Throwing
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Loading ...So I spent my summer in Japan, studying the language at a University near Tokyo.
I didn’t exactly have easy access to regular ultimate (I had weekly pickup with a pretty sweet group of international people in Tokyo, but it was a long trek–expensive, too, a good $20 to travel there and back–and there were weekends we traveled and such as a class when I couldn’t go play), so I tried to make up for it with a lot of tossing–a good hour or two every weekday, basically. And when I wasn’t tossing, I was doing reading online about ultimate, with particular emphasis on my throws.
And I had an epiphany about my throws. Really, it’s gotten to the point where I wonder how I ever really threw before I figured out how to really throw.
In any case, I feel like I have a good enough grasp of throwing mechanics that I can almost coach it (well, as well as it can be coached, I guess). Some of the things I figured out about throwing over the summer, listed in order of (I think) importance:
-Wrist snap. It’s important to have it, but what’s really game-changing is the timing of it. A lot of newbie players, I think, throw with their wrist snap drawn out over the course of the throw–that is, you’re starting your snap/release prematurely, resulting in a loss of spin, velocity, and a trend towards instability and the airbounce, all not particularly desirable.
Basically, the way I visualize throwing, it’s all a whipping motion. As far as the wrist is concerned, you want to snap your wrist as hard as you can at the point of release–take all the velocity from your arm motion, multiply it with the wrist snap, and then release the disc. A little hard to follow, maybe, but when applied it’ll improve all your throws.
Along with this, you also have the amount of wrist snap to worry about. The further back the disc and your wrist are, the more power you can transfer into spin and thus the further the disc will fly, generally speaking.
-Grip. As far as having control goes, it really starts with the grip. Most people know better than to use that finger-on-the-rim backhand grip, and the split-finger forehand, but I think a lot of people, especially with forehand, don’t get optimal control from their grip. A good grip is tight, and allows for maximal energy transfer to the disc.
For a backhand, it’s hard to beat the power grip in terms of energy transfer, but because all your fingers are tight against the rim it’s hard to keep the disc in a stable line while throwing, so I prefer keeping the pointer and maybe the middle fingers only bent, and the others are extended along the radius for stability (most of your power comes from the spin around that front finger–this is why the finger-on-rim grip is crap).
For a forehand, there’s definitely a lot you can do with the grip. I see a lot of newer players with forehand grips that are far too loose–you can throw the disc, sure, but because you’re not in control of the disc angle on release you’ve little say in the curvature of the disc. It’s very hard to get touch on a flick with a poor grip. I’m a big fan of gripping the disc tightly by means of the thumb and ring/pinky fingers; the thumb should press so hard that it “dents” the top of the disc slightly, and the bottom fingers can be bent or extended, so long as they clench the disc with the thumb. My grip is good enough to the point that I can remove my two “throwing” fingers from contact with the disc and hold it perpendicular to the ground by strength of my thumb and non-throwing fingers alone. Along with the fingers, where the disc rests in the hand is also important–it should be as far into the recess between the thumb and pointer finger as possible, for a good, tight grip.
-Wrist position. This mostly applies to IO/OI throws. When you want to throw OI, you need to tilt your hand upwards at the wrist, and vice-versa for IO. Along with this, your body position comes into play as well–essentially, your shoulders should be in the plane you want the disc to fly in; if you want the disc to fly IO and you’re throwing a righty flick, you should be dropping your right shoulder so as you throw and your arm comes across your body it’s going from your lower right to your upper left, the same sort of arc you want the IO flick to have.
There’s more to it than that, mostly with regards to hucking, and I’m gonna put it into a separate post.
I rant a lot, but I swear I actually know what I’m talking about…
