Why and When the Turtle Wins - TW

Hey Folks,

Staying on a throwing theme, I'm going to talk about another way to improve your throws. People always come to me and ask how can I throw farther or improve my throws. I quickly evaluate the thrower by throwing back and forth with them for a few throws. In most cases, I notice that developing throwers simply throw too hard.

Pictured Above: A remarkable catch by Marcius Extavour at Canadian Ultimate University Nationals (Kirk Nylen made a good attempt). This catch was in the finals, but was sent back due to a travel call.

So, one of the easiest ways to improve your throws is to try to throw as slow as possible. As you improve your slow throw, you develop two important skills. One, you learn how to throw a slow throw (obviously). Two, as you learn to throw slow you increase your spin that stabilizes the disc. This additional spin translates into all of your throws and will improve you hucks and throws.

Throwing slow with a partner will give you the opportunity to practice the throw slow. To make it even more challenging it is fun to challenge another partnership to a slow throw off. Starting the same distance apart, both people with a disc do a 3-2-1 release, and you see who can get their disc to their partner last. Sure it's hard to guarantee proper release times and finish line calls, but this can be a fun drill to run. The emphasis is really not the competition, but the idea that you are trying to throw ridiculously slow while maintaining a nice disc flight.

In addition to the slow throw, it is also good to throw a soft throw. The soft throw is less about as slow as possible, but is a throw which lands in the receivers hands gently. Your receiver can tell you how hard your throw is. The soft throw is a game based throw that is used when you want to throw to a receiver and they can just run through the disc without worrying about losing an appendage or eye.

PJ