Throwing Thought: Load the scapula!
(No Ratings Yet. Click to Rate!)
Loading ...
Hopefully this gives you a good idea.
So many novice throwers use primarily their arm, or throw from their hip. Both sap throwing power. Relax your arm (but not the grip), and load the scapula when you’re hucking forehands.
The force that results from this loading should flow fairly easily from your torso/shoulder to the disc if you’re keeping your arm relaxed. From your biceps to your forearm, nothing should be tightening up until your snap your wrist to release the disc.
Next time you’re watching somebody with really good forehand hucks, watch their shoulder. I can almost guarantee you that if they throw with any power or authority they load their shoulder to some extent.
I’ve yet to determine whether “loading the scapula” is appropriate for backhands. But it most definitely helps for forehands. Pull your shoulder blade in when you wind up, and just let the natural stretch-shortening cycle pull your arm through the throwing motion.
Hmm… the RKC Hard-Style school thinks of this as firing the lats / packing the shoulder / (squeezing a sponge):
http://begin2dig.blogspot.com/2008/12/why-fire-lats-to-swing-kettlebell.html
…ideas which come from martial arts & boxing too, momentum transfer and all that.
I don’t know that that’s the same sort of loading–with KB swings you’re working in the sagittal plane, whereas with a frisbee/baseball throw you’re working more in the transverse, and loading the scapula for throwing is more to take advantage of the stretch-shortening cycle of your pectoral muscles rather than stability (though that’s part of it under heavy loading, as in baseball).
Thoughts? I’m no KB expert.
Yea, it definitely looks different, just wanted to “throw” the idea out there
I haven’t used squeeze the sponge / pack the shoulders to improve anybody’s throws, it’s just something I’ve thought about from time to time re: momentum transfer. A fh isn’t exactly the same as a boxing punch, but we know a lot about the mechanics of the latter.
It’s interesting that you’ve been learning about coaching from other coaches, seemingly, whereas I’ve learned lots of interesting things being coached in non-Ultimate things (Chinese martial arts and Russian kettlebells).
I think people struggle the most with fh throwing form rather than momentum transfer? and a trick I picked up from senior RKC instructor Rif was just to use your body (as the trainer/coach) to enforce good biomechanics. In the KB case you use it to make sure people engage their lats by standing in front of them when they swing, or putting them next to a fence when they clean the KB.
For hucks, just placing your hands where the disc shouldn’t be (released high) will teach rookies fh or bh I/O form mechanics without having to verbalize it, your body just does it.
I also learned some things about learning to layout from a ex-varsity volleyball player turned firefighter who was at the SJ RKC, cuz the drill Tiina recommends (get on your knees to layout) hasn’t worked for us since it’s a bit artificial, but that’s another post
Most of my throwing thoughts come from my own observation and experimentation–a few seed crystals scattered through the blogsphere helped crystallize a lot back in ’05 when I was still trying to get it all down.
Likewise for a lot of training stuff–the internet is a vast resource.
Certainly form is of paramount importance, but when you’re talking about throwing it far, that power needs to come from somewhere.
I’m not terribly fond of the fall-from-your-knees method either.
Seems like “loading the scapula” applies more intuitively to the hammer, as you point out elsewhere.
As for laying out, what has started to work for me so far, besides diving in the Vegas mud, was practicing getting on my stomach quickly (we had to do this often at the RKC, to listen to instructors talk), which got me used to getting low and getting on the ground.
From there, the ex-volleyball player suggested I practice on slippy bball/vball floors where you go for a layout by first moving forward into a low, lunge-type position, putting your hands on the ground (just for training wheels I promise), and then pulling yourself forward on the floor.
Eventually you can smoothly jog into a layout on a slippy floor, by getting low, and eventually you can do so without your hands.
They key diff here is it’s not “fall from your knees” which doesn’t happen in a real layout, it’s shoot-forward from a low / lunge-like position.
That said, I almost got my first super-low layout endzone-O the next weekend (but dropped), but haven’t tried this training on my teammates yet. I do like how it enforces the forward motion and the leg mechanics in concert with low center of gravity, and how it provides a progression, but we’ll see how it goes!