the 2020 pandemic when social distancing was heavily enforced. The folks playing disc golf on the pro tour are understandably competitive. With a pause in their tour they found a way to create lots of content for their social media channels and ways to compete with each other at the same time.
I want to make a few points before I list out all the cool challenges I’ve seen pros on YouTube complete.
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Progress isn’t linear.
You don’t magically get better just because you put in more time. Magically getting better takes something like a pact with a supernatural being and multiclassing into Warlock.
In real life, sometimes you get worse at a skill, then you get better at whatever it is you’re practicing. Maybe you will get better right away and then it disappears. “Embrace the suck” will always be my motto for practicing disc golf. It gets better, give yourself time, an honest effort and you’ll see consistent improvement. -
Compare yourself to the pros for fun.
Every time I take a lesson with a touring pro, watch them throw a round in person, or watch them play a course I’ve played, I remember that they’re the top 0.0002% of disc golfers. (Top 50 players in the 250,000 history of the PDGA. They’re statistically probably better than that because it’s unlikely someone was the greatest ever and never played competitively, so the denominator is definitely greater.) Don’t get hung up on their numbers if you can’t come close. -
Warm up before these challenges.
Some of these are quite strenuous in nature. Don’t decide to do the Parked challenge the day before a tournament. You may say “I’m good” at a certain point, and that’s fine too.
Let’s get on to the challenges.
Parked challenge.
Players have to land a disc within 11 feet of the basket from 200 feet, then move back 20 feet once you make it. You have 30 minutes. This challenge is best done with 2 people so you can have someone verify you made it in the circle.
Simon Lizotte
Moving Back Every Time I Make It Challenge.
This challenge involves making it into a basket. You have 1 hour and every time you make it, you move backwards 10 feet. Sure we all make 10 footers, 40 footers after a few tries, and even the occasional 70 footer. But how far back can you go in an hour?
Brodie Smith
DMP Challenge
Players have to throw a Driver, Mid, and Putter as far as they can and combine all three. This reminds me of the Punt, Pass, Kick that the NFL camps put on for kids.
Mile Challenge
This one was the most popular by… a mile. Sorry.
How many throws does it take to reach a mile in total distance? Some folks used UDisc’s distance measuring tool, others opted for the Bushnell Rangefinder. If you want to see raw power and great distance form, these videos are great to watch. Pick their brains for the discs.
Oskari Vikström, Lauri Lehtinen, Samuel Hänninen
Dialed In With Bushnell Challenge
Can you pick a distance and hit it? If you’re not practicing something similar to this, you should give it a shot and see how accurate you are. It’s always great to know if your midrange is hitting 200 or 300 consistently.
This is an example of a great sponsorship tie in that I hope to see more of in disc golf (so touring pros can make a good living). It makes so much sense, and it’s why you see pros actually using these on tour. Some of these challenges have slightly different rules they play by, but they’re all in the same spirit.
Simon Lizotte, Ricky Wysocki, Drew Gibson, Eric Oakley, Paul McBeth, Garrett Gurthie
These challenges hopefully inspire a new way for you to compete against yourself and your friends while building your disc golf skills towards a goal. I tried to find as many of these challenges with athletes that I could, apologies if I missed any pros who did a YouTube video. I enjoyed watching disc golfers push themselves to the limits, and I hope that you give some of these a shot.
May your discs miss all the trees,
Andrew Streeter #70397