Throwing, Part 3

You may not be asking yourself the most important questions:

Imagine standing around throwing with someone in the way most casual players throw around. You stand some distance apart. You make a throw. Maybe it’s right to the other person. Maybe not. Maybe it’s too hard. Maybe not. Maybe it’s short. Maybe not. Maybe it’s too high. Maybe not. But nothing happens on each of those results, and you just make another throw.

This doesn’t actually do anything. It definitely doesn’t help your throwing. But, years of this goes by, and you’re no better a thrower than you were last year. Or 3 years ago. Or 5, or 10, or 15, or even 20. If at any point your throwing has plateaued, and you still have a meaningful number of throwaways, there are a few things you need to know:

• Throwing IS the sport.

• And, this is totally fixable. If you do the work.

• Until you fix it, you are one of the team’s problems.

• Stop saying “Sorry!” when you miss.

Why shouldn’t you say “Sorry!” when the other person has to go chasing an errant disc? Because, if you’re like most people—and this goes doubly for polite and/or indirect cultures, including and perhaps especially the UK—a “Sorry!” almost always elicits these responses:

“That’s ok!”

or

“Don’t worry about it!”

The problem is that the situation is literally the exact opposite: it’s NOT OKAY, and you SHOULD WORRY about it—that is, if your goal is to IMPROVE. Plus, saying “Sorry!” is almost always expressly to provoke those exact responses. And, when you hear “that’s ok”, you train your brain to associate that missed throw with the message that “that’s ok”. And you’ve done that thousands of times by now, training yourself to be comfortably satisfied with throwaways.

And as if that weren’t bad enough, the unfortunate reality is that your apology does nothing to improve your throw, now or later. And, when you train your brain to apologize only to hear everything is fine, then you’re training your entire learning apparatus to shut down.

Think about a professional basketball or an elite netball player. When they shoot the ball, and it doesn’t go in the net, whether at training or in competition, do they apologize? Does that even make sense? When you throw and miss, (i.e., “don’t connect”), it’s no different than missing the basket. No one needs an apology. That’s just…weird. What we need is to 1) recognize the objective reality that it didn’t go in, and 2) have some plan to fix it.

Now, I get that different people have different tolerances for making mistakes. Some people need to be told “You’re a good person, you’re a moral person, you’re an ethical person, you’re trying, thank you for showing up, I appreciate your energy, you make excellent cookies, you drive a fast car, and your hair is immaculate. Plus, three throws ago, you hit the target,” before they’re able to tolerate: “That last throw was too fast.” As a coach, especially of Mixed and Juniors, you learn quickly that navigating “The Ratio” is an important part of being effective.

But, if at the end of the day, despite your efforts to meet the ratio needs of your team, if someone just can’t hear: “Hey, these throws aren’t working,” then they are telling you that they don’t want to improve, because the cost of improving (coming to grips with the reality that their throws aren’t connecting) is too high (accepting that they’re not as good as they can be at something, and that hard work is ahead).

EVERY SINGLE TIME you throw, you need to throw a specific throw with specific qualities.

EVERY THROW should have had an intention before the throw.

You should have intended to do something—to throw something in PARTICULAR—before the throw. In order to do that, you have to know the qualities you can control.

See the previous article. You’re almost always throwing too fast.

It shouldn’t wobble. Period. If it does, and you don’t know what’s causing it, get someone with a nice phone (something produced in, IDK, the last 10 years) to do a slow-mo video, and watch how the disc is coming out of your hand. 90% of the time, it’s because you are imparting spin while the disc is not being held in a single plane.

But, you don’t have to believe my conjecture. Just watch the video and be honest. If you can’t see what’s wrong, ask someone to watch it with you.

Most of us are not NEARLY as hard on ourselves as we need to be with regard to accuracy.

Let’s define an average competitive thrower as someone who can complete any pass to a “pivoting target” if there’s no pressure, within a certain range. First of all, if you don’t meet this definition, you are not yet an average thrower. Don’t fret. You’re still a good person, you’re trying, you show up and we appreciate it, your car and baked goods are nice, and your fashion sense is still impeccable. But, you’re not an average competitive thrower yet.

An average thrower, in my experience, tends to view a “good throw” as one which the target doesn’t have to run to get. Some drills emphasize this, with the condition that if the receiver has to do more than pivot, then it’s considered a miss. But does this “pivoting target” make practical sense?

As a very average-sized man, (and below-average-sized Ultimate player), I have a 175cm wingspan. If I can step out just over a meter in each direction, that gives a total target size of 175 + 112.5 + 112.5 = 400cm. That’s FOUR METERS of width that you’re allowing as a target. Let’s also say that I can catch anything up to ankle-high, and can raise my hands above my head, but can’t jump—for the purposes of the drill. That oval target looks like this, and comes with a total area of 25 square meters.

