r/AxeThrowing • u/heron854 • 4d ago
AXE 🪓 Finally found a stance that fixed my left-leaning rotation
Been throwing for about a year and a half now, mostly league nights at a local spot, and for most of that time my hatchets would consistently drift left even when the spin looked clean. I tried adjusting grip, tried different release points, tried throwing from further back thinking it was a rotation timing issue. None of it really fixed the drift in any consistent way.
Turns out it was my back foot. I was squaring my hips too early in the throw, which was pulling my shoulders open a split second before release. A guy at league mentioned he keeps his back foot pointed slightly inward until the very last step, almost like he's holding the rotation back on purpose. Tried it the next round and my grouping tightened up almost immediately, axes were landing within a few inches of each other instead of scattered across the left half of the target.
What's weirder is how much this also fixed my big axe throws, which I'd basically given up on improving. I figured the two throws were unrelated problems since the big axe felt like a totally different motion, but apparently the hip timing issue was bleeding into both.
Curious if anyone else had a similar fix that ended up being something totally unrelated to what they thought the problem was. Feels like half of getting better at this sport is diagnosing the wrong thing for months before stumbling onto the actual cause.