Thoughts.

I’m a big stickler for sleep, for various reasons – general health and well-being being a big one.

However, there are more tangible, concrete reasons to value your sleep, too – and the Harvard Business Review does a great job of touching on some of those needs.

As an ultimate player, you should know that throwing is a dynamic motor skill – in much the same way that professional violinists need their sleep to continue to progress, we as athletes likewise need to give ourselves appropriate time to consolidate the motor learning we do by taking the time necessary to sleep. (PS – It can help with controlling your weight, too).

Make 8 hours the minimum, not the ideal. Consider napping. Reap the benefits!

I tried to dig up a couple pictures of what I was talking about last week with the “IO Foot”; Keeghan Uhl’s gallery of Nationals provided a few useful pictures.

Without further ado:

This picture provides one angle on the IO foot. The throw isn’t explicitly IO–which is to say, this could just be a flat throw to the open side–but you’ll note that the foot position forces the knee to follow and wind up in a position which allows a fairly clean follow-through of the arm in front of the leg.
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I was asked last week about foot placement on forehand hucks. I’ve been meaning to write about foot placement for a while now, and for something so seemingly simple there’s actually a decent amount of nuance to it, so this likely won’t be the only post on the topic.

Some general points on stepping and throwing a forehand:
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Simple cue, significant results.

Get your weight set on your throwing (non-pivot) foot before you throw.

To put it a little differently, you should be balanced with your weight on your throwing foot during your release. I like to cue a balanced “finish” position (stepped-out, at full extension or what-have-you) on the follow-through, as it encourages stability throughout the whole throwing motion.
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Last weekend at Chesapeake a teammate remarked, when watching the Chain vs. Ironside game, about how the players were “throwing with their shoulders”–throwing with the hip means power is generated from below the plane of the throw, adding a natural float, while throwing from the shoulder keeps power in the same plane and allows for flatter throws–your typical elite-level pass, in other words (touch has its place, but by and large throws are all about speed and precision).

It’s a facet of throwing mechanics I hadn’t considered but instantly made a difference as I applied it. Throwing from the hip can generate more power but takes longer and is inclined to float; throwing from the shoulder leads to a faster release (no step required, though it can augment) and a bit more consistency in windy conditions.

I think your ideal thrower can generate enough power from torso/shoulder as to obviate the need for the hip on long throws. I need a bigger sample of observing high-level players and applying it myself before I can make that judgment authoritatively, though.

Try it out next time you’re tossing–throw with no step, just torso/shoulder motion. Channel the same motion from your stepped-out pivot position, extend application to practice and game use.

I recently received a question from a commenter on my old “Forehand Hucks” post asking about how to compensate for the natural OI that comes with the grip I epouse for flicks.

The easiest (and best) way to control for this is with your shoulder tilt. It’s easy to think that some wrist tilt can compensate, but the plane of the throw, flat or otherwise, is decided by your shoulders. A throw that naturally comes out OI becomes flat becomes IO if you adjust the plane along which it’s thrown.
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Do you think about your step when you’re throwing?

Not just the mechanics of it (more on that in a later post), but WHERE you step to.

Cara Crouch’s post for the Huddle’s Team USA issue alludes to “throw[ing] from a plane that is not parallel to [the mark's]” for better throwing, and I thought it was important enough to flesh out a bit more.

There are two extremes to your pivot planes; In practice, your pivot* will of course wind up somewhere between the two. The planes are relative to your intended throwing direction, e.g. the dump, upfield:
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I’m not talking the standard step-forward, push back up type, I’m talking stepping at angles and especially stepping sideways. You’ll see a noticeable improvement in your pivoting speed, which will in turn allow you to develop more effective fakes and generally become more capable with the disc in your hands.

Frank (of RSD fame) talks about people being off-balance with their throwing positions because they step out too wide; if you can develop enough strength, these positions are far from off-balance (though you can still over-extend in the context of a given situation/against a given mark). Work to extend your absolute pivot range through better flexibility and strength (lunging can help with both–heavier weight obviously means more of a strength emphasis, but you can work on your mobility with adequate work in these positions too), and practice your pivots and fakes to extend your practical pivot range.

As for specific recommendations, simple standing side-to-side lunges, or 45 degree lunges (stepping across your center or away from it), are what I have in mind here.

Weight/rep ranges really don’t need to be that intense–pivoting is plyometric in nature, so relatively light loading (if you’re in 12-20 rep range you’ll probably still see an effect) should still be enough to stimulate a positive adaptation, especially if you’ve never trained it before. You probably don’t need to get much heavier than 8 or 6 reps, especially if it’s light enough that you can really explode up out of each lunge.

Other lunge variations include standing lunges (stepping both forwards and backwards), walking lunges, and (a personal favorite) bulgarian squats. These, however, are all in the sagittal plane, and won’t carry over to action in the frontal plane (pivoting).

The lunge position itself is pretty important to throwing well and consistently–more on that in a later post, but regardless you can only stand to improve as a player if you improve in your lunging.

UPDATE: Some good addendums with other exercise can be had in the comments–definitely worth a look.