But, that’s not actually how it works out when I’m playing with an opponent. When I’m running, it looks more like this. Most people running at speed have difficulty catching things below their knees, they do not have much lateral margin while running, but can jump. Even with the jump, though, this circle has an area of only 12.5 square meters.

Basically, if you’re aiming at the first (big oval) target and “hitting”, but are using the whole size of the target, a lot of throws are missing. Even assuming your throws are normally distributed around the origin, if that smaller target (circle) is only within one standard deviation, you’re still missing the target 30% of the time. And that comes out to about 67%, or only two-thirds of the time. That means ONE OUT OF EVERY THREE THROWS you catch, you will eventually throw away, if you’re measuring yourself by this standard.

Better than both is to aim for this target: a 1-meter circle, what I like to call the “head-to-junk” target circle:

This is an easy thing to visualize, and lets you know immediately if you’re hitting the target or not.b. People can catch things outside this radius, but you throwing isn’t a catching drill. It’s about IMPROVING YOUR THROWING.

Ah, now we get more nuanced. Once you’ve got the accuracy and speed down, the next thing to think about is the “shape”, or, the “whole flight path” of the disc from you to your target. This involves lift, drop, bend, attitude, stall, etc etc. Not going to get into this right now, but let’s just say that once you’ve got speed and accuracy, congratulations! You’ve just entered the echelon of average competitive throwers. There’s still a lot to work on.

In many ways, this is the most decisive factor. However bad your throws, as long as they’re not going into the ground, have some probability of being caught. Good receivers can mitigate bad throws to some degree. But, immediately after “not throwing the disc straight into the ground” is the next-most-important thing of “not throwing the disc straight into the defense”.

And, this is complex. It requires that you understand:

• How defense works.

• How defenders want to move.

and then to:

• Anticipate that movement.

• Evaluate whether that movement will intercept the throw you want to throw.

• Make a split-second decision to throw or holster.

There aren’t a whole lot of ways to work on this, other than through scrimmage and actually playing against other teams. For some of you, not throwing into a crowd of defenders—and seeing defenders at all—will be the hardest thing to learn, especially if you’ve already been playing for a number of years. It may require building new habits, and that’s incredibly hard if you’ve already been at it a while.

You have to have a target upon which to converge, and you have to have a plan to do gradient ascent. No, I’m not talking about AI.

Work on something specifically. Tell your partner. This makes it possible for both of you to help hold you accountable. Examples:

• “I want to work on my low-release, rising flat backhand.”

• “I want work on my bender flick (outside-in) to curve more.”

• “I want to make my hammers more stable.”

If you don’t know what you intend to throw before you throw it, you can’t possibly know if the throw was good or not. So, announce your intentions, and then execute.

Instead, after each miss, have a little routine. For example, ask your partner to come toward you, (or you run toward them), and throw 5 quick passes to the target. In the same way that professional basketball players (and I presume netball players) want to “see the ball go through the hoop” to reestablish confidence and “reset” the psychological pain of missing, disc throwers need to “see completions” for the same reason. THEN, go back to what you were doing. And keep your standards high.

Your partner should always be giving feedback. If you’re in the 1m “head-to-junk” circle, they should say: “Great!” or “Yes!”. If you’re in the 2m “can prob catch while cutting” circle, they can say: “Good,” or “Nice.” If you’re in the big oval, they shouldn’t say anything. If you’re throwing too hard, they should say: “Too hard.”

Similarly, you should identify your own problems. When it’s too low, you should say: “Higher.” When it’s too fast, you should say: “Slower.” When it’s wobbly, you should say: “Steadier”, or “Stable,” or “More omega, less v,” (for my physics nerds).

Once you identify what the issue is, then, do something about it. If you can’t figure out what to do about it, ask someone. Don’t just try again without changing anything, because the only thing that does is build a habit of…wait for it…making the same mistake again.

Here are a few examples:

• Wobbly? Try to put more spin. Get the disc cocked further back in your hand and arm, and snap your wrist harder.

• Too fast? Move your arm less.

• Too low? Look at a higher spot on your target. HEY MY EYES ARE UP HERE.

If you don’t do this stuff, here’s what happens. You just sort of mindlessly do something different, without identifying what you want to fix, and how you’re fixing it. It might work. It might not. You might not even be changing anything. Which leads to Brownian motion.

Instead of improving, your throwing just goes on a “random walk.” One day it’s too high, another day it’s too low. One week the velocity is good, another week it’s not. Yes, of course, consistency comes with time. But, “practice” without either a goal or a plan to fix a particular issue—with continuous feedback and adjustments and reevaluation—just results in your throw CHANGING, not IMPROVING.

Get an honest partner, say what you’re going to do, and do it. If it’s not working, articulate the problem, state—out loud—your proposed solution, and try it. Get ideas for solutions if you’re stuck. Remember to reset (see yourself make good throws) when things aren’t working. And don’t apologize; instead, create a plan. Then, give yourself credit for doing a hard thing (trying to get better) AFTER the session.