If we don't teach 'palm up', then what?
A guide for coaches
I recently posted an older article of mine, Don't 'turn the palm up' on forehands, to Reddit, where it sparked some good discussion.
One of my biggest takeaways from the thread is that it's not enough to ask people to stop teaching 'palm up'—we have to offer new ways to teach that can replace those old concepts.
Here's how I teach forehands without telling players what to do with their palms:
Do nothing
Do nothing? Yes, I think one of the best answers is to coach less.
Does the 'palm up' advice even work? A good science experiment needs a control group. Just because someone tells a player "keep your palm up" and they get better at throwing forehands after doesn't mean that the tip generated the improvement. Perhaps they would have seen that same improvement without the tip.
New players get better even without cues. Imagine a player who's thrown 100 flicks in their frisbee career. You tell them to keep their palm up, and by the time they've thrown 1,000 flicks their forehand is much better. It isn't necessarily proof that the advice works—the bigger factor is that they now have 10x as much experience.
One commenter on my Reddit post said "I agree with your point about not keeping the emphasis on ['palm up']. I wouldn't be still using that cue after about 3 months". But any player that new is going to get better just by practicing, whether someone gives them advice or not. Even as an experienced player, there have been concepts I learned and changes I made that helped me get better at throwing. But the biggest reason for my improvement was simply that I threw a lot.
In general, we often overestimate the influence we have over those we coach, teach, or parent. We can try to shape our players or our children, but they find their own path anyway. Our coaching is often less influential than we'd like to think. As coaches we should accept that. We should encourage and allow players to find their own path from the start. (For more on this I suggest the book The Gardener and the Carpenter.)
Doing nothing, to be clear, doesn't literally mean nothing. You're still there to be a throwing partner. You can answer questions. You should still encourage them to practice more, encourage them to experiment more, and point out how much progress they've made. Doing nothing just means you don't always need to go overboard providing new cues. Sometimes time and reps, not cues, are the answer.
Encouraging players to continue throwing is often enough, especially for new players. Consider doing nothing a bit more often.
Teach players how a disc flies
I don't tell players to keep their palm up, but there is a lesson I often give new players: I describe how a disc flies.
The reason coaches want to teach palm up, it seems, is that it helps players learn to throw flat flicks instead of having an outside-in flight path. For example, another Reddit commenter said:
Anyone with a basketball/football/baseball background learning the flick motion will throw wobbly blades that turn over.
The Ultiworld article mentioned in my original post made the same point:
...Pronating (turning over) your wrist on release is a common issue and results in the disc curving outside-in and down.
So 'palm up' is not important in and of itself. It's important as a means to a different end—a flat throw. But we don't need to tell a player to keep their palm up. I like to skip right to the end goal—explain to them how the disc flies. They can then experiment to find the feeling that works well for them.
I often give a quick lesson while partner throwing with a new player. It goes something like this:
If the disc is angled when it comes out of your hand, it'll fly in a curve. In general, the disc will curve towards the lowest edge on the disc.
If you tilt the disc this way [show them an OI flick about to be released], it'll curve to the right and then back to the left. [throw a few OI flicks to demonstrate]
If you tilt the disc this way [IO flick] it'll curve to the left and then back to the right. [demonstrate a few IO flicks]
And if the nose of the disc is up, then the lowest edge is the side close to you—the disc will go up in the air and then curve back towards you.
All these different curves are useful in different situations. You want to be able to control whether the disc curves or not.
Once a player understands for themselves why the disc flies the way it does, they can find their own ways to make the disc fly flat.
The ultimate goal is to teach throws that don't turn outside-in. Teaching 'palm up' is inserting an unnecessary step that's not our ultimate aim. If we take the time to describe how the disc behaves, we can directly focus on the outcome we care about instead of focusing on a stand-in.
Encourage variation
Perhaps the most robust finding in learning science is that variation is a better learning technique than pure, unchanging repetition. For more, see my article An introduction to the science of learning, for frisbee throwers. Variation allows our bodies to calibrate.
We shouldn't just teach our players to throw flat forehands. We should teach them OI and IOs, too, right from the start. Have players experiment with underarm IOs, even, as Ryan Lowe suggests in one of his videos. Have players practice blades.
Encouraging variation helps turn a negative—"your throw is wrong, it shouldn't curve like that"—into a positive—"that's a nice curve, you should practice throwing it at different angles, too".
When a player knows what it feels like to throw an IO, and they know what it feels like to throw an OI, they'll be able to figure out what it feels like to throw the disc flat, as well.
Use analogy
Analogy and imagery are powerful techniques for teaching motor skills, as explained in the book The Language of Coaching (my review here). Instead of telling players what to do with their body itself, an analogy gives players an external goal that helps them along their path.
"Flick your wrist like you're snapping a towel" is a famous example for teaching flicks. Unfortunately, not everyone has experience snapping towels. Perhaps instead of giving up on the metaphor, we should bring towels to practice for players to experiment with.
The Language of Coaching often uses analogies of the form "imagine there's a solid object in your way". Teaching flicks, we could have players imagine there's a table in front of them, and they need to keep the disc under the table as they release it. Or to constrain the disc from both the IO and OI angles, we could ask them to imagine they're slotting it through a horizontal coin slot at the moment of release.
In my book review linked above, I offered the analogy of imagining the edge of the disc was a scythe, and the player is using the outside edge of the disc to cut the grass. This could help a player turn their disc more towards the IO side:
Analogy can be a very effective learning tool when we find an analogy that works for a player. It's "a picture is worth a thousand words" as a coaching tool. I'd love to see more frisbee coaches experiment with analogy.
The "Inner Game of Tennis" technique
Timothy Gallwey's classic The Inner Game of Tennis is every frisbee coach's favorite book (source: personal experience). But what does he actually say about learning motor skills? Here's a passage I found thought-provoking:
Jack...came rushing up to me during the lunch hour, exclaiming, “I’ve always had a terrible backhand. Maybe you can help me.”
I asked, “What’s so terrible about your backhand?”
“I take my racket back too high on my backswing.”
“How do you know?”
“Because at least five different pros have told me so. I just haven’t been able to correct it.”...
... complaints such as Jack’s are common among people of all levels of intelligence and proficiency. Besides, it was clear that at least five other pros had told him to lower his racket without much effect. What was keeping him from doing it? I wondered....
“Your backhand is all right,” I said reassuringly. “It’s just going through some changes. Why don’t you take a closer look at it.” We walked over to a large windowpane and there I asked him to swing again while watching his reflection. He did so, again taking his characteristic hitch at the back of his swing, but this time he was astounded. “Hey, I really do take my racket back high! It goes up above my shoulder!” There was no judgment in his voice; he was just reporting with amazement what his eyes had seen.
What surprised me was Jack’s surprise. Hadn’t he said that five pros had told him his racket was too high? I was certain that if I had told him the same thing after his first swing, he would have replied, “Yes, I know.” But what was now clear was that he didn’t really know, since no one is ever surprised at seeing something they already know. Despite all those lessons, he had never directly experienced his racket going back high. His mind had been so absorbed in the process of judgment and trying to change this “bad” stroke that he had never perceived the stroke itself.
Looking in the glass which mirrored his stroke as it was, Jack was able to keep his racket low quite effortlessly as he swung again.... [Bold font added by me]
So the first key is to watch ourselves play. The second key is to watch others—experts—play:
To Self 2, a picture is worth a thousand words. It learns by watching the actions of others, as well as by performing actions itself. Almost all tennis players have experienced playing over their heads after watching championship tennis on television. The benefits to your game come not from analyzing the strokes of top players, but from concentrating without thinking and simply letting yourself absorb the images before you.
Nowadays we're all walking around with videocameras in our pockets. It's easier than it ever was—certainly easier than it was when Mr. Gallwey wrote his book—to help players watch themselves throw. Take videos of your players throwing at practice. Download some videos from Joe Marmerstein's Throwing Form Project so your players can watch elite throwers at practice, too. You might not have to say a thing—just let your players see what their form looks like, and let your players see what elite form looks like.
If you're a fan of The Inner Game of Tennis, as I am, consider coaching the way he suggests. His suggestions have never been easier to put into practice.
Encourage more spin and less wobble
Our goal, supposedly, is to teach flicks that don't turn over outside-in. Let's not forget the release angle isn't the only thing that causes the disc to turn over.
Discs with less angular momentum will turn more in flight (see here for more explanation). Let's encourage our players to get more spin on their throws.
Discs that wobble as they spin will lose angular momentum, and thus turn over more as well. Let's teach our players to have less wobble on their throws. (I've written about wobble in my post Forehand: wrist, grip, and wobble.)
Increasing spin and reducing wobble takes time. There's no quick, comfortable solution—it mostly just takes a lot of throws. Another reason to be patient and understand that often "do nothing" is a perfectly fine coaching technique. Give your new players time to get stronger, more refined throws before you bombard them with cues.
Final thoughts
I still haven't laid out why we shouldn't teach 'palm up'. Some Reddit commenters (here, for example) suggested that even though it's not always what elite throwers are actually doing, it's still a useful teaching tool...right?
My answer to that is in Book Review: The Language of Coaching. In short, teaching via cues that focus on the body (i.e. "internal" cues) has two downsides compared to cues focused outside the body ("external" cues):
First, research shows internal cues lead to people learning more slowly.
Second, some research suggests internal cues lead to worse performance under pressure. Thinking about our body is exactly what we don't want to be doing when the pressure is on.
In my own experience, I haven't used the "Inner Game of Tennis" or "Analogy" techniques too much (I'd love to use the video method, but it makes the most sense with more experienced players). I mostly encourage variation, encourage more spin, and provide an understanding of how the disc flies. Then I sit back and "do nothing" while players gain strength and experience.