Throwing Advice

Most of the players who asked about what they should work on over the summer got a variation of this basic advice:

• Having big hucks isn't that important, but you should try to get to a point where you are consistently able to throw flat 40 yard forehands and backhands with a mark on you.
• Become great at breaking the mark. That means being able to throw low-release IO/flat/OI forehands/backhands with as much extension as possible.
• Get faster with a disc in your hands. The best way to do this is to practice your fakes and pivoting in front of a mirror.
• Work on your balance and footwork so you're really quick running give-and-go's to either side.
• Think about how you throw (grips, footwork, etc.). Decide whether your technique is basically good and you just need incremental improvements, or whether you need to start over from scratch.

If you'd like something more advanced, here's what I sent to the team in 2007:

Some of you seemed a bit confused by part of an email I sent Micah, so I thought I'd try to clarify what I was talking about. For those of you who sent me sarcastic emails or were making fun of me at dinner last night, I did not give Micah any formulae or equations for improving his throws. What I did do was implicitly define a couple equivalence relations.

What I wrote:

Work on varying the flight paths and amount of touch you put on your throws. Rather than just thinking about (1) using throw A to get the disc from point B to point C, think about (2) using throw A to get the disc from point B to point C with flight path D in time E.

The equivalence relations can be described as:

(1) Let A1, A2 be a type of throw (forehand, backhand, etc.)
Let B1, B2, C1,C2 be elements of R^3+ := {(x,y,z) in R^3 s.t. z>0}
Let D1, D2 be the (smooth) flight paths in R^3+

Then define the equivalence relation == by
for throws X=(A1,B1,C1,D1), Y=(A2,B2,C2,D2)
X==Y if
a. A1=A2
b. B1=B2
c. C1=C2
d. There exists a diffeomorphism from D1 to D2 where we consider D1, D2 as differentiable 1-manifolds embedded in R^3.

(2) Let A1, A2 be a type of throw (forehand, backhand, etc.)
Let B1, B2, C1,C2 be elements of R^3+ := {(x,y,z) in R^3 s.t. z>0}
Let D1, D2 be the (smooth) flight paths in R^3+
Let E1, E2 be the time the disc is in the air.

Then define the equivalence relation === by
for throws X=(A1,B1,C1,D1,E1), Y=(A2,B2,C2,D2,E2)
X===Y if
a. A1=A2
b. B1=B2
c. C1=C2
d. E1=E2
e. D1(t)=D2(t) for all t in [0,E1], where D1, D2 are parameterized by t so that:
D1(t)=x1(t)i+y1(t)j+z1(t)j, for t in [0,E1], D1(0)=B1, D1(E1)=C1
D2(t)=x2(t)i+y2(t)j+z2(t)j, for t in [0,E2], D2(0)=B1, D2(E2)=C2

Basically, to improve your throws, you need to start thinking in terms of ===, not ==. Hope that clears things up